US Scientists Predict Long Battle Against Ebola 119
An anonymous reader writes: Despite recent advances in medicine to treat Ebola, epidemiologists are not hopeful that the outbreak in west Africa will be contained any time soon. Revised models for the disease's spread expect the outbreak to last 12 to 18 months longer, likely infecting hundreds of thousands of people. "While previous outbreaks have been largely confined to rural areas, the current epidemic, the largest ever, has reached densely populated, impoverished cities — including Monrovia, the capital of Liberia — gravely complicating efforts to control the spread of the disease. ... What worries public health officials most is that the epidemic has begun to grow exponentially in Liberia. In the most recent week reported, Liberia had nearly 400 new cases, almost double the number reported the week before. Another grave concern, the W.H.O. said, is 'evidence of substantial underreporting of cases and deaths.' The organization reported on Friday that the number of Ebola cases as of Sept. 7 was 4,366, including 2,218 deaths." Scientists are urging greater public health efforts to slow the exponential trajectory of the disease and bring it back under control.
+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's about the number of deaths measles cost us every 6 days and we've had a vaccine for that for over 50 years.
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Informative)
For any who are tempted by the comforting thought that this remains an African Problem, remember that the longer the virus replicates inside a host species, the more chances there are for a favorable mutation to take hold.
Favorable for the virus.
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Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Funny)
... ebola could mutate into some superhero bug that gives people big erections.
Just like your mom.
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Indeed. The problem is collapse of civilization in the affected areas. Worst-case scenarios like planes having to be shot down because there is nobody left on the other side that checks who is getting on them may become a reality.
This thing is now a race between immunity (natural from survivors and pharmaceutical from vaccinations or effective treatments) and containment on the one side and its infection rate on the other side. Containment is basically out. Even a modern western state could not handle that
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In the west, we have a difficult time living down a major football contest (win or lose) with no rioting, let alone a natural disaster. What advantage are we afforded by natural selection that makes the anarchy of
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From my reading, it's possible to be infected for two or three weeks without visible symptoms. This means that there's plenty of opportunity for somebody in Africa to get on a plane and go somewhere else, and then have ebola hit. I have no confidence in confining it to one continent.
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You need to go back and read again.
Until you are symptomatic, you are not infectious.
(And it's highly unlikely, as in lightning-strike odds territory, to become able to infect via airborne methods. It will remain a touch
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Doubling time is closer to 50 days than 30 days:
http://i.imgur.com/trBhsa2.png [imgur.com]
But the point still stands, you don't want to mess around when there's exponential growth at play. With 50 days doubling time, you get to the population of the world in about 2 years.
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The doubling time looks like 30 to me (1000 at 110 and 2000 at 140) ...
According to the given formula e^(0.022x+4.591) it is actually log(2)/0.022 = 31.5
e^(0.022*0+4.591) = 98
e^(0.022*31.5+4.591) = 197
e^(0.022*63+4.591) = 394
e^(0.022*94.5+4.591) = 788
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According to the given formula e^(0.022x+4.591) it is actually log(2)/0.022 = 31.5
Hmm... sorry, I got the wrong base. But I also got my millions and billions muddled up, so it's still about 2 years....
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Interesting)
1918 flu killed 18 million around the world. figure around 50 million with today's population.
black plague killed 1/3 of europe and 1/3 of byzantium when it struck
point is to control it before it gets that far
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can ebola, by it's very nature even *get* that far? It's significantly more lethal more quickly than the flu; and it's vector for spread isn't a flea on the back of rat.
(not to say there's no cause for alarm, this strain of ebola in a large, densely packed city is obviously a disaster.. but playing the pandemic card is a bit more far fetched)
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:4, Insightful)
All it takes is a couple of people who 'aren't infected, just look' (there are a few days of little-to-no symptoms) to bribe some official to get on some plane or past a border check. We're a significantly more interconnected world today than even a hundred years ago - you don't need rats to spread things widely.
It's not a pandemic - yet. But it wouldn't take much for it to be one, and it would be major.
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All it takes is a couple of people who 'aren't infected, just look' (there are a few days of little-to-no symptoms) to bribe some official to get on some plane or past a border check.
Except that's already happened.
In the middle of a hospital doctors strike in the receiving country.
And the receiving country was Nigeria, not a country with a first world health system.
And we've had 21 infected and 7 deaths so far.
So don't panic yet.
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This will not become a pandemic. If necessary, there will be nuclear cauterization. Human civilization cannot survive a pandemic of this stuff, the survival rate is 50% only with good medical care. With civilizatory collapse, it is more likely to be > 95%.
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No. Definitely not. Not by several orders of magnitude. Maybe look up some definitions before spouting BS?
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There is no such thing as nuclear cauterization except in movies and video games.
A nuclear attack in a densely populated area would just destroy the medical infrastruture and would create thousands or millions of survivors most of them affected by radiations and so with a weakened immune system. The pandemic would spread very fast.
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The point is that there were always survivors. The death rate was never 100%. Not with anything non-human invented. According to Christopher Smart, even his cat Jeoffrey, he plays with the mice he catches, and 1 in 7 escape thus. A cat is a very efficient killer of mice, it can see in almost total dark, but even it allows some to make it.
Though it may be possible that humans do come up with stuff that gets 100% death rate in their biotech labs. But nature, so far, even during major extinction events, has no
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Insightful)
imagine 1/3 of the USA or the first world dying? that's not only a decades long economic depression that will follow, it will mean a huge impact onto your quality of life as people who make all your stuff from the food you eat to your electricity to gasoline die, you will have to learn how to survive on your own. grow your own food, etc
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and yet, if it were to happen, humanity would not learn from it.
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Competing consumers would also drop from the population. Less food/power/gas would be needed to match.
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Possibly. But the short-term social disruption would not be something I'd like to witness.
And since the 'short-term' in this case is probably 'a generation or two', I'd have to be a witness. (Or dead.)
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Not sure if this matters, but I remember reading someplace that one of the "benefits" of the plague is that it drove up the cost of labor which ended up having a positive impact for ordinary people.
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imagine 1/3 of the USA or the first world dying?
That's the "happy end" of John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up".
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I have doubts, but if you look at which country has the higher probability of dying it is poor countries in Africa whereas the first world can fend it off easily. This leads me to think that as we get under pressure from net energy decline we will be far more susceptible to diseases like Ebola. Of course pandemics can have knock on effects, i.e. the global flow of things will get reduced due to countries barricading themselves in, but initially it were the conditions of people living in West Africa who wer
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This strain kills 90%
Rubbish. Around 50% with rudimentary treatment.
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When the pandemic runs its course and stabilizes over the pool of potential infected, the final mortality will rather be 65-75%. Now consider what a few thousand infected will do to the healthcare system of any so-called developped country, and you'll realize that even your standards for rudimentary care are optimistic. The hubris in your opinion is palpable.
So your contention is that the health systems of Liberie, Guinea and Seirra Leone were better prepared for this problem than those of first world countries?
not sure that we want it controlled (Score:2)
Right now, we have massive numbers of small wars popping up. This has gotten old. In addition, it could lead to a real war with nukes.
But, if the world takes a massive loss of life due to say Ebola going airborne, it would lower the likelihood of a nuke war.
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The problem with a nuke war is the huge number of people who would suffer and die as a result of it, so I fail to see how the same number of people suffering or dying in a "natural die-off" would be any kind of improvement.
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I suspect this is a psychological problem, people probably can accept death through an act of god easier than through human action. The number of people suffering is probably not important to anyone else than politicians. Assuming that you can know around 150 people the number of dead in either case exceeds what you can grasp.
The difference between the two cases is that diseases affect poor nations that don't compete for resources as much. I would guess that Ebola spreading won't prevent resource wars becau
Re: not sure that we want it controlled (Score:2)
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One appalling aspect of the Spanish Flu epidemic is that, due to wartime censorship, information about the disease was suppressed, including information about where it was, and how to avoid it.
Not in Spain, though. The disease was in a lot of places, including Spain. Spain wasn't in WW 1, so wartime censorship did not apply there.
Information about it was in Spanish newspapers, and that's how it got the name -- even though it apparently started in Kansas, and spread through overcrowded US military barrac
Re:+-2000 deaths? (Score:4, Informative)
There are loads of places far less poor and squalid than Liberia and the other oubreak sites; but without any good options on the table it wouldn't take long to run through your supply of isolation wards and fancy positive-pressure protective suits even in the most upmarket first world locations with well regarded research hospitals and such, were the population to be affected.
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Re: "...it wouldn't take long to run through your supply of isolation wards and fancy positive-pressure protective suits... "
Well yeah, but so what? None of that is actually necessary here. It's striking that with no direct treatment at all (I'm discounting ZMapp as experimental and unproven), we can manage Ebola just fine. In some of the poorest places on Earth.
Supportive care. You keep the patient clean, fed (if possible, when possible), and watered. Survival rates go up. The important thing is tha
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It takes three medical support people to keep an Ebola patient clean, dry, hydrated, fed
Yes, but those same 3 can deal with up to 10-20 other patients at the same time.
And three more armed and dangerous army types to defend you while you do it
No. because not all the world is the one against all hobseian hellhole that the US pretends it is.
Re: +-2000 deaths? (Score:1)
Yes but unlike measels the Ebola outbreak could have been contained if it were not for the moronic actions and beliefs of the people its been infecting. Ebola is not easy to transmit. Measles is by comparison.
Re: +-2000 deaths? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ebola may not be easy to transmit, but it sure as heck isn't hard to transmit. It's not pedantically known to be airborne, but it is believed to be spread by droplets (e.g. sneezes). There's a very, very, very fine line between the two.
And yes, I can provide citations if you'd like, but it's not like they're very hard to find with a Google search.
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Re: +-2000 deaths? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, here's a link to the research paper [nature.com] from 2012.
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If we ever get to the point where we're getting over 500,000 cases of Ebola every year, but are only seeing 2000 deaths a week, then we'll talk.
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as long as there are no zombies (Score:1)
i'm not worried
Good episode of Frontline (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you in the US, the PBS show Frontline had part of an episode dedicated to what's going on. While it is very hard to get, cultural problems there make it really easy (mourners touch the dead). People in remote villages are scared to tell doctors that they have symptoms since they'll be whisked off to the clinic, never to be seen again, just like almost everyone else that went to the clinic. In the larger cities, some nitwits are spreading the rumor that Ebola doesn't exist and the government is just trying to steal blood from the patients. So bands of people think that patents bleeding from every orifice needs to be rescued(!).
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Liberia is/was classified as a "fragile state," despite being near the bottom of the failed state index.
Cultural issues exacerbated the spread, but the actual problem is the Liberian Government's inability to (or decision not to) mobilize resources and quarantine infected patients or infected areas.
People are already calling for the President's resignation and arguing that the her poor *handling of this plague has pushed Liberia back towards being a failed state.
*and a general inability to create a viable h
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There's a simple solution then, we go back to doing what we had every time there was a serious outbreak of some disease. Quarantine and cutting that area off, eventually it'll simply kill the stupid people off. Something that most people don't realize is that many places outside of the western world, the understanding of the spread of infectious disease is where Europe was in the 900-1200's.
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No, far later than that. Slaves brought from Africa in the 15th and 16trh centuries came with Yellow Fever and Malaria. Since they either already had it as children or had better genes to handle the disease, they were usually okay, but Europeans who were in the colonies would get sick for a year and possibly die. They made a connection, but didn't do anything about it.
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Liberia has some 4million people and borders are only lines on a map.
Both true, but -
Everybody in Africa knows that running into the forest is how you die - there is nothing to eat there.
People leave their villages when forced out at gunpoint or in face of serious problems like drought. Not a tiny problem like disease, which is omnipresent.
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Almost nothing gets through healthy skin. But skin-contact is very hard to avoid when dealing with sick people. That is the whole problem of this thing.
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Exposure to a handful of virons has been observed to infect cells when the virons were released into the intercellular matrix - We may safely assume it will take more than five nanites to get through the thick, dry layer of dead cells we call skin. Only a few Ebola outbreaks have fatality rates of 90+%. Despite being of that dreaded Zaire lineage genetically, this one has a CFR of more like 50%.
This thing is scary enough (I'll tell you, I was scared the first time I saw the log-plot was a straight line) wit
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90% of the infected die.
For values of 90 that are less than or equal to 50.
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It varies by strain and number of people infected. Some outbreaks get to 90%, this one is closer to 60%.
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While there is a certain amount of local ignorance or incapacity of hygiene going on here
By "here" you mean slashdot, right?
Because I've read a shitload of stuff in this discussion that makes the average inhabitant of Monrovia look like a qualified virologist.
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improper terminology (Score:1)
It's not a battle. We are going to degrade and ultimately destroy Ebola.
Blood immunity (Score:2)
Some people exposed to this disease will survive and develop an immunity.
Shouldn't we be developing vaccines based on human beings who have survived and develop that? The human condition itself is a remarkable platform for self preservation and we have science as a tool. Thinking this is not our problem or that it is a challenge of a particular country seems to be a great way to spead this disease.
Ebola is a human challenge, shouldn't we treat it that way?
Quarantine with extreme prejudice (Score:1)
Crater the airfields. Mine the harbors.
Snipers sans frontieres, At the borders.
Nothing leaves.
The cure for overpopulation is ebola.
The cure for ebola is napalm.
Civilization is a choice. Make it soon.
Ebola Spreading: Slums connected by Travel (Score:1)
Reading the last publications about the spreading of Ebola, I've got the idea that WHO tries to hide information, in particular about the different types of spreading. So I'm making this up from common sense, maybe somebody with access to privileged information might add details:
Spreading in slums: That seems to be the case in Monrovia ultimately. Inhabitants don't trust the public health system (with certain reason...) and believe in which doctors or conspiracy theories. Once >500 persons are infected,
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Spreading across the "pepper coast" via land connections: The area from Guinea to Ghana seems to be relatively sparsely populated with exception of a few cities.
You somehow missed the Ivory Coast, population 20 million? Not all urban, the biggest city, Abidjan has a population of 4.5 million.
And these cities are now basically disconnected from international air traffic.
Monrovia currently has flights to Brussels and Casablanca.
Conacry has flights to Paris and Casablanca.
Freetown has flights to Brussels and Casablanca.
So, not quite disconnected.
Silver kills microbes and ebola (Score:1)
Hmmm... and why are they not using their own research and solution?
A PDF of Janice Speshock and Saber Hussain's research at the US Air Force National Laboratory [drrimatruthreports.com].
Before some anonymous coward yells some shill-inspired-drivel about the dangers of silver.... the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA is part of the Department of Defense, created in 1999) confirmed the authenticity of this research [drrimatruthreports.com].
So, will "medical science" aka big pharma and their marketing arm, the FDA, "allow" this potential cure, or
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Your ancestors came out of there around 200,000 years ago, when they climbed off the trees.
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Drink some coffee [wikipedia.org], google around a bit, and get back to us.
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Coffee is shit.
ooo, the Nonsense Game...lets play!
All Ice Cream is disgusting.
Chocolate is hideous.
Vegetables are the devil.
Soda tastes like a rotten corpse.
Water is ebola.
Sunshine is evil.
OK, your turn!
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Drink some coffee [wikipedia.org], google around a bit, and get back to us.
I do like to drink my Columbian coffee, that according to you own link was probably indigenous to and first cultivated in Yemen.
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I do like to drink my Columbian coffee, that according to you own link was probably indigenous to and first cultivated in Yemen.
You should try Colombian coffee instead!
Always something new (Score:2)
ex africa semper aliquid novi
"Always from Africa comes something new." Pliny.
Que haya no navedad
"May no new thing arise." Traditional Spanish benediction.
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Did you read the post you replied to. He wasn't suggesting anything that required anybody to comply with government orders. He basically advocated putting a big wall around the infection zones and mowing down anybody who tried to climb over.
Completely sidestepping the huge moral issues, I'm not convinced that could actually be done at a national level. At least, not for countries in Africa - there is just way too much area to try to patrol. You really need geographic barriers if you're going to do somet
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That's the fun part about so many infections...
The more people with the virus, the more chances for mutations per given unit of time. The more chances for mutations, the higher the chance of a nasty mutation arising.
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Embargo completely those countries were it is currently at. No one in, no one out.
A couple of weeks ago that would have included the US, the UK and Spain.