Ebola Cannot Be Halted or Slowed Any Time Soon, Says New Study

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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I've said this before, my only fear is if the virus mutates into something more easily transmittable. Every new host increases the likelihood of this happening.

Fortunately, I never leave the house anyway, so this doesn't affect me, but the rest of you should be terrified.
 

small

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Aug 5, 2014
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Olas said:
I've said this before, my only fear is if the virus mutates into something more easily transmittable. Every new host increases the likelihood of this happening.

Fortunately, I never leave the house anyway, so this doesn't affect me, but the rest of you should be terrified.
thats what concerns me as well. ebola itself can only be transmitted by bodily fluids but its demonstrate on one occasion to mutate into an airborne strain which was fortunately harmless to humans, but in such a large pool of host the potential for mutation is there, not to mention if it gets into livestock populations where the mutation risk is so much higher
 

x EvilErmine x

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Apr 5, 2010
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Olas said:
I've said this before, my only fear is if the virus mutates into something more easily transmittable. Every new host increases the likelihood of this happening.

... but its demonstrate on one occasion to mutate into an airborne strain which was fortunately harmless to humans...
Source please? I haven't heard about that happening. I know that is can be transmitted in aerosol form in a small radius either by the victim coughing/convulsions or evaporating fluids from a dead body but I have not herd of it becoming truly airborne

008Zulu said:
I am surprised that after all this time, the numerous (but isolated cases in first world countries) hasn't caused the world's leaders to stand up and say "To hell with this, we are throwing all the money at this and won't stop until there is a cure!"
Why would they? The cases in fist world countries are easily contained and and nothing to worry about. there is no uncontrolled spread and the danger of contracting it to the average citizen is so close to nil that it's not even worth consideration at this point. No they will do nothing until it really starts affecting them directly, it's not worth the cost. Hell the only reason that the virus has even spread so far is because of the poor health infrastructure in Africa and the prevalence of the belief that Ebola is not a real thing.

The uncomfortable truth is that this type of thing will become more and more prevalent in the coming decades/century. As population density increases then the potential for viral/bacterial pandemic grows geometrically. You could argue that we have the drugs and vaccines to fight them in the first world and it's really the countries with a poor healthcare infrastructure that will be the most affected. That's partly true but it only holds as long as the antibiotics are effective. Which they may not be for very much longer.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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DANGER- MUST SILENCE said:
Strazdas said:
For starters, well, how about, close the frigging public airports so it does not fly to other countries?
Probably because closing ports (since I assume you don't want this to get out by ship either) would devastate the economy of any country that tried it, lead to food and supply shortages for the healthy population, not to mention aggravate the best way we have to contain the outbreaks by denying the opportunity for medical professionals to enter the country and deal with it.

Unless you want to adopt an "It's okay, they're black so who cares if huge swathes of the population are infected and killed without need?" Personally, I think that's probably not a very ethical position to take.
Erm, not what i said. I said closing public airports. which means no civilians flying. cargo is still fine, altrough riskier. No need to worry about ships though. This is because Ebola is a fast virus, and the symptoms would show up before it would reach its destination unless its a very short distance travel (in which case trucks are used almost always nowadays). Essentially ebola would kill itself on ships because it could not spread in open waters and it kills humans too fast for it to fly across the ocean in incubation.

And obviuosly exceptions need to be made for stuff like getting medical professionals in and so on, im not saying a completel blackout, more like "dont let it spread guys". Also i never once inferred anything racial here so what are you even talking about this?
 

P-89 Scorpion

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Sep 25, 2014
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Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
First: I see Escapist has jumped on the "OMG PANIC" bandwagon here. That's always nice to see.

Second: I'm in partial agreement about a few things here. In Africa Ebola has a pretty high morbidity rate at this point. The more infected, the harder it becomes to contain.

Third: How in the world does 9200 suspected Ebola cases turn into 200,000 infected. I'm calling bullshit, someone made a big typo somewhere.

Fourth: Maybe someone can explain to me why the WHO denied the "right" of experimental treatments to the people of Africa. Last I checked, if I'm 99% sure I am gonna die because I have Ebola, who the hell are they to tell me I'm not allowed to try anything I want to cure myself (within reason of course).

First infected December 2013
31st March 2014 - 130 infected
30th April 2014 - 233 79% increase
29th May 2014 - 354 34%
30th June 2014 - 759 53%
31st July 2014 - 1,440 47%
31st August 2014 - 3,707 61%
28th September 2014 - 7,192 48%
14th October 2014 - 9,216 22%

If the infection rate continues at a 50% increase every month 230,000 will be infected by the end of February 2015

Unfortunately the above WHO figures are believed to be vastly underestimated as the governments are only giving the numbers of those admitted to hospital, if someone gets ebola and dies before being admitted to a hospital then they are not counted. The WHO believes the real infected rate is 2.5 times higher if that is correct 200,000 by the end of December is possible.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert at the maths, but if it increases by 50% every month, it won't be anywhere near 200k people infected by December, it will be an order of magnitude less, literally.

So, feel free to tell me what I did wrong there. I simply added 50% to the numbers for several months (cumulative of course), unless we are literally assuming the number is 2.5 times less than what is based on actual known numbers. In that case, by December we are looking at 60.5k cases, not 200k cases. Once again, feel free to correct me on how I'm looking at this wrong.

That's what I said, that on current figures it's 200,000 by February 2015 but by the 2.5 times higher the WHO believes are the real numbers then it's 200,000 by December.
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
First: I see Escapist has jumped on the "OMG PANIC" bandwagon here. That's always nice to see.

Second: I'm in partial agreement about a few things here. In Africa Ebola has a pretty high morbidity rate at this point. The more infected, the harder it becomes to contain.

Third: How in the world does 9200 suspected Ebola cases turn into 200,000 infected. I'm calling bullshit, someone made a big typo somewhere.

Fourth: Maybe someone can explain to me why the WHO denied the "right" of experimental treatments to the people of Africa. Last I checked, if I'm 99% sure I am gonna die because I have Ebola, who the hell are they to tell me I'm not allowed to try anything I want to cure myself (within reason of course).

First infected December 2013
31st March 2014 - 130 infected
30th April 2014 - 233 79% increase
29th May 2014 - 354 34%
30th June 2014 - 759 53%
31st July 2014 - 1,440 47%
31st August 2014 - 3,707 61%
28th September 2014 - 7,192 48%
14th October 2014 - 9,216 22%

If the infection rate continues at a 50% increase every month 230,000 will be infected by the end of February 2015

Unfortunately the above WHO figures are believed to be vastly underestimated as the governments are only giving the numbers of those admitted to hospital, if someone gets ebola and dies before being admitted to a hospital then they are not counted. The WHO believes the real infected rate is 2.5 times higher if that is correct 200,000 by the end of December is possible.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert at the maths, but if it increases by 50% every month, it won't be anywhere near 200k people infected by December, it will be an order of magnitude less, literally.

So, feel free to tell me what I did wrong there. I simply added 50% to the numbers for several months (cumulative of course), unless we are literally assuming the number is 2.5 times less than what is based on actual known numbers. In that case, by December we are looking at 60.5k cases, not 200k cases. Once again, feel free to correct me on how I'm looking at this wrong.

That's what I said, that on current figures it's 200,000 by February 2015 but by the 2.5 times higher the WHO believes are the real numbers then it's 200,000 by December.
I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding you. It doesn't look like you read my post. I said that no matter how I do the math, I DO NOT arrive anywhere near 200k infected by December. I arrive at 20k by December. And if it's 2.5 times more infected like it could possibly be, I get to 60.5k infected by February of 2015. I'm saying that if I'm wrong, please correct me on how I'm supposed to arrive to those numbers, the first of which looks like a magnitude too large.
 

kurokotetsu

Proud Master
Sep 17, 2008
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Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
First: I see Escapist has jumped on the "OMG PANIC" bandwagon here. That's always nice to see.

Second: I'm in partial agreement about a few things here. In Africa Ebola has a pretty high morbidity rate at this point. The more infected, the harder it becomes to contain.

Third: How in the world does 9200 suspected Ebola cases turn into 200,000 infected. I'm calling bullshit, someone made a big typo somewhere.

Fourth: Maybe someone can explain to me why the WHO denied the "right" of experimental treatments to the people of Africa. Last I checked, if I'm 99% sure I am gonna die because I have Ebola, who the hell are they to tell me I'm not allowed to try anything I want to cure myself (within reason of course).

First infected December 2013
31st March 2014 - 130 infected
30th April 2014 - 233 79% increase
29th May 2014 - 354 34%
30th June 2014 - 759 53%
31st July 2014 - 1,440 47%
31st August 2014 - 3,707 61%
28th September 2014 - 7,192 48%
14th October 2014 - 9,216 22%

If the infection rate continues at a 50% increase every month 230,000 will be infected by the end of February 2015

Unfortunately the above WHO figures are believed to be vastly underestimated as the governments are only giving the numbers of those admitted to hospital, if someone gets ebola and dies before being admitted to a hospital then they are not counted. The WHO believes the real infected rate is 2.5 times higher if that is correct 200,000 by the end of December is possible.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert at the maths, but if it increases by 50% every month, it won't be anywhere near 200k people infected by December, it will be an order of magnitude less, literally.

So, feel free to tell me what I did wrong there. I simply added 50% to the numbers for several months (cumulative of course), unless we are literally assuming the number is 2.5 times less than what is based on actual known numbers. In that case, by December we are looking at 60.5k cases, not 200k cases. Once again, feel free to correct me on how I'm looking at this wrong.

That's what I said, that on current figures it's 200,000 by February 2015 but by the 2.5 times higher the WHO believes are the real numbers then it's 200,000 by December.
I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding you. It doesn't look like you read my post. I said that no matter how I do the math, I DO NOT arrive anywhere near 200k infected by December. I arrive at 20k by December. And if it's 2.5 times more infected like it could possibly be, I get to 60.5k infected by February of 2015. I'm saying that if I'm wrong, please correct me on how I'm supposed to arrive to those numbers, the first of which looks like a magnitude too large.
Well, the math is complicated but it can be seen in the linked article.

They are using what is called normally a SEIR model. Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Recovered. To make ti more accurate they added some new categories. The H and F categories, and changing the R to account for the dead/removed. The idea is simple. Divide the population in the categories. Either those that are susceptible, exposed, infected in the hospital, died but still infecting in funerals and those that recovered, died or are in some other capacity no longer in the cycle of the model and are "out". These give you a set of differential equations, telling you how the rate of change of these populations change over time. The parameters, given by the data, give what is called an R0, which is how many people get infected per unit of time basically, which is around 2.2 for the data reported in the countries. That means that every infected person, infect around 2.2 other people (not 1.5).

The solution of those differential equations, for the time being is an exponential equation (the solution is different for larger amounts of time, as the population all got infected and then returned to other states). That means it grows very, very rapidly, especially with an R0 that big.

For the infection to disappear, the R0 must be under 1, (eery infected person infects less than one, so it doesn't recover the population) and what the paper reports, is that measures taken now, would not decrease the R0 under that number (actually the overall R0, seems to stay above 2 for every scenario), which means that the epidemic will not die out with those measures. Which could be interesting to see if those reductions of R0 where dependent on a I0 (an initial number of infected) which would mean that maybe those numbers would be better if applied before the measures before this point.

The time scale is in days in the paper, not months by the way. Just to say. So teh increase of R0, menas that there are 2.5 new infected per each infected each day, not each month.
 

Artaneius

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Dec 9, 2013
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BadNewDingus said:
Considering that this is from a study where they compile a bunch of research from outside sources and make a educated guess ... I still wouldn't panic. Panic drives people mad and causes more harm. Of which, the media has done a great job of doing. I do believe that the numbers of which they're giving us could be false and are far worse, but it is kinda hard to hide anything like this these days.

Also, if the any strain was airborne the numbers of infected would be gigantic. It's just the fact that our nurses are not prepared for this sort of virus. Flu season is coming and if anyone is sick should stay the fuck home. I don't know how many times I've seen idiots go out shopping while sick and coughing everywhere. Those are the people that will spread it.
So people who are single, sick, and have no one else to take care of them aren't allowed to buy food and supplies to keep them from starving to death?
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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DANGER- MUST SILENCE said:
Strazdas said:
For starters, well, how about, close the frigging public airports so it does not fly to other countries?
Probably because closing ports (since I assume you don't want this to get out by ship either) would devastate the economy of any country that tried it, lead to food and supply shortages for the healthy population, not to mention aggravate the best way we have to contain the outbreaks by denying the opportunity for medical professionals to enter the country and deal with it.

Unless you want to adopt an "It's okay, they're black so who cares if huge swathes of the population are infected and killed without need?" Personally, I think that's probably not a very ethical position to take.
Danger, would not the closing of passenger airlines to and from an area while still maintaining essential services minimize the possible risk while still supporting the country? One of the people infected in US checked into a hospital, explained that he'd recently traveled from Libya, and then was sent home after an antibiotic shot was administered because he had no insurance. This was dumb, ignoring the little alarm bell that he'd been in a country where the virus was. If people are going to make this sort of mistake, it would behoove us to take the reigns out of those hands somewhat.
 

Wackymon

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Jul 22, 2011
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Sarge034 said:
Don Incognito said:
That is all perfectly true.

However, it is not particularly likely to spread in any nation with a functional public health system.
chiefohara said:
Ebola takes from 2 days to 2 weeks to show infection but because its not airborne the majority of people will be okay. Unless you are sleeping with someone who has it, or someone who has it sneezed in your face you'll be fine. Its passed on through touch and liquid. You could have been sharing a daily bus with an ebola victim for the last month and you will be fine.

This bastard virus is going to devastate africa, but its not going to kill the world.
Folks, there are confirmed cases in the US. At least two, last I heard, were nurses who treated an infected patient. So assuming these nurses followed procedures and had no skin on skin contact with a patient infected with an unknown illness how did they get infected? There is the very real possibility this strain could be airborne, or at the very least survive in aerosolized body fluids long enough to mimic airborne transmissions. The CDC has confirmed that several infected people had flown not only from Africa but within the US as well. And the CDC is refusing to institute a pandemic level quarantine on those arriving from hotspots as well as Obama sending 5,000 troops to "help". These aren't doctors or nurses or bio-chemical warfare specialists. These are 5,000 men and women we are going to unnecessarily expose to this pathogen and then bring home. It is going to spread, and we will only have our governments to blame.
Actually, to my understanding (My mother is a microbologist, this is her job), there was a fairly major breech in protocol, which resulted in bare skin with minor wounds getting liquids in it.
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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kurokotetsu said:
Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Baresark said:
First: I see Escapist has jumped on the "OMG PANIC" bandwagon here. That's always nice to see.

Second: I'm in partial agreement about a few things here. In Africa Ebola has a pretty high morbidity rate at this point. The more infected, the harder it becomes to contain.

Third: How in the world does 9200 suspected Ebola cases turn into 200,000 infected. I'm calling bullshit, someone made a big typo somewhere.

Fourth: Maybe someone can explain to me why the WHO denied the "right" of experimental treatments to the people of Africa. Last I checked, if I'm 99% sure I am gonna die because I have Ebola, who the hell are they to tell me I'm not allowed to try anything I want to cure myself (within reason of course).

First infected December 2013
31st March 2014 - 130 infected
30th April 2014 - 233 79% increase
29th May 2014 - 354 34%
30th June 2014 - 759 53%
31st July 2014 - 1,440 47%
31st August 2014 - 3,707 61%
28th September 2014 - 7,192 48%
14th October 2014 - 9,216 22%

If the infection rate continues at a 50% increase every month 230,000 will be infected by the end of February 2015

Unfortunately the above WHO figures are believed to be vastly underestimated as the governments are only giving the numbers of those admitted to hospital, if someone gets ebola and dies before being admitted to a hospital then they are not counted. The WHO believes the real infected rate is 2.5 times higher if that is correct 200,000 by the end of December is possible.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert at the maths, but if it increases by 50% every month, it won't be anywhere near 200k people infected by December, it will be an order of magnitude less, literally.

So, feel free to tell me what I did wrong there. I simply added 50% to the numbers for several months (cumulative of course), unless we are literally assuming the number is 2.5 times less than what is based on actual known numbers. In that case, by December we are looking at 60.5k cases, not 200k cases. Once again, feel free to correct me on how I'm looking at this wrong.

That's what I said, that on current figures it's 200,000 by February 2015 but by the 2.5 times higher the WHO believes are the real numbers then it's 200,000 by December.
I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding you. It doesn't look like you read my post. I said that no matter how I do the math, I DO NOT arrive anywhere near 200k infected by December. I arrive at 20k by December. And if it's 2.5 times more infected like it could possibly be, I get to 60.5k infected by February of 2015. I'm saying that if I'm wrong, please correct me on how I'm supposed to arrive to those numbers, the first of which looks like a magnitude too large.
Well, the math is complicated but it can be seen in the linked article.

They are using what is called normally a SEIR model. Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Recovered. To make ti more accurate they added some new categories. The H and F categories, and changing the R to account for the dead/removed. The idea is simple. Divide the population in the categories. Either those that are susceptible, exposed, infected in the hospital, died but still infecting in funerals and those that recovered, died or are in some other capacity no longer in the cycle of the model and are "out". These give you a set of differential equations, telling you how the rate of change of these populations change over time. The parameters, given by the data, give what is called an R0, which is how many people get infected per unit of time basically, which is around 2.2 for the data reported in the countries. That means that every infected person, infect around 2.2 other people (not 1.5).

The solution of those differential equations, for the time being is an exponential equation (the solution is different for larger amounts of time, as the population all got infected and then returned to other states). That means it grows very, very rapidly, especially with an R0 that big.

For the infection to disappear, the R0 must be under 1, (eery infected person infects less than one, so it doesn't recover the population) and what the paper reports, is that measures taken now, would not decrease the R0 under that number (actually the overall R0, seems to stay above 2 for every scenario), which means that the epidemic will not die out with those measures. Which could be interesting to see if those reductions of R0 where dependent on a I0 (an initial number of infected) which would mean that maybe those numbers would be better if applied before the measures before this point.

The time scale is in days in the paper, not months by the way. Just to say. So teh increase of R0, menas that there are 2.5 new infected per each infected each day, not each month.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining.
 

Pinky's Brain

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Mar 2, 2011
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Ignoring the absolute numbers for a moment.

Are they essentially saying that they don't see any way to escape a ~100% infection rate in Liberia and Sierra Leone? If even the most optimistic view of potential measures still show spread then containment within those countries seems impossible period. The measures will only get harder to implement with more cases.
 

Flunk

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Feb 17, 2008
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It's unlikely to spread out into the so-called "developed world" anytime soon. What we need to do is not panic and instead funnel more money into researching a vaccine or cure. I'm fairly certain that lack of money is the only reason we don't already have a vaccine for ebola yet.
 

flying_whimsy

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Dec 2, 2009
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I was starting to get worried what with all of the fear mongering the mainstream media (especially cnn) have been running, but then I talked to my mom who is also a nurse. The cold kills more people per day than this ebola outbreak has in total. And given that it is only spread by direct contact with body fluids, there isn't actually that much risk in developed nations. I am effectively totally sick of this.

Although it would help if infected people would stop getting on planes and flying to other countries. The hospital my mom was working at had a call from a guy that rode on the plane with that one infected nurse: he was fine, but I find it a bit disconcerting that the government has no qualms spying on me but won't opt for a simple medical check at the borders.

EDIT: And before people start jumping on me about being unsympathetic to the nations that are being affected: I care, really I do, but I care slightly more about more localized outbreaks like that children's cancer cluster that sprung up in a town south of where I live (Protip: don't let chemical companies build playgrounds on top of their old dumps).
 

kurokotetsu

Proud Master
Sep 17, 2008
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Baresark said:
kurokotetsu said:
Well, the math is complicated but it can be seen in the linked article.

They are using what is called normally a SEIR model. Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Recovered. To make ti more accurate they added some new categories. The H and F categories, and changing the R to account for the dead/removed. The idea is simple. Divide the population in the categories. Either those that are susceptible, exposed, infected in the hospital, died but still infecting in funerals and those that recovered, died or are in some other capacity no longer in the cycle of the model and are "out". These give you a set of differential equations, telling you how the rate of change of these populations change over time. The parameters, given by the data, give what is called an R0, which is how many people get infected per unit of time basically, which is around 2.2 for the data reported in the countries. That means that every infected person, infect around 2.2 other people (not 1.5).

The solution of those differential equations, for the time being is an exponential equation (the solution is different for larger amounts of time, as the population all got infected and then returned to other states). That means it grows very, very rapidly, especially with an R0 that big.

For the infection to disappear, the R0 must be under 1, (eery infected person infects less than one, so it doesn't recover the population) and what the paper reports, is that measures taken now, would not decrease the R0 under that number (actually the overall R0, seems to stay above 2 for every scenario), which means that the epidemic will not die out with those measures. Which could be interesting to see if those reductions of R0 where dependent on a I0 (an initial number of infected) which would mean that maybe those numbers would be better if applied before the measures before this point.

The time scale is in days in the paper, not months by the way. Just to say. So teh increase of R0, menas that there are 2.5 new infected per each infected each day, not each month.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining.
You're welcome. I kind of like this models, so I've studied them. They are fascinating, and where concepts like herd immunity come in.

flying_whimsy said:
I was starting to get worried what with all of the fear mongering the mainstream media (especially cnn) have been running, but then I talked to my mom who is also a nurse. The cold kills more people per day than this ebola outbreak has in total. And given that it is only spread by direct contact with body fluids, there isn't actually that much risk in developed nations. I am effectively totally sick of this.

Although it would help if infected people would stop getting on planes and flying to other countries. The hospital my mom was working at had a call from a guy that rode on the plane with that one infected nurse: he was fine, but I find it a bit disconcerting that the government has no qualms spying on me but won't opt for a simple medical check at the borders.

EDIT: And before people start jumping on me about being unsympathetic to the nations that are being affected: I care, really I do, but I care slightly more about more localized outbreaks like that children's cancer cluster that sprung up in a town south of where I live (Protip: don't let chemical companies build playgrounds on top of their old dumps).
Per day? Are you talknig globally? Because in the US, alone that is not true, as average, there are 23,000 deaths per year of influenza and influenza related complications such as pneumonia. If the model is correct by December and if the current death rates stay, this epidemic will have killed nearly four times that (about 90,000 deaths) in the same amount of time and even double of the worst epidemic of influenza in the US since the seventies. If the model is right, more people will have died of Ebola in those countries than women of breast cancer in the USA in 2011, and we have month of awareness over that.

Let's put a perspective here. If the model is correct, by the year about 1% of the population of three countries will be infected with a disease that has around 45% mortality rate. If a similar outbreak happened in only Dallas that be around the 6200 deaths in a year. if it was Texas, it would be around 100,000 deaths in a year. If it was the USA in its totality there would be around 1.6 million deaths.

Yes, absolute numbers tell one story. But relative ones tell another. This is a huge epidemic. It will kill and be a devastating effect on a lot of people. Saying flue kills more people, or that this isn't a big deal is being disrespectful for a very important event. It is huge and this piece of news is discouraging, as it means that if the model is accurate, a very significant amount of the population of several countries will be affected by a horrible disease. It is very sad it came to this. Hope the model is wrong.
 

O maestre

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Nov 19, 2008
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Should this be part of the Escapist news? it seems very unrelated to gaming or nerd subculture, I had half expected to see something about plague inc.

I get that this kind of news is important, but this is not the place for it.