Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[Eddie Teach]

What were you told about relaxing?

Don't do it.

[CountDeMoney]

Then again, that doctor who wrote the Op-ed in the Times is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, so maybe he knows what he's talking about.

If he knew what he was talking about, he wouldn't be at the University of Minnesota doing "policy".

I'm up to my black ass in virologists and immunologists here, I trust what they say more than some headline-grabbing op-ed Golden Gopher.

[Ed Anger]

And their football program stinks too.

[CountDeMoney]

"Golden Gophers".  Sounds like a fetish porn video series.

GOLDEN GOPHERS VOL 26, "VARMINT VIXENS"

[jimmy olsen]

You guys are in denial.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/ebola-case-count-could-rise-to-between-77000-and-277000-by-years-end/

Ebola case count could rise to between 77,000 and 277,000 by year's end

A worst-case scenario would see an additional 77,181 to 277,124 Ebola cases by the end of 2014

Helen Branswell

September 11, 2014


TORONTO – The case count in West Africa's unprecedented Ebola outbreak could grow by tens or even hundreds of thousands of cases before the end of this year, a new study suggests.

The work, published Thursday in the online journal Eurosurveillance, said that if growth continues at its current pace, a worst-case scenario would see an additional 77,181 to 277,124 cases by the end of 2014.

The authors suggested it is unlikely the worst-case scenario would come to pass because containment efforts are being scaled up in response to the crisis. But in an interview, one of the authors admitted that if the current numbers are wrong and many more cases have been missed in recent weeks, their estimate could potentially be too low.

"If the cases are roughly uniformly distributed over time, then our estimates shouldn't change much," said Gerardo Chowell of Arizona State University in Tempe.

However, if most of the missed cases had more recently occurred, "this would be very bad news."

An editorial that accompanied the study warned that the world cannot hope that this Ebola outbreak will burn itself out. It was written by Adam Kucharski and Peter Piot of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Piot is one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus.

They called the epidemic an international crisis and said it demands a commensurate response.

"It is true that outbreaks of acute infections will generally decline once a large number of people have been infected because there are no longer enough susceptible individuals to sustain transmission," the authors noted.

"But ... given the vast populations in affected areas and the disease's high fatality rate, this is clearly not an acceptable scenario."

They suggested that unless the containment efforts start to gain ground, the number of cases could double every two weeks.

The most recent numbers from the World Health Organization suggest there have been at least 4,269 cases of the disease and 2,288 deaths in this outbreak, which is believed to have started late last year. Those numbers are higher than the total of all known Ebola cases and Ebola deaths since the first known outbreak in 1976.

The agency has said it believes its numbers are underestimates, but because the outbreak is so large and the situation in hot zones so chaotic it does not have a good handle on how far off the numbers are.

Because of those problems, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota warned against seeing the numbers in this study as a true projection.

Michael Osterholm said he wasn't trying to suggest the case numbers aren't big or that they won't get much bigger, but just that at this point it is difficult to quantify how large the outbreak might get.

"All we can say is there are lots and lots of cases, and more coming. And there are lots and lots of deaths, and more coming," said Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy.

"And I don't think we can put any real precision around this at this point. All we can say for our planning is that it's a very, very big number. And we just have to take that into consideration."

The work is what is known as a modelling study. Chowell and a colleague, H. Nishiura from the University of Tokyo, calculated what is called the reproductive number of the outbreak, the number of new infections that stem from an average case. When a disease has a reproductive rate of less than one, it cannot sustain itself and will eventually stop spreading.

In the case of this outbreak, they estimated the reproductive rate was between one and two. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, the harder hit of the countries, the reproductive number was calculated to be between 1.4 and 1.7. The worst-case scenario of 77,181 to 277,124 was calculated using those figures.

Chowell, who was reached in Japan, said in a telephone interview that as of Aug. 26 there was no evidence the containment efforts were bringing down the reproductive number. That would occur if new cases were isolated as soon as the people became sick, eliminating the risk they would infect others. People with Ebola are only believed to be contagious when they have symptoms.

Chowell said he and Nishiura will continue to track the numbers to see if the increased efforts are making an impact on the outbreak.

[Valmy]

Us being in denial does not really matter.  The fact the UN and various other idiots seem to be in denial is much more serious.  Anybody going to get some doctors and emergency facilities over there?  Bueller?

[jimmy olsen]

Us being in denial does not really matter.  The fact the UN and various other idiots seem to be in denial is much more serious.  Anybody going to get some doctors and emergency facilities over there?  Bueller?

Cuba's sending 165 health workers.

http://thenationonlineng.net/new/ebola-cuba-sends-165-health-workers-to-west-africa/

Likely too late though
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/africa/ebola-who-africa.html?_r=0

So far, 4,784 Ebola cases have been reported and more than 2,400 people have died in the outbreak, which is concentrated in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ms. Chan said on Friday, citing the latest data available. But she made clear the figures were "an underestimate."

A surge of 400 new cases in Liberia in the past week, double the number of new cases in the preceding week, was "a particular cause for concern," the health organization said. Sierra Leone reported 200 new cases in the past week and a high rate of transmission in the capital, Freetown, the W.H.O. said. Nearly half the total number of infections in West Africa and just over half the deaths occurred in the last 21 days, it said.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm not in denial, I'm in the United States. Where it's safer.

[derspiess]

Cuba just can't resist meddling in Africa, can it??

[Caliga]

You guys are in denial.

[Ed Anger]

You guys are in denial.

Denialist.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm not in denial, I'm in the United States. Where it's safer.

Until the boatloads of infected Africans start washing up on our shores.

[mongers]

You guys are in denial.

Deni-alist.

She's my celebrity dream date. 

[CountDeMoney]

I'm not in denial, I'm in the United States. Where it's safer.

Until the boatloads of infected Africans start washing up on our shores.

What, like all the boatloads of infected Haitians that were going to destroy us by washing up on our shores in the '80s? 

[Eddie Teach]

I'm unfamiliar with the disease that affected five million Haitians.