Ebola: I Guess We Are All Going To Die

[Famine]

Well that's proven to be not true

Check out the word "might".

If you've done that with someone who does have ebola and is symptomatic, the answer may be different.

Don't you think those heath workers that got it weren't covered head to toe in protective gear and had knowledge above and beyond the average person about how to NOT get infected...

No. They're just health workers. They're not class 4 specialists.

Sure, the guys in yellow hazmat suits and breathers make for good copy, but exactly how many of those suits do you think there are in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea? The majority of care workers are not so well protected and while it should be the case that patients are isolated and those involved in direct patient contact are in protective gear, often it's not. All you need is a walk-in with a runny nose and you've got nurse infected.

It can travel in water vapour in the air in a very humid situation (Africa) so the sweat evaporating from someone can enter your body just by breathing near them.

That's truth mixed with Mail-grade bollocks - it can travel in ejected oro-nasal water droplets from symptomatic individuals, at least experimentally with different species (see below). Also all the guys in yellow suits are wearing respirators so according to your first line about health workers being covered head-to-toe, shouldn't cause any cases in health workers...

Plus anything that people touch leave sweat molecules so you can get it from a door handle or any surface.

That's marginally less bollocks, though you're talking about a very short window of opportunity and again this is something that your hazmat suits prevent.

For those of you so ******re Ebola can only be spread by contact with an Ebola victim, explain the case of the doctor who acquired the disease without such contact, and the well documented laboratory test case of aerial transmission between pigs and monkeys.

Oh dear. That's God-thread levels of "prove me wrong" right there. I'm not sure why it's beholden on anyone to explain things you have brought up without context.

However, in the unspecified case of the doctor who got the disease without contact, he got the disease through contact. The pig-to-monkey case involved infecting piglets and putting them in wire cages next to macaques. After four days of coughing on the macaques, they became infected - though the infection may have been transmitted though oro-nasal ejection or by external contamination when the cages were cleaned.

You might want to read up on the experiment and the conclusions, because one thing they don't support is that ebola virus is airborne. Or you can just persist with hand-wringing panic-mongering, like the gutter press and conspiracy websites are doing.

 

[RACECAR]

Just heard some kid posted a pic of a fake news alert(with the Fox news logo photoshopped on it) and Fox had to go on air and tell people it was not them after it incited panic.

Great job moron, you're officially worse then the media. Just what we need is more panic.

 

[Fryto]

Biggotism? Are you serious?

This Liberian piece of trash lied on his forms on his exit from Liberia - and was dumb enough to expose himself to Ebola and then travel across the world.

Let me guess - you would rather hug a murderer and understand his childhood rather that lock him away in prison?

oh boy...

I'm not saying that he shouldn't be sanctioned for lying on on his exit/entrance forms, that was negligence, true.

My point is though that 'boxing him up and send back' like you suggest isn't going to resolve anything. What's the merit of doing that?

Instead of focusing on this guy alone like you're doing, I think the border security system could use some improvement, and that hospitals need a standard rulebook on what to do if someone who just flew in from a high risk region, presents himself with high fever.

 

[RC45]

oh boy...

I'm not saying that he shouldn't be sanctioned for lying on on his exit/entrance forms, that was negligence, true.

My point is though that 'boxing him up and send back' like you suggest isn't going to resolve anything. What's the merit of doing that?

Instead of focusing on this guy alone like you're doing, I think the border security system could use some improvement, and that hospitals need a standard rulebook on what to do if someone who just flew in from a high risk region, presents himself with high fever.

Oh boy...

The real point is that without risk of criminal charges and deportation there is ZERO incentive to stop people lying on their forms and risking the health of entire populations.

This guy did not crawl across the border like a typical illegal alien roach - he flew commercial.

He also knew he was infected.

He is at that point a criminal.

The same way an HIV positive person that sleeps around knowing they are infected and does not tell their sexual partners - it is a crime and they will be charged as such.

No difference here.

And truth be known, I don't think this outbreak is really Ebola - but thankfully its slightly less terrifying cousin Marburg.

If this was a true Ebola outbreak, then things would be a lot worse a lot quicker and the only cure is to isolate those infected and let them die out.

They do not seem to be doing this with all the infected groups in West Africa at the moment.

 

[Dotini]

This article is something of an indictment of the World Health Oganization.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/10/04/how-ebola-sped-out-of-control/
The people in charge of stopping the Ebola epidemic will have to do something that they have not been able to accomplish: They must be even more aggressive, more ruthless and more persistent than the virus - a mindless and implacable force carrying out its own genetic instructions.

 

[Dotini]

MADRID (AP) -- In what is the first reported incident of Ebola transmission outside Africa, a Spanish nurse who treated a missionary for the disease at a Madrid hospital tested positive for the disease, Spain's health minister said Monday.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-06-14-41-22

 

[Robin]

They should have never let any medical staff out of isolation after treating Ebola patients until a incubation period has passed. This nurse had gone on holiday when she started feeling ill and who knows how many people she may have infected.

 

[Sanji Himura]

Update on the Ebola patient in Dallas: He has now gone into critical condition in the last 12-24 hours. Doctors at the hospital have refused to use any experimental treatments on the man (including one made up of mouse blood and tobacco leaves that cured one man enough to be transported to the states).

 

[KSaiyu]

They should have never let any medical staff out of isolation after treating Ebola patients until a incubation period has passed. This nurse had gone on holiday when she started feeling ill and who knows how many people she may have infected.

I don't think she was feeling ill when she went on holiday. That could have been a disaster.

 

[Mark T]

I can't believe how badly it has been handled. Any person who has been in contact with Ebola victims needs to be in quarantine until they are absolutely 100% sure there is no risk. Apparently she went on holiday but not outside of Madrid. Even so, how many people could she have infected?

Just read that Ebola only becomes infectious after symptoms develop. This gives health workers a small window to recognise symptoms and get the patient quarantined.

 

[Crumpet]

Thanks to a few selfish Africans eating contaminated bush meat we are all going to die...

Why are they even letting people in and out of Africa? Isn't the fact this disease is starting to hit Western countries a signal to maybe do something and stop air traffic to these diseased areas and focus on containing it there, instead of making a big mess of it by allowing them to infect anyone that they please and having to deal with the issue in multiple countries as opposed to just one?

 

[Dotini]

Why are they even letting people in and out of Africa? Isn't the fact this disease is starting to hit Western countries a signal to maybe do something and stop air traffic to these diseased areas and focus on containing it there, instead of making a big mess of it by allowing them to infect anyone that they please and having to deal with the issue in multiple countries as opposed to just one?

People are let in to Africa in order to stop the outbreak there. They are really quite helpless to do it themselves.
People are let out of Africa for...other reasons. Like Commerce, Freedom, Democracy and American Values.

If Ebola gets out of Africa into advanced western countries, why, no big deal. We are so smart and well equipped that we will stop it in its tracks!

 

[Robin]

It's kinda against human rights to flat out forbid people to leave Africa. Many airlines have suspended flights to and from that area but there are still many others operating which is frankly insane giving the current departure containment procedures which are in place, i.e. none.

Anyone leaving affected African countries should be made to wait in isolation for a few days before boarding the flight or give a blood sample. That would ensure everyone arriving in other countries would be virus free. They are never going to get on top of this if the air traffic is open.

 

[Carbonox]

It's even more against human rights to allow people to leave so they can infect more people. (Knowingly or not)

 

[magburner]

Hello.

I heard the BBC mention earlier, that the number of Ebola cases in Africa, were growing exponentially.

Exponential growth, is often not fully understood by the man in the street. A simple explanation of exponential growth could be:

"Every day, the total number of cases, equals the total number of cases from all the previous days. Another feature of exponential growth, is that the time it takes for each step of growth, becomes shorter and shorter."

To further explain this concept, I have put together some graphs, and some videos. I hope by the end of this post, you will at least understand the great sense of urgency surrounding this Ebola outbreak.

To begin, here is a graph detailing the number of ebola cases and deaths up to the 24th June 2014.

Again, here is another graph, detailing the cases and deaths, as of the 1st of October 2014.

Do you see the similarity?

Here is a link to the CDC website, to a page titled 'Estimating the Future Number of Cases in the Ebola Epidemic — Liberia and Sierra Leone, 2014–2015'. Do you see the similarity amongst the graphs on that page too?

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6303a1.htm?s_cid=su6303a1_w

All these graphs detail the exponential growth, in Ebola cases and deaths.

To illustrate the point further, I have presented a number of videos that discuss exponential growth in greater depth.

This first video by Chris Martenson, explains exponential growth, pay close attention to what the graphs look like. I would like to point out, that although the subject of the video is unrelated, the principle and the mathematics, are exactly the same.



This second video, also by Chris Matenson, details compounding, and how it relates to exponential growth. In the example in the video, instead of a drop of water, think ebola cases, or even ebola deaths.



Here is a final video, and it is the definitive account of exponential growth, entitled 'The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our Inability to Understand the Exponential Function', by Dr Alan Bartlett. RIP



Are you worried yet? If you are not, then you should be. This is not some half-baked conspiracy theory, although, you are free to insert your own apocalyptic vision, as your tastes require. All I am discussing, is the simple mathematical principle, which is driving this Ebola outbreak.

You have to trust me when I say that we have possibly weeks, not years, or even months, before Ebola becomes pandemic. It may already be too late, I believe that we are already in a de facto epidemic state in Africa. There is only a short period of time, before Ebola becomes airborne, and then pandemic.

If this is the case, and Ebola does become pandemic in Africa, then the only option we will have left, could be the nuclear option. Ebola has the 'potential' to become a global killer, it could even signal the end of mankind. As we speak, the virus is slowly evolving, what if it finally becomes airborne? what if it mutates and becomes yet more virulent? If the thought of seventy-percent mortality rates, leaves your blood running cold, try to imagine eighty, or even ninety-percent mortality rates. Would you choose to save the few, or save the many? Lose millions of lives, or lose billions of lives?

 

[Famine]

Hello.

I heard the BBC mention earlier, that the number of Ebola cases in Africa, were growing exponentially.

Exponential growth, is often not fully understood by the man in the street. A simple explanation of exponential growth could be:

"Every day, the total number of cases, equals the total number of cases from all the previous days. Another feature of exponential growth, is that the time it takes for each step of growth, becomes shorter and shorter."

Just thought I should fact-check that one.

If the total number of new cases each day exactly equals the total number of cases from all previous days put together, everyone on Earth would have been infected with EBOV 5 weeks after the first case. If we're taking June 24th 2014 as Day 0, we'd have all been infected on or before July 29th 2014.

Are you worried yet? If you are not, then you should be.

Why?

 

[PeterJB]

If the virus breaks out in Europe or North America it will be quickly be brought under control. West Africa has arguably the worst sanitation and healthcare in the world, so it's hardly surprising to me that this is happening. It's not airborne, it can only be transferred through bodily fluids, it's quite easy to avoid. The main overseas area under threat from it is India and South-East Asia. It could wreak havoc there.

 

[m8h3r]

The population in India would be heaven for Ebola, especially in the major cities.

I'm not too worried about it in the UK yet but if it did get near me I'd be one of the first to get it as I work in a call centre

 

[Sanji Himura]

It's kinda against human rights to flat out forbid people to leave Africa. Many airlines have suspended flights to and from that area but there are still many others operating which is frankly insane giving the current departure containment procedures which are in place, i.e. none.

Anyone leaving affected African countries should be made to wait in isolation for a few days before boarding the flight or give a blood sample. That would ensure everyone arriving in other countries would be virus free. They are never going to get on top of this if the air traffic is open.

You saw how well a paper form worked, you're right.

 

[Touring Mars]

Apparently classic symptoms of ebola virus are bloodshot eyes, nausea and vomiting. If an outbreak starts in Glasgow at the weekend, it is questionable if anybody will notice any difference.

 

[Robin]

The biggest danger in outbreaks like this is being complacent, underestimating how apocalyptic this could become. There is particular worry, as has already been stated, that it could travel to another developing nation like India where it would be uncontrollable.

The CDC feels that we should be overreacting to this because that is the only way it can be brought under control. The response to this has only been adequate and that gets us nowhere.... it should be over the top. People should be scared and extreme measures should be in place before it even gets here.

Spain has admitted that only Madrid has a hospital with a biosafety levels high enough to deal with Ebola... one... in the entire country, a developed European country. However advanced our healthcare systems are it will not contain an outbreak, people will still touch things and other people just like anywhere else on earth.

 

[Famine]

The biggest danger in outbreaks like this is being complacent, underestimating how apocalyptic this could become.

Actually the biggest danger is physical contact with the bodily fluids of the symptomatic.

Ebola is quite like HIV in this respect, only with the additional joy of persisting in oro-nasal ejecta. I remember the end-of-days fearmongering about HIV in the 1980s and, while HIV is classed as a worldwide pandemic, we're not quite all dead yet.

There were TV adverts and everything.

 

[Dotini]

It seems likely the virus will infect over a million people sometime shortly after the new year.

Assuming this is so, does it increase the odds the virus will mutate to airborne transmission? I would think so. But on the other hand, I know almost nothing about viruses or genetics.

Edit: Apparently viruses, and especially Ebola, don't mutate very rapidly.
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/220046-cdc-airborne-ebola-possible-but-unlikely

 

[KSaiyu]

Actually the biggest danger is physical contact with the bodily fluids of the symptomatic.

Ebola is quite like HIV in this respect, only with the additional joy of persisting in oro-nasal ejecta. I remember the end-of-days fearmongering about HIV in the 1980s and, while HIV is classed as a worldwide pandemic, we're not quite all dead yet.

There were TV adverts and everything.

There's faecal transmission too isn't there. That can be problematic if the patient has diarrhoea.

It seems likely the virus will infect over a million people sometime shortly after the new year.

Assuming this is so, does it increase the odds the virus will mutate to airborne transmission? I would think so. But on the other hand, I know almost nothing about viruses or genetics.

Edit: Apparently viruses, and especially Ebola, don't mutate very rapidly.
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/220046-cdc-airborne-ebola-possible-but-unlikely

It increases the odds, but I imagine it's the equivalent of going from 1'000'000 - 1 to 999'999 - 1. The discoverer of Ebola himself considers it extremely unlikely.

 

[magburner]

Just thought I should fact-check that one.

If the total number of new cases each day exactly equals the total number of cases from all previous days put together, everyone on Earth would have been infected with EBOV 5 weeks after the first case. If we're taking June 24th 2014 as Day 0, we'd have all been infected on or before July 29th 2014.Why?

You are assuming that the Ebola virus was growing exponentially right from the start, when it was not. Left unchecked and without human intervention, the Ebola scenario that you describe, could have become a reality. We were fortunate enough to have had safeguards in place that mitigated the early growth of this virus. Those safeguards have now been overwhelmed.

I beleive that day zero was not the first reported case for this Ebola virus outbreak, which first broke out in Guinea in December 2013. Day zero was the first day, that the total number of cases, outstripped our ability to treat them. From that point forward, the Ebola virus has been growing exponentially.

Do not take my word for it, watch this next video that was uploaded late last night, and listen to what the White House spokesman is talking about - the exponential growth of the Ebola virus. He even mentions the curve and the graph, that I first discussed.

I remember the end-of-days fearmongering about HIV in the 1980s and, while HIV is classed as a worldwide pandemic, we're not quite all dead yet.

I believe that there are similarities in the design of both of these viruses, but the methods of transmission are completely different. People are gaining infection from simple contact with Ebola. How do we explain the nurse in MAdrid who was apparently wearing fully protective clothing? As far as I am aware, AIDS is nowhere near as infectious, but if it was, we would have been in this situation, back then too.

 

[QuattroDelta]

The biggest danger in outbreaks like this is being complacent, underestimating how apocalyptic this could become. There is particular worry, as has already been stated, that it could travel to another developing nation like India where it would be uncontrollable.

The CDC feels that we should be overreacting to this because that is the only way it can be brought under control. The response to this has only been adequate and that gets us nowhere.... it should be over the top. People should be scared and extreme measures should be in place before it even gets here.

Spain has admitted that only Madrid has a hospital with a biosafety levels high enough to deal with Ebola... one... in the entire country, a developed European country. However advanced our healthcare systems are it will not contain an outbreak, people will still touch things and other people just like anywhere else on earth.

Thing is, that hospital WAS prepared to deal with ebola, now it isn't.

 

[sems4arsenal]

The US patient who had Ebola has sadly died. Oh boy.

 

[Famine]

You are assuming that the Ebola virus was growing exponentially right from the start, when it was not.

Nope.

Well, sort of. The 5 week 1-to-everyone scenario is a best-case scenario using a single infectee at Day Zero and your claim that EBOV is spreading at an exponential rate with no more than the minimum definition of exponential you gave. You can work it out for yourself if you want:

Day 0 - 1 new infection, 1 total infection
Day 1 - 1 new infection, 2 total infections
Day 2 - 2 new infections, 4 total infections
Day 3 - 4 new infections, 8 total infections
Day 4 - 8 new infections, 16 total infections
Day 5 - 16 new infections, 32 total infections
Day 6 - 32 new infections, 64 total infections
Day 7 - 64 new infections, 128 total infections

Not bad for a week.

Just totals from now, because it gets big quick:
Day 8 - 256; Day 9 - 512; Day 10 - 1024; Day 11 - 2048; Day 12 - 4096; Day 13 - 8192; Day 14 - 16,384

Well, still, that's only a small town's worth after two weeks.

Day 15 - 32,768; Day 16 - 65,536; Day 17 - 131,072; Day 18 - 262,144; Day 19 - 524,288; Day 20 - 1,048,576; Day 21 - 2,097,152

Uhh... that's everyone in England's five largest cities combined in three weeks.

Day 22 - 4,194,304; Day 23 - 8,388,608; Day 24 - 16,777,216; Day 25 - 33,554,432; Day 26 - 67,108,864; Day 27 - 134,217,728; Day 28 - 268,435,456

Most of the population of the USA in four weeks...

Day 29 - 536,870,912; Day 30 - 1,073,741,824; Day 31 - 2,147,483,648; Day 32 - 4,294,967,296; Day 33 - Everyone, Game Over, Insert Coin(s) to continue

At the point EBOV cases start to increase exponentially, everyone on Earth has been infected in under 5 weeks. It depends on when you're asserting this to have happened as to the point we're at.

Now, you're asserting it's happened already. Let's be kind and say that the very last day the CDC has data for - October 3rd - is Day 0 of the exponential spread phase. Checking the CDC, they say there were just under 8,000 cases reported as of October 3rd, with around 4,000 of those as laboratory confirmed - closely corresponding to Day 12 and Day 13 on the exponential chart. Today is October 8th, so we should be seeing Day 17 and Day 18 numbers if EBOV is in an exponential infection phase. There should be around a quarter of a million cases, with around 130,000 laboratory confirmed cases.

This is being as kind as I possibly can to bias the numbers in your favour. 4,000 confirmed cases as of October 3rd should lead to 130,000 confirmed cases as of October 8th if EBOV is growing exponentially.

Are there?

I believe that there are similarities in the design of both of these viruses, but the methods of transmission are completely different.

Sure, except for the infection pathways that are identical. They're both transmissible by infected body fluids - EBOV merely adds poo, puke, snot and wee to the list. Oh and EBOV is only transmissible from symptomatic individuals, whereas HIV can be transmitted by asymptomatic ones.

People are gaining infection from simple contact with Ebola. How do we explain the nurse in MAdrid who was apparently wearing fully protective clothing?

Oh I know, it's a complete mystery:

Alcorcon Ebola ward, yesterday​

 

[Dennisch]

The Spanish are now coming out with stories about that things were taken way too light for the severity of this case. Starting with the plane they used for the evacuation and ending with the work protocol in the hospital.

So if more people are infected the Spanish have only themselves to blame.

 

[Robin]

Actually the biggest danger is physical contact with the bodily fluids of the symptomatic.

Ebola is quite like HIV in this respect, only with the additional joy of persisting in oro-nasal ejecta. I remember the end-of-days fearmongering about HIV in the 1980s and, while HIV is classed as a worldwide pandemic, we're not quite all dead yet.

There were TV adverts and everything.

Yes but unlike HIV lots of people die pretty quickly and that makes it much more dangerous, Ebola is actually quite bad at what it's trying to do (exist) by killing it hosts. HIV on the other hand is far more devious in its master plan to cause misery but that works to our advantage. Although much more widespread than Ebola, it takes years to kill and so there is time to contain and treat. We have also had the benefit of many more years of research into it over Ebola.

Additionally you can't get HIV from touching someone's swetty hand for example, the amount of fluid's needed to be infected are much higher.

The Spanish are now coming out with stories about that things were taken way too light for the severity of this case. Starting with the plane they used for the evacuation and ending with the work protocol in the hospital.

So if more people are infected the Spanish have only themselves to blame.

I could understand if this guy walked off the street into A&E, but he was FLOWN IN and they had the luxury of preparing for his extraction and treatment ahead of time. If they can't even do it right when they hold all the cards how on earth are they going to cope with randomers coming in if an outbreak occurs