Ebola Outbreak in exponential growth


"On 14 October, during a news conference in Geneva, the assistant director-general of the WHO stated that there could be as many as 10,000 new Ebola cases per week by December 2014"
 im not sure if you know what the word "could" means
I know what the word "could" means.

Ebolas R0 is roughly 2, currently, in west-africa - meaning on average one infected person infects 2 others. It is possible that in western countries the R value could be lower due to better hygiene (washing hands) and quicker isolation of patients. If it became airborne the R value would increase dramatically.


It IS propagating exponentially, with a doubling period of approximately 3 weeks. 10,000 cases per week by december is a prognosis based on sound epidemiological methodology - not scare tactics.
We will see in a few weeks then. Im confident its a scare tactic again.
 
It IS propagating exponentially, with a doubling period of approximately 3 weeks. 10,000 cases per week by december is a prognosis based on sound epidemiological methodology - not scare tactics.
As I said many times before, you don't qualify anything exponential just on a small time period. We"ll see in 6 months if it is still exponential. Most probably NOT, obviously.
 
EDIT: Another estimate by a reputable institute is for 1.5 million infected by end of January. http://www.ibtimes.c...ays-cdc-1467514 EDIT2: "22 September 2014 ¦ GENEVA - Unless Ebola control measures in west Africa are enhanced quickly, experts from the WHO and Imperial College, London, predict numbers will continue to climb exponentially" http://www.keyboard-...3f7f09b279b424c Quote MultiQuote Report Page 1 of 2 1 2 Next Back to Offtopic General talk · Next Unread Topic → Reply to this topic ekianjo's Photo 1 user(s) are reading this topic 1 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users ekianjo OpenPandora Boards → Off topic → Offtopic General talk Privacy Policy RSS Feed Change Theme Mark Community Read Help Community Forum Software by IP.Board 3.4.6
LOL LOL LOL

You don't seem to remember the SARS episode. Let me refresh your memory:

http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/831.full

They predicted exponential spread of SARS as well at the time and that we would basically all die from it in no time. Look at the curves in the link, that was from 2003.

And you know, your super reputable institution, the CDC, removed conveniently all links to their previous SARS stories when they realized they were completely wrong. Now this page is a convenient 404: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/ppt/globalsars.ppt

BUt hey, believe what you want and get ready for the apocalypse if that's your thing! Stock on weapons and food !
 
As for the mutation bit I've got no idea how likely/possible that would be but, using logic alone, it does not seem to me to be a huge evolutionary leap for the disease to become communicable via coughing / sneezing as the current method of infection is via any sort of bodily fluid.
 Does not work like that. When the virus mutates not only one variable changes. It may spread more easily but be less virulent. Or even more virulent, killing the host twice faster and therefore limiting the spread of the disease. If that were that easy we would be surrounded by killer diseases by now, yet this is FAR from being the case.
Hands up everyone posting here that's a medical professional.

No-one? Oh, just me then.

We are surrounded by killer diseases. They're getting worse every year, though the spread isn't anything like as rapid as Ebola - but that's mostly because Ebola is spread by ignorance and questionable social practices.

In the 1970s, Staphylococcus Aureus mutated to become resistant to the wonder-drug of choice, Meticillin. It's a killer, and it's everywhere but thanks to the efforts of the WHO it's no longer serious and we can treat it. It mainly kills the immunocompromised, the elderly and the very young. It's in every home in the whole world now and the vast majority of people are colonised with it.

We developed new drugs (antibiotics) to deal with it - mostly Vancomycin, Mupirocin and for decolonisation we use things like Triclosan. It's a serious problem for surgical procedures as most people carry it and it plays havoc with wounds. Yet we still deal with it on a daily basis. Thanks to the WHO, you'll be tested for it and cured of it (for the short term, until you go home and become recolonised) prior to anything risky.

Clostridium Difficile is on the rise and that kills people by rotting their intestines. Again, it's a twat to destroy - its spores can survive in 90% ethanol for more than twenty years - but we deal with it using the same Antibiotics as we do for MRSA, Vancomycin.

Just recently we've discovered Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriacae - a mutation of low-grade bacteria which is not only resistant to our top-line antibiotics (Carbapenems) but can actually eat them, if you will. There is no known cure or remedy and it will kill at least ten percent of cases, probably more.

Then there's Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus - a mutation of MRSA that is resistant to all known antibiotics and will almost certainly (according to biochemists at Sheffield's research wing of the University) kill ten percent of the world's population within our lifetimes - and again, there's no cure.

And the most (un)surprising thing is that nobody is researching new antibiotics for these last two - biochemists have given up on them and are looking now to biological treatments (quorum-sensing looks promising, as does nanotech in current research).

Ebola is worrying, as is SARS and H1N1, because they're viruses. Our arsenal of antivirals is small, and largely ineffective. Most patients in my care are brought through a nasty viral infection not by killing the virus but by managing symptoms - reducing fever, hydration, ventilation etc. A few years ago, someone dropped dead in front of me from Swine Flu - it was horrific to watch but there was nothing we could do; he had waited too long for treatment.

The point is that we've run out of options for Bacteria - they've won the war. Viruses are even worse because we don't have any effective tools at our disposal and if just one runs out of control we're seriously fucked - it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.

We've been lucky so far, all the flu-variants have been rather mild. Ebola probably will be too, but can we take the chance that it might not be?

One final thought for you all - Humans' evolution has happened over a very, very long timescale as we don't tend to reproduce in binary manner. Bacteria (and to a lesser extent, viruses) evolve very, very fast - so fast you can see it happen under a microscope. So how likely is a mutation?

Thank fuck Ebola is a virus.

D.
 
*raising hand*

reading your post was a real joy, dunny, as you're just so right about almost everything you wrote.

One final thought for you all - Humans' evolution has happened over a very, very long timescale as we don't tend to reproduce in binary manner. Bacteria (and to a lesser extent, viruses) evolve very, very fast - so fast you can see it happen under a microscope. So how likely is a mutation?
now this bit is kinda misleading: iirc ebola is a ~19 kb rna virus. it's replication depends on virus based rna polymerase which is, by the way, not proofreading. luckily it's non-segmented single strand, so genetic reassortment doesn't come into play (and thank fuck for that!). but spontaneous mutation and recombination literally do happen all the time.

still, i couldn't agree more to what you wrote :)
 
it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.
If they are think this is THIS serious, why do we still have planes flying all over the place? It's not at all consistent with the scenario of a pandemic.
 
it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.
 If they are think this is THIS serious, why do we still have planes flying all over the place? It's not at all consistent with the scenario of a pandemic.
Because planes not flying hurts business of the plane flying companies, that's why.
 
it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.
 
If they are think this is THIS serious, why do we still have planes flying all over the place? It's not at all consistent with the scenario of a pandemic.
Because planes not flying hurts business of the plane flying companies, that's why.
NObody had big issues to stop flights in Europe when there was a volcano Eruption a couple of years back, if you don't remember.
 
it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.
 If they are think this is THIS serious, why do we still have planes flying all over the place? It's not at all consistent with the scenario of a pandemic.
Because planes not flying hurts business of the plane flying companies, that's why.
 NObody had big issues to stop flights in Europe when there was a volcano Eruption a couple of years back, if you don't remember.
There were laws in place which caused this automatically and nobody could deny them, they were phrased accurately enough "if this <scientific, testable fact>, then no flights".But against something like this? Much harder to proof. It's not really a testable fact, it's just extrapolation from a few data points. Anyone who doesn't like exponential growth can fit some polynomial or something else on those data points. And they might even be right, who knows? Even if it /is/ exponential growth, it could stop at any point in time, everyone knows exponential growth isn't sustainable in the real world. It could stop /now/.

It's really easy to argue like this. Some people here in this thread do.

Heck, I don't know if it's really serious enough to justify cancelling lots of flights.

But I know that the flights and other stuff which hurts profits of large corporations (and states) will only stop when it's really /undeniably/ a really, /really/ bad epidemic. And in that case it might be too late to be effective because it's in the nature of such things to only become undeniable when it's too late to act.
 
But I know that the flights and other stuff which hurts profits of large corporations (and states) will only stop when it's really /undeniably/ a really, /really/ bad epidemic. And in that case it might be too late to be effective because it's in the nature of such things to only become undeniable when it's too late to act.
You won't hurt much profits if you stop airplanes from flying to the infected areas. It's not like you have thousands of flights there everyday or something. It's not New York, Paris or Beijing we are talking about.
 
But I know that the flights and other stuff which hurts profits of large corporations (and states) will only stop when it's really /undeniably/ a really, /really/ bad epidemic. And in that case it might be too late to be effective because it's in the nature of such things to only become undeniable when it's too late to act.
 You won't hurt much profits if you stop airplanes from flying to the infected areas. It's not like you have thousands of flights there everyday or something. It's not New York, Paris or Beijing we are talking about.
You might have a point there, can't judge how much it would cost them.
 
It's almost funny to see how hysteric people get if such a disease suddenly appears in their own Country.  Nobody in the western world seems to care about Africa and their Ebloa problem, especialy not USA. Now that the first infections are reported from outside of Africa, everyone is going nuts and Ebola is present in every media. :rolleyes:
 
Ebola close by is freakin scary if you ask me!


Soon enough we will start treating the first patient in my hospital. We will see how that works...
 
Look at what Nigeria did to stop the outbreak.

"As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits."

The US (Texas) response was not nearly as aggressive.

The German health worker whom I chatted with (who claimed to have had contact with an ebola patient) reportedly developed fever and hasn't been online since friday morning. He might have been making all of it up of course. Still... Nevermind, was online and is ok.
 
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