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Ebola Cases Surge At Record Pace As Death Toll Hits 1,145
Is it any wonder that both the WHO and Doctors Without Borders appear in full panic mode, explaining that the outbreak is "moving faster" than they can manage it? As WHO reports, the death toll in West Africa has jumped to 1,145 (2,127 infections) with 76 new deaths in the last 2 days and a record-breaking pace of reported new cases (152 in the last 2 days).
New cases...
and deaths...
»
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My ass bleeds for these people, no wait...
Sorry, pumping NFLX more important, Ebola not a concern
Those who know the ways of health will survive. Those who depends on the sickness industry will die.
The good news, Ebola will burn itself out in a year's time.
Mar, 2014 – Infected: 104 Dead: 62 ROI: 1.86
Apr, 2014 – Infected: 203 Dead: 122 ROI: 1.95
May, 2014 – Infected: 417 Dead: 250 ROI: 2.05
Jun, 2014 – Infected: 898 Dead: 539 ROI: 2.15
Jul, 2014 – Infected: 2,031 Dead: 1,218 ROI: 2.26
Aug, 2014 – Infected: 4,821 Dead: 2,892 ROI: 2.37
Sep, 2014 – Infected: 12,016 Dead: 7,210 ROI: 2.49
Oct, 2014 – Infected: 31,448 Dead: 18,869 ROI: 2.62
Nov, 2014 – Infected: 86,421 Dead: 51,853 ROI: 2.75
Dec, 2014 – Infected: 249,365 Dead: 149,619 ROI: 2.89
Jan, 2015 – Infected: 755,513 Dead: 453,308 ROI: 3.03
Feb, 2015 – Infected: 2,403,461 Dead: 1,442,077 ROI: 3.18
Mar, 2015 – Infected: 8,028,264 Dead: 4,816,958 ROI: 3.34
Apr, 2015 – Infected: 28,157,589 Dead: 16,894,553 ROI: 3.51
May, 2015 – Infected: 103,695,185 Dead: 62,217,111 ROI: 3.68
Jun, 2015 – Infected: 400,969,208 Dead: 240,581,525 ROI: 3.87
Jul, 2015 – Infected: 1,627,993,821 Dead: 976,796,293 ROI: 4.06
Aug, 2015 – Infected: 6,940,388,486 Dead: 4,164,233,092 ROI: 4.26
Wheres the best place to try out a new bio-weapon???? of course in Guinea, Africa.
The current scenario is akin to having some mad scientists needing GUINEA pigs to test on and so just lures homeless people off the street as his lab rats. When they go missing, nobody gives a shit or even notices it.
Us Americans are oblivious to Ebola...I still get many people telling me DONT WORRY, IT WONT SPREAD OVER HERE!
What, they were underreporting?
Look at my *SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY* face.
Hard to get an accurate count when medical personnel refuse to show up and hospitals are closed down. Nobody is walking the streets counting stacked bodies.
We will never know an accurate number of infections and deaths....just remember to panic early.
Its easier to track using fruit bat futures
WHO now says there are "neurological disorders" in the survivors..., translation, brain damage.
We may not be talking about the same things when we say recovery.
Expect bad news from Atlanta, if there is any more news.
Zombie apocalypse confirmed!
Hockey stick recovery!
Mother Nature wins again.
The cool kids track living hosts.
http://i.imgur.com/U75czNj.png
Available information certainly indicates the "survivors" continue to need very substantial support, with a prolonged period of convalescence. Add in neurodisability, liver damage, renal damage, and how long before the "survivors" succumb to some other illness? I'd imagine that catching typhoid after "surviving" ebola is going to cut another swathe through what's left of society.
#AMessageFromEbolatoUS
We are in your state
We are in your cities
We are in your streets
You are our goals anywhere
The prevailing view in Africa has been: "You go into the hospital, and you come out dead"
The classic Post hoc ergo propter hoc (OK, I had to look that up) logical fallacy.
You mean you don't have them all memorized?
=]
They're only useful in academic papers... if you try them in court, then the judge will just scratch his head and opposing counsel will look the other way until you just go on...
Finally! Some more Ebola-based fear-porn! I've needed a fix for the last few days. Alas, now I have to wait another weekend for the next update. C'mon Tyler, keep it coming!
Ebola is a Containment level 4 pathogen: No effective cure, potential to cause widespread death / injury within a population.
In my early career (when I was younger and rather braver / more foolhardy) I worked with such organisms in a BSL4 environment. The only reason I (and my colleagues) are alive is because we took extreme (and I DO mean EXTREME) precautions to avoid personal, and environmental, contamination.
I've seen what the filoviridae can do to other mammals / primates (and very quickly). I know what Ebola, and all the other HF viruses, can do to us.
For me, as an Infectious Diseases Physician, this is NOT "Doom Porn", but a very long expected wake up call. Do we have "contingency plans"? Seeing how even basic infection control is so poor in Aussie hospitals that we regularly have widespread outbreaks of Norovirus in our wards (as well as Clostridium difficile infections), it is pretty obvious that complacency is rampant. Seems the case everywhere, especially when "Senior Management" are more concerned with budgetary savings than real (as against "window-dressing") service quality (and Patient Safety) improvements.
Thanks for posting. I know you have had extensively more experience in this realm than I. I have read so many technical papers on Ebola it has left me in despair. I see no hope in an effective vaccine ever being developed for this. The pathogenicity is just so incredibly great. When people talk of silver and vit C as therapy I just cringe. This is not Flu. And here I was predicting a novel coronavirus as the next epidemic. Silly me.
During infection, Macrophages and monocytes are releasing a cocktail of proinflammatory cytokines that destroy the vascular endothelium, but also activate the coagulation cascade. This puts your body in a paradoxical state in which you can die of hypovolemic shock from massive hemorrhage, or from catastrophic thrombosis, the formation of blood clots around the body and avoiding the human immune system. I've seen many people die of DIC by alone, I can't imagine having a virus such as this as well.
Perhaps a treatment for Ebola could involve deshielding the immune-relevant surface proteins of cells infected by Ebola, by either biochemical targeting or preventing the Ebola glycoprotein from inserting itself in the cell membrane. I don't have the necessary background to specifically propose how to do this. There doesn't seem to be an adequate formation of neutralizing antibody. Certainly if an effective one were ever developed, it must be administered very early in the infection.
All I can come up with is "run". That certainly doesn't sound professional or scientific. Help me obi wan Kenobi you are my only hope.
Miffed;-)
Ah, DIC. Been there, seen it, HAD IT (Ps. aeruginosa sepsis, a week's stay in a very well equipped UK ICU and even with the best of the best, I had a number of close shaves (parents called, "get here quickly if you want to see your son alive" sort of close shaves)).
So, having had such a life changing event believe me when I say I'm somewhat freaked out by this. I KNOW people who work for MSF (Clinicians and RNs alike), and all I hear from them is that Africa is still the same old corrupt, unstable Continent it has always been. "Aid" goes into the pockets of the well-connected, and local warlords, PPE is re-used (and re. your earlier posting, if aseptic technique in Aussie "First World" hospitals is so bad that we spread Noro with absolute certainty, then you'd be horrified to hear the stories I've heard on what happens there. Things along the lines of washing disposables in water that will be used for human consumption (stream, not chlorinated!)).
The problem as you know is the mode of budding. The coat is derived from the host cell, and although some specific surface proteins are expressed, the immune system sees "mostly host", and so the response (humoral and cellular) is at least delayed. Note also the lymphoid target cells. We just don't have the technology or facilities to do what you suggest (and we certainly don't have the time). I've no idea how host acclimatisation will proceed, but a certainty is that acclimatisation will "improve" infectivity, not necessarily host survival. With the bad news from WHO and elsewhere re. organ damage (liver, kidneys, lungs, and now CNS) "survivors" are pretty much a sitting duck for anything opportunist, and if we have any kind of services disruption, typhoid would be my next big concern (assuming I'm still around, and that's not at all certain.)
I've mentioned further on down the need to not place too much reliance on the "official" figures. I prefer to use the "Margaret Chan" factor - i.e. multiply it all by 20. Then we get a real feel for what's going on, and the news isn't good M'am!
Ethical dilemma: do we attempt to treat patients who will probably die (and probably kill HCWs along the way), or do we "palliate" as best as possible? When does "Palliation" become Euthanasia, and when does Euthanasia become "Shoot on Sight"?
Do we preserve the unpreservable, or do we conserve what resources we have for effective management of the aftermath? Will there be anything worth conserving anyhow?
Right now Run Like Hell seems as good a strategy as any. We're planning a trip to Pitcairn Island . . . . . .
Me too, me too! I had an 8-day stint in the ICU with sepsis - with full DIC - renal, pulmonary, and hepatic failure. Activated c-protine (Xigris), along with a boatload of pressors returned my MAP above 40 on the 4th day. Close shaves a plenty. Sadly, none of the countless doctors assigned to my case were ever able to determine the cause of the infection.
You do know that Drotecogin alpha (Xigris) actually killed more than it saved (hence global withdrawal a few years ago!) You're one of the survivors!
Mine was well before such pharmacotherapy existed, and maybe that was a good thing. My colleagues freeze-dried a sample of "my" organism, and I still keep it in the desk drawer (safely sealed in a glass vial), as a reminder of how fragile life can be.
Egads! My guess would be GNR sepsis like Parrotile. That is the classic way and the most frequent cause of DIC deaths I see. My typical day. Blood Culture positive for a GNR. I go to Coag. PT and PTT high, fibrinogen low and a shit load of split products. Fuck, I've got to call the dr fast. Before I can. Blood Banks phone is ringing. We need 4 units of FFP thawed STAT!! Nights from Hell I'll never forget. Many died. Hard to stop DIC when it starts. Only easy ones were the placenta ruptures. Minutes after an emergency c section it usually stops.
Miffed;-)
M'am, you'll know that FFP is hardly a "bulk item" that you can easily restock!
Imagine how quickly your service would collapse if you had, say, even ten Patients needing JUST 4 bags? But they won't of course, and that's when the Red Cross start to call other centres (who also suddenly need FFP and LOTS of it, and RIGHT NOW!)
Panic. Leads to bad choices / disorganisation, leads to service collapse. No matter what other volume expanders / crystalloids you have, you NEED the components in plasma. Succinylated gelatin or hydroxyethyl starch just ain't the same!!
No FFP - "bye, bye Patient" Can't use whole blood since too many RBCs lead to sludging, and the clotting factors are absent (so useless for the purpose intended).
Maybe a little too late to rethink the "JIT delivery schemes" much loved by the bean counters!!
Absolutely. My record was 100 FFP when a liver transplant went bad. A friend at another hospital topped that. I wreaked several once trying to squeeze the ice out I precipitated the cryo. Just as I was going to toss it in the trash, the surgeon ran in the lab covered in blood, grabbed it out of my hands. I TOLD YOU I NEEDED IT NOW he shouted at me and ran out. We all just gave each other WTF looks wondering who was doing the surgery. That was a severe auto accident with multiple crushing injuries, another DIC fatality.
We only routinely stocked about 25 units of FFP in all blood types back then. I'm sure it's more now but I haven't worked BB in years. Even with proper facilities, can you imagine the amount of FFP needed for just one Ebola case? And consider the panic during the outbreak. Who is going to go down to the neighborhood blood drive to donate? Yeah, I can see the lines waiting for pheresis. We are so doomed if this gains traction.
Would you like some company on Pitcairn? My mother-in-law had a trip on Easter island and had a wonderful time. Kinda wish I was invited. A remote quiet island has a strange attraction for me now.
Miffed;-)
One bag per donation, and a far lower safety margin than even cytotoxics. Although the screeing processes are very comprehensive, blood products always carry the risk of accidental infection, and as the infusion count rises, the "chance" of being unlucky rises too.
As an ex BB Scientist, you'll be aware of the cost per session - the Haemonetics "disposable centrifuges" were not budget, then add in post harvest processing, freezing, storage, and supply logistics (dedicated transport, 24/7 availability), and the costs mount.
Pitcairn, though attractive, may well be "pie in the sky". Even though retirement (and NOT "Early retirement" by any means) beckons, I do have a moral and professional responsibility, and I feel I should do as much as reasonably possible to mitigate "the problem" if things progress as an Epidemiologist colleague cheerfully predicts. If we're told "Nothing you can do any more, do your best to look after yourselves" then off we will both go, and we'll find out what fate has in store for us on the deep blue seas.
You both need a crash course in blue water sailing, and astronavigation (since the GPS constellation will be unreliable). GPS time data should remain adequate for a long while, so you don't immediately need an accurate onboard clock, but you will need a good sextant and sight reduction tables.
Pitcairn's 25 deg 0.3' South, 130 deg 06' West. Currency is Kiwi $s, and for us Aussies, our passport allows visa-free migration. Maybe if it does go "T***s up*, we'll see you there???
P.s. - just heard THIS on the radio. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-15/ebola-outbreak-vastly-underestimated2c-says-who/5674068 NOT the sort of news I prefer to hear right now.
Thanks for this summary. I haven't read up on the mechanisms. So the coat is mostly derived from the host cell? OMG! If so, it will make immune surveillance problematic to say the least. Well, then, the big question more than ever is just how infectious this sucker is. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of How Contagious is Ebola? Is it more like flu or more like HIV?
BTW, are you aware the Aussies inavertently invented a biological weapon of mass destruction over 10 years ago when they were fooling around with overexpressing IL-4? They considered not publishing but decided to go for it anyway. Very interesting. The mechanism was like AIDS on wheels.
Yes, and that's just another example of us thinking we know how the "system" works, but having an incomplete picture. I still remember the fanfare when Centocor developed Centoxin (an anti-TNF antibody) that "would revolutionise sepsis survival". It sure did - Clinical trials showed it to be better than placebo at killing those with GNR sepsis!!
The entire humoral surveillance system is very finely balanced, after ages of development. Then we come along and think we can "fix" the problem without any thought of downstream consequences.
The same mind set as trying to fix a pocket watch using a hammer, in a darkened room . . .
Whilst ebola seems pretty effective in circumventing host defences (e.g. tetherin, usually effective in inhibiting retroviruses), it is nevertheless a retrovirus, with essentially the "same machinery" as HIV, and I'm wondering whether our existing toolkit for management of that other retrovirus - HIV-1, might provide some mileage?
Whilst the "anti-HIV" drug classes are all trialled specifically with HIV Patients, there might (should?) be some cross-over efficacy, maybe in higher than usual doses, that may give the host some time to mount an effective response against ebola? Do we have the resources? Funding, availability, Government approval for such an "off-label" use? Could our Pharmacies even get hold of sufficient supply in a hurry, with a reliable re-stock capacity?? With so many "invisible links" in the Healthcare supply chain, guaranteed supply becomes uncertain.
Another major problem, is that ebola infection is so subtle initially - how many Patients do we turn away from ED every day, with "minor viral infections", those with headache, arthralgia, mild pyrexia? Common Cold, mild viral URTI, non-specific viral illness? "Go home and rest for 24 hours, plenty of fluids, and paracetamol. If there's no real improvement after 2 days, return, or see your GP" Early ebola mimicks these symptoms exactly, and not every case has the high fever. Even if they do, we'll do an l.p., (comes back "normal parameters"), so we might send them to a short-stay ward (Medical Assessment Unit usually) for a few days of IV Aciclovir pending blood cultures, then off home. Aciclovir doesn't work against ebola, so we could easily have an infected, infective patient in a general ward, with no known need for special contact precautions. Open visiting too, so plenty of visitors to spread "it" far and wide.
Do we turn away ALL Patients who might have bacterial meningitis? Doing that would be a Public Health catastrophe in the making, and we cannot "assume" that every patient coming in with mild photophobia / headache / neck stiffness has viral meningitis. So we HAVE to at least consider treatment for a few days, and by then we could have a major problem, including a major Staff Health problem.
No Nurses / Clinicians / everyone else in the "Service Chain", no Hospitals, and no effective infection management.
This is the concern. We really need a VERY fast and VERY reliable test. As far as I'm aware, this does not exist, so we really don't know if that patient coming in during the "evening rush hours" is our "index case", and that's where it starts to get scary, especially when you consider the usual ED workload, often junior staff getting ED experience, always a bed management issue, and always pressure to "get them to a ward, or get them out".
"Whilst ebola seems pretty effective in circumventing host defences (e.g. tetherin, usually effective in inhibiting retroviruses), it is nevertheless a retrovirus, with essentially the "same machinery" as HIV, and I'm wondering whether our existing toolkit for management of that other retrovirus - HIV-1, might provide some mileage? Whilst the "anti-HIV" drug classes are all trialled specifically with HIV Patients, there might (should?) be some cross-over efficacy, maybe in higher than usual dose..."
My guess, and it is just a guess, is that counter measures will need to be more specific than this if ebola doesn't respond to antivirals. Have retrovirus inhibitors besides tetherin and Aciclovir been tried? If both fail, as you've indicated, it looks bad for antivirals in general. Hmm... Why doesn't ebola respond to antivirals?
Am I missing something? Where is the full court press to determine the exact mechanisms and put a spanner is their works?
HIV infects TH1 cells wiping out cell-mediated immunity. What cell type(s) does ebola target?
Tetherin's endogenous, so we can't (directly) use this. "The Wife" is a Pharmacist (Ph.D. in formulation) and she pointed out to me that many of the HIV toolkit were developed specifically to target HIV components, development being along the lines of computer-aided molecular design, intended to provide the "best possible target affinity".
So unless we're really lucky and the targets in ebola are REALLY similar to the targets in HIV - 1, this line of thought may not gain much traction. Aciclovir has been shown to inhibit HIV-1 in vitro, and some trials have shown a benefit (slowing rather than stopping disease progression), so, since this drug is (relatively) cheap, and (relatively) safe, even in high doses, this could be one possibility of many. In view of the strategies we have to use with HIV-1, I'd be happier if we knew we had a range of "reasonably effective" drugs we could use as a group. That way we'd hopefully maintain efficacy, since past experience has shown "single drug therapy" to be a sure (and fast) way to guarantee resistance development.
Miffed: stopgap? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/opinion/can-statins-help-treat-ebola.html?_r=0
and another stopgap? http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_coconut_juice_substitute_for_blood_plasma
This chart is just noise
shows we still have almost 2 years to Paaaaaaaarrtaay!
I have to say, Tylers, I am getting tired of your "red arrows at the end of charts" schtick. It cheapens whatever message the actual data might be sending, and these charts are a perfect example. The most recent data points do not confirm your "doom arrows". Doom porn gets tiresome.
Not if it spreads.
With a 90% kill rate it will decimate demand in the western countries.
This strain is closer to 50%, in exchange for being more communicable, it seems.
which is why it is so much more dangerous to the world at large. it can spread faster than it burns out.
And as it spreads it replicates and mutates and will likely become more communicable. MIffed likely understands this muchbetter than I do but as it spreads it mixes genetic material with that of its host organism.
So if the host has a common cold at time of Ebola infection then there is a possibilty Ebola will acquire the capacity for airborne transmission.
I'm sure that ISIS, or some other mad-hatters, will figure out that Ebola represents a perfect means of payback for all those drone strikes. You the impregnable super power? Sneeze this!!
Aquisition of host information is unlikely (ebola uses RNA as its genomic material). The big concern is "host acclimatisation" via repetitive passage (i.e. infection), in mind of the 3% transcription error rate per kilobase pair (ebola is about 19 kbp). Many of the errors will prove fatal for the virus, but occasionally there will be a beneficial change (for the virus!), and that change will propagate favourably providing the host does not change. With 7 Billion + potential hosts, all of whom are pretty much genetically identical (in the areas where ebola and others prefer to grow and bud happily) that's something that keeps me awake at nights.
So, transmission horizontally within a community is never good news. The virus will change slightly person - to - person, and there is the high likelihood that any vaccines developed using "lab" virus, may have reduced efficacy against repetitively - passaged "wild" virus, so even "effective" (Primate trials) vaccination might not be the "great cure" that the MSM seem to be peddling just now.
Thanks for that clear explanation. The MSM should provide those forms of clarification but they don't.
Parrotile "Aquisition of host information is unlikely (ebola uses RNA as its genomic material). The big concern is "host acclimatisation" via repetitive passage (i.e. infection), in mind of the 3% transcription error rate per kilobase pair (ebola is about 19 kbp). Many of the errors will prove fatal for the virus, but occasionally there will be a beneficial change (for the virus!), and that change will propagate favourably providing the host does not change. With 7 Billion + potential hosts, all of whom are pretty much genetically identical (in the areas where ebola and others prefer to grow and bud happily) that's something that keeps me awake at nights.
So, transmission horizontally within a community is never good news. The virus will change slightly person - to - person, and there is the high likelihood that any vaccines developed using "lab" virus, may have reduced efficacy against repetitively - passaged "wild" virus, so even "effective" (Primate trials) vaccination might not be the "great cure" that the MSM seem to be peddling just now."
Hmm... Yes, but be that as it may, how has this worked out in the real world. E.g., did smallpox evolve to become more deadly or infectious? Or can we say smallpox was already so bad it couldn't get worse? Might that already be the case with ebola? Insuffucient data. Only time will tell.
And the Fed are rumored to have the first interest rate rise in March 2015, eh?
That's a new chart :)
As Einstein said, the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.
So, is ROI "return on investment" or "recovered of infection" or "rate of increase"? If you guessed #1, you are a numbers guy and only think of the bottom line, if you guessed #2 you're an wishful optimist, and if you guessed #3 then yo is 1 very shmart dude!
< Ebola has already topped out...
< Ebola is just warming up...
If you remove the arrows telling you what to think... it looks to me like the rate of new ebola cases may have topped out 20 days or so ago...
On deaths it appears that way but there is a lag and reported cases appear to be breaking out to the upside.
Information is improving which will help reduce the rate of new infections... as are survival rates as new infectees seek medical help where before they just hid and spread it to family members as they died.
Too early to call yet but looking good I think.
In any event Barry should go down in a show of solidarity... roll up his sleeves (real high like) and help out by digging in and getting his hands dirty...
'If it was my son i would kick his bleeding ass out of the White House's back yard'
That first chart looks more like its documenting anomolies in the reporting system rather than real infection rates.
Anicdotal boots on the ground reports indicate that the situation is far worse than is being officially reported (due to most sick folks staying home - not because of any conspiracy).
It's gotta go super exponential, cuz Tyler drew a red arrow pointing almost straight up. It's just gotta.
The red arrow represents the daily infection rate, for the last two days, which appears to have been 150, i.e. 75 per day.
Then you look on the left side of the chart, to see where 75 per day is...
Not that much higher than 60. Let's see the oscillations for another ten days before drawing that red arrow. It is still not clear whether it is an exponential (we're all dead), steady-state (many are dead), or transient (few are dead) phenomenon. From a zoomed out perspective, a transient looks like a quick Gaussian pulse. Steady state looks like a table. Exponential looks like a quick transition from slop 0 to inifnity, before falling on the floor back to 0 in an instant.
Zoom. Out.
Be careful in placing too much reliance on these figures. These are poor (desperately poor) countries, where Public Health surveillance is all but non-existent, and the power exerted by local warlords is almost god-like. If "they" cannot benefit from allowing reporting, cases will not be reported. Hell, even the WHO admits that the true number of cases may well be an order of magniture higher (or more??)
So before jumping to any conclusions, be aware that you are relying on pretty (maybe very) unreliable data. Data that is more than likeley under-reporting both morbidity and mortality. Try mentally multiplying all this data by 10, and see how that feels, especially in the almost-certain knowledge that this too will be an underestimate of the true situation.
Indeed it is, we need to reach a target of 5000 deaths by the end of this month and we're clearly not going to make it.
We need another pandemic because clearly Ebola isn't cutting it.
We need more doctors getting infected
too bad we cant find a use for lawyers to help out in africa..
<-- Over
<-- Under
on 4200 cases by 8/31?
Applying Margaret Chan's view a fortnight ago that the WHO is only seeing 5% of all cases, that's a potential 84k cases . . . . . . .
I took the under because I don't think they will be accurately counted by 8/31, not that we are not well over that number in reality, already. When you hear that bodies are laying in the street (they do not have enough teams to bury the bodies) and they are reusing equipment, plus they are at times "chasing" patients who have been "liberated" by their families, or when you hear about folks not letting health care workers into their village, or that they are still eating bush meat because they think the government is lying to them (I saw an african doctor interviewed who admitted he ate bushmeat and thought the government might be lying about the Ebola outbreak to get US funding), when you add up all the sociological/anthropological evidence, and couple that knowledge with what we know about how it is transmitted, well, it is hard to believe that the reported numbers are not way too low.
I also saw this and I am not sure what it means but a bunch of doctors on strike, and then fired, in Nigeria does not sound good.
https://news.vice.com/article/nigerian-president-sacks-doctors-on-strike...
I agree if your not all hell bent on doom and gloom, the charts above could be viewed as a half full scenario. Granted time will tell, but I certainly don't see an exponential function as they seem to think down below.
People are now taking precautions and Africa has the optimal conditions for the spread of this disease. (SE Asia perhaps as well)
It won't likely spread by domestic transmission outside the continent unless a nasty mutation occurs...
WTF is the difference between West Africa and the entire steamy, muggy Southern half of the US from LA to FL?
With an incubation period of about 20 days +/-, you will see "echos" of the peaks. The key is whether the "next" peak is lower than the last.
I saw the weekly case figures posted somewhere the other day and it was dropping back to the low 40s in that model.
Death is a lagging indicator.
I've heard you can't enter a business in Sierra Leone without sticking your hands in
bleach water. Its entirely plausible that the epidemic is topping out.
Even stupid people catch on eventually.
The CDC keeps a running scorecard HERE.
I'm stepping up my preps to shelter in place. Of course I'm always working towards that anyway.
Don't forget a good pair of scissors.
Never bring a gun to a scissor fight. Got it.
A little known historical secret is that the atomic bombs were/are, in fact, atomic scissors. Snipped the place right in fucking half.
Dude. Thanks for the coke-out-the-nose explosion.
Uparrow.
It's not really known how long the plague took to cover all of Europe in the 1300's, but it was not an over-night affair. One estimate - at least for the UK - is that it spread at about 5 miles per day.
People usually lived and died within 10 miles of where they were born. Such was the life of 14th century serfdom.
Rats with their cargo of infected fleas however... not being owned by the contemporary elite... were free to move wherever they wanted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_in_England
And its when the rats die that the fleas... flee.
So you can imagine a rat-bludgeoning campaign, spreading plague, and resulting in peasants not making a connection between killing the rats, and stopping the plague!
How far could a fleeing flea flee, if a fleeing flea could. . . nevermind.
Ebola seems to be disproportionately killing black folks. He should get Holder to investigate.
Agreed, Holder needs to take a "hands on" approach to this.
Has anyone actually gone back to review the public statistics on Ebola?
Do have to do this? Yes/no
Yes.
It depends on exactly what you are looking for.
But unless someone is an infectious disease specialist and is already familiar with the actual data or is full of shit, how could someone not go back and review the data?
In terms of the issue at hand, researching the historical infection rates are probably less relevant, because the outbreaks have always been identified and contained before spreading very far (like the next subdevelopment down the road) and there is no historical transmission data for huge urban centers.
In terms of that issue and this outbreak and the "official count" - the numbers don't reflect much of a spread of infection beyond the origin, so while there are "stories" and "pictures" of decimated neighborhoods and villages, and bodies lying uncollected in the cities, they would not appear to be entirely reflected in the current WHO body count.
Ebola Infections by Locality 2014
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/evd-outbreak.jpg
West African Population Density 2005 (it's only gotten more crowded since then)
http://i49.tinypic.com/k9jn21.jpg
Ebola spread rate at current trend
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/
Mar, 2014 – Infected: 104 Dead: 62
Apr, 2014 – Infected: 194 Dead: 116
May, 2014 – Infected: 360 Dead: 216
Jun, 2014 – Infected: 670 Dead: 402
Jul, 2014 – Infected: 1,247 Dead: 748
Aug, 2014 – Infected: 2,319 Dead: 1,391
Sep, 2014 – Infected: 4,313 Dead: 2,588
Oct, 2014 – Infected: 8,022 Dead: 4,813
Nov, 2014 – Infected: 14,921 Dead: 8,953
Dec, 2014 – Infected: 27,753 Dead: 16,652
Jan, 2015 – Infected: 51,621 Dead: 30,973
Feb, 2015 – Infected: 96,016 Dead: 57,610
Mar, 2015 – Infected: 178,590 Dead: 107,154
Apr, 2015 – Infected: 332,177 Dead: 199,306
May, 2015 – Infected: 617,849 Dead: 370,709
Jun, 2015 – Infected: 1,149,199 Dead: 689,519
Jul, 2015 – Infected: 2,137,510 Dead: 1,282,506
Aug, 2015 – Infected: 3,975,768 Dead: 2,385,461
Sep, 2015 – Infected: 7,394,928 Dead: 4,436,957
Oct, 2015 – Infected: 13,754,567 Dead: 8,252,740
Nov, 2015 – Infected: 25,583,494 Dead: 15,350,096
Dec, 2015 – Infected: 47,585,299 Dead: 28,551,179
Jan, 2016 – Infected: 88,508,656 Dead: 53,105,193
Feb, 2016 – Infected: 164,626,099 Dead: 98,775,660
Mar, 2016 – Infected: 306,204,545 Dead: 183,722,727
Apr, 2016 – Infected: 569,540,453 Dead: 341,724,272
May, 2016 – Infected: 1,059,345,243 Dead: 635,607,146
Jun, 2016 – Infected: 1,970,382,153 Dead: 1,182,229,292
Jul, 2016 – Infected: 3,664,910,804 Dead: 2,198,946,482
Aug, 2016 – Infected: 6,816,734,096 Dead: 4,090,040,457
Hardcore gloom and doomers will masterbate while reading that.
I already busted a nut.
This analysis is assuming that everyone is exposed to this virus and no quarantines are put into place. It is going to tear through heavily populated parts of Africa at the high rate but will slow down when reaching more advanced countries with lower population densities.
Wait more advanced than Liberia? That is the Atlantis of Africa!
WTF lower population densities.
That's some serious fear porn.
Th...th...th..thats all folks.
The March and April numbers were underreported as the disease was just slowly recognized. You're dealing with stats from Africa here.
As for the rest of the algos, I tried using that math predicting the price of gold or silver matching QE and other monetary debasement.
Sorry to disappoint you, the algos are wrong on this.
The more the disease gets recognized and the more Africans start washing their hands and stop kissing the Ebola dead, the disease will get contained.
Nigeria has 175 mio people of which several thousands may succumb to the disease. It will not get past the West African corridor the WHO has established. Disease will run its course in 6 to 8 months.
Did you get a do-over on your PM algo? Goldman gets a do-over when their algos go haywire. They didn't really mean to make that trade you know, so do-over! Thanks SEC and NYSE.
I know you kids like playing with your exponential toy but it doesn’t work for everything
What you don't know cant hurt you.
Until you're bleeding out of all orifices to death cuz EEEEEE-BOLAAAAAA.
I think I will ask my wife for sex tonight. As it appears that will be curtailed sometime later this year.
You don't have to ask!
Try romancing her to the point where she Demands to get laid...
you are using just a numerical projection, in reality what happens when those infected can't be cared for, medical staff have died. The mortality rate is not 50% as projected, but a figure much higher.
On the other hand as infection spreads the person to person contact reduces, because of fear and survival instinct, the infection will plateau.
it still will be horrific event, and I pity those trapped!
Fear can lead to some pretty stupid choices too. The first hint of "containment" by restriction of movement, and the populace will scatter widely - such is the "benefit" of our "instant information" society. That's not to say there are those out there who would deliberately instil panic via irresponsible Twitter / Facebook postings.
Africa might come out of this decimated by "functionally" OK. As for the West (every service provided by a "specialist", very little knowledge, understanding or even interest in how infrastructure works on a day-to-day basis), it could be far, far worse (if cellular telecoms fail, just how is "Society" suppposed to "continue" without Instagram / Twitter / YouTube / Facebook??). The death rate would not be helped by complete failure of the infrastructure we hold so dear.
It is useful to note that during the last "real" influenza pandemic, there were many cases of the virus changing so much (as a result of repetitive host passage) that many who had survived "the first wave" succumbed to a "second wave", caused by an antigenically "different" virus - but still influenza. Could well happen again if ebola becomes well-established.
Parrotile "It is useful to note that during the last "real" influenza pandemic, there were many cases of the virus changing so much (as a result of repetitive host passage) that many who had survived "the first wave" succumbed to a "second wave", caused by an antigenically "different" virus - but still influenza. Could well happen again if ebola becomes well-established."
Interesting. Do you have some references for that?
Parrotile "It is useful to note that during the last "real" influenza pandemic, there were many cases of the virus changing so much (as a result of repetitive host passage) that many who had survived "the first wave" succumbed to a "second wave", caused by an antigenically "different" virus - but still influenza. Could well happen again if ebola becomes well-established."
Interesting. Do you have some references for that?
BULLISH !
That's nothing yet..people need to familiarize with the term exponential..you start seeing this erupt in Europe or Asia get to Costco and the woods as soon as possible if you are in a major metro area especially where guns are banned you will not stand a chance.
The wife thinks I am crazy, but I have staged a few items at the in laws out in the sticks just in case. I asked he what it would hurt? If I am wrong so what, but if I'm right, well then that is another matter.
That's right. I was one of the nut jobs who made some preps for Y2k. Of course, I didn't need to but the generator has come in handy several dozen times since then and one cannot have too much ammo. And Mountain House freeze dried food I'd damn edible too. Take some camping with me all the time. Nothing I purchased in 1999 has gone to waste.
Yeah water, canned food, some candles, and a few puzzle books didn't break the bank. The toughest part would be being locked up with the in-laws. Ebola might be an alternative after awhile.
Soylent green is in-laws.
Just think of your mother in law dargging around the insides of her colon as they slough off. She will, literally, turn herself inside out.
Now, you don't want that happening to dear old ma, do ya?
I just picked up some extra non perishibles so we have something in case fear empties the shelves at the stores. I don't want to be out there with all the rioters and looters.
Exponential growth? Does ebola have a printing press too?
Yes and it can stop the spread of the disease in 15 minutes.
Actually it is a printing press. And one hell of one at that. Ben can only dream.
Miffed;-)
Almost perfect, and it's the tiny imperfection that causes the biggest headache - for us. Got to look on the bright side - some plant RNA viruses have a 6% per kbp per cycle error rate - VERY high-speed host adaptation!!
4th death in Lagos reported.
Nigeria reports fourth Ebola deathand next thing is UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE:
Nigeria sacks 16,000 doctors in midst of rising Ebola concernsLet's get in started in here....
Doctors being sacked demanding moar pay and better working conditions is in our future with Obamacare.
I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of Nigerian doctors here soon.
Ugh no, they won't be allowed in...
yes they will be MR RACIST.
True, that impermeable frontier with Mexico will stop them.
<=o
HFS.
So the country pays the Doctors, what could go wrong there. At least here in America, oh wait obama care. Not quite the same but we're getting there.
Good luck with that, Johnson.
The doctors were ALREADY ON STRIKE, so they WEREN'T TREATING ANYONE.
The .gov made it clear that anyone who wanted to come in and actually help people... would have a job and would receive pay (just not as much as they were demanding).
Doctors who were fired were the lucky ones.
If that is what is being reported then we know that is much worse than that. NBC told me not to worry though becuase that Liberian on the plane next to me coughing and sweating has to basically jerk off on me to transfer the disease.
Nothing to see here.
He also has to spit in your anus while doing a carthweel. If all these things happen at the same time your chances are higher than average of contracting it. It's really not that contagious.
Coffee on keyboard. Thanks.
Well, the guy next to me WAS jerking off. OK, not really. I was jerking him off.
Is that bad?
Is that how you got the name?
Well, Gates created a fortune by spreading computers that were more like viruses than operating systems. Now this:
Surprise! Ebola Outbreak Connected To Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and George Soros
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=313329
I got to read this. wow that was a good video. Thanks.
The PROBLEM, Infinite QE, is that despite it being practically impossible to satisfactorily confirm such news, that kind of news is entirely PLAUSIBLE!
Question the disease diagnosis: bioweapons? |
Politics via biological weapon false flag attacks?
Take another 4 months for this to burn itself out.
Expect at least 5,000 death (that anyone knows)
But this is just Round 1. This kind of thing will keep coming back until we decide it's worth our time to innoculate poor people at no profit.
And the latest on the zioqueer engineered disaster at Fukushima:
Pacific Ocean Now Dead From Fukushima Radiationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1FrscZBjhc&feature=youtu.be
As linked under that video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20HYCDKKKmg
The same severely devastating destruction out on the west coast of Vancouver Island. During the previous 150 years, the vast abundance of sea life in the Pacific North West has been 99% wiped out. It was already 90% wiped out a decade ago, during the previous Century or so. However, the destruction has been accelerating drastically, as the video linked above demonstrates has happened even out on the wilder west coast of Vancouver Island, like it has on the inside passage between that Island and the mainland. IT IS HARD TO WATCH THOSE TWO VIDEOS AND HAVE THEIR MEANING GRADUALLY SINK IN, THAT 99% OF THE ONCE ABUNDANT LIFE ON THE COASTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTH WEST IS GONE ...
The people bothering to make and post those videos appear to still be hoping that they can make a difference, and motivate something to bring about some better resolutions to these runaway problems. However, as far as I can tell, it is now too late. So sad, too bad, that human beings have apparently already committed suicide, although they are temporarily able to continue to deliberately ignore that they have already killed so much that there is now nothing to stop that continuing to get worse, automatically.
Pick whichever disaster from the palettes:
It is in that context that it does not surprise me that there is apparently enough evidence that the recent Ebola outbreak started in a very suspicious way, that indicates there may have been criminal negligence, or criminal insanity, behind that. Overall, there is now overwhelming evidence that human societies were controlled by lies backed by violence for so long, so much, which facilitated attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance, which have set up the conditions where the accumulating disasters have been picking up size and speed at an exponential rate, so that things even a few more doubling times into the future are impossible to fully imagine.
As with the death of the Pacific Ocean, that has been getting worse, faster, for a couple of Centuries, from whaling, on through to over-fishing generally, to which was then added every kind of chemical pollution, with the radioactivity from Fukushima being the latest layer of destruction piled on top of all the rest, so that, as I said, the life in the Pacific North West, which was one of the last places that the European Invasions put on its map, have systematically wiped out more and more of the natural environment there, so that there are now only a few junk species left that can still survive.
The same patterns of evil deliberate ignorance that we saw in official lie after lie, behind building the atomic power plants, and then attempting to cover up the facts about their disasters, are the same with respect to the slow motion train wreck of the Pacific Ocean ecologies, and those same patterns are now being found in the ways that this Ebola outbreak is manifesting.
Add all the other level after level of similar sorts of human driven disasters, that have all been driven out of human control, and I no longer perceive any feasible ways to cope with these runaway sorts of problems ... I can not imagine actually doing anything but continuing to watch, and wait, as all these kinds of trends automatically continue to get worse, faster. The final results of the human world being dominated by enforced frauds are that we have behaved with so much evil deliberate ignorance towards what we were doing, for so long, that it now appears too late to stop what has thereby been caused to happen.
There seems no point to reading these articles, nor posting any comments, that I can see ... but then, there is nothing else which is possible to do either. People who talk about being prepared for this emerging series of disaster after disaster, multiplying each other, appear to me to be delusionally optimistic. The more you know, the worse it gets ... to the point where there no longer are any possible ways to be prepared, nor respond to this overall runaway social insanity situation, which has allowed its consequences to develop to the point where there no longer are any ways that human beings could bring these runaway trends back under control.
What are the red dashed arrows? They look scary.
It's bullshit. The data is a scattergraph.
Drawing a smooth curve though it is ludicrous.
true.
later, less so.
True. Those red trend line projections are totally unsupported by the actual recorded data patterns.
All you need are Ebola infected workers on Cruise ships and serving food on Wall Street. It's panic time.
Ebolaoid Mary
Love those "guide for the eyes" curves and red arrows whose purpose is to suggest what you should think. Just look at the raw data paying particular attention to the scales used on both axis. My conclusion: there's way more fluctuations than clear trends in the reporting (a lot like the weather). Virulent viruses are self-limiting-so they either become less virulent or vanish-as ebola has historically done in the past. As long as there are animal reservoirs they can and will return only to die out again. That's why the good old rhinoviruses that cause common cold have lasted so long and are so widespread-they are the fittest in the Darwinian sense-they don't kill their hosts. Its called negative feedback and its what allows equilibrium states to be established. Run-away behavior requires positive feedback-something lacking in both disease and climate.
There was a chapter in "The Stand" where the general in charge pretty much says, "fuck it" and they unleash the virus all over the world.
Not sure we are there yet. But I am giving it another read, just something to keep me up at night.
Can we get one of fearless leader's many brothers to come for a visit in Washington and stop off along the way??
Instantaneous infection rate (smoothed over three data releases) is now:
15 Aug 14 - 54/day
13 Aug 14 - 40/day
11 Aug 14 - 37/day
08 Aug 14 - 54/day
06 Aug 14 - 55/day
04 Aug 14 - 57/day
02 Aug 14 - 43/day
29 Jul 14 - 38/day
27 Jul 14 - 23/day
23 Jul 14 - 12/day
17 Jul 14 - 10/day
Morbidity: 54%
Partial: 5.1%
(Date above is day WHO statistics were posted, e.g 02 Aug is compiled data as of 30 Jul).
http://www.who.int/csr/don/en/
Partial is the number of new cases per day divided by active cases, expressed as a percentage. Active cases being defined as all confirmed, probable, and suspected cases less deaths. The smoothed value has ranged between 3.7% and 7.9% since early July.
Obamacare fixed!
If I get Ebola, will that affect my insurance premiums?
Not for long.
Lets talk mathematical facts.
Outbreak is 141 days old as of 13 Aug. Using all data, exponential growth is occuring with a power of .0193. That means about 13.7k dead by XMAS (assuming no change).
However, using only last 3 weeks worth of new cases and deaths, the exponent is .0236. 44.8k dead by XMAS
Small changes in the exponent mean BIG changes in death totals.
22k vs 80k by Jan 2015
153k vs 856k by Apr 2015
656k vs 5M by Jul 2015
Keeping my eye on how exponentially it gets.
The savings this black friday are going to be out of this world! Fire Sale!!!!!
One math problem. Countryside ebola is 'vastly' (WHO statement) under reported but is slower to transmit than dense urban areas. So we do not know the true numbers in the countryside, and we need another month to see the growth in the city. Also at some point health care workers will either go awol or become sick themselves. So the ability to fight ebola is an unstable number. Still I like your attempts at projecting numbers.