Now if WHO thinks the spread can jump from 3000 estimated now in late september to 20 000 in november the expontential spread will be impressive. That is if the infected people are on the move in the region as of today. The rise is not due to forther spreading of course but to too low estimates. Now it is true that if everyone gets infected in an area the disease will burn out as people die. However that is only a rational scenario if all infected are kept in a restricted zone not getting to new people to infect. On this scale that would also mean to isolate and contain a lot of people that would want to leave in order not to be infected. Since the three affected countries have close to complete chaos already one can just start imagining how crazy stuff will be when locals realise the risk of staying in a region with more an more people being infected and dying. Elts just magine that if one ebola patient can infect 5 more. if there are three thousand that would imply around 3000 X 5 which is 15 0000. Of course if the spreading zone is very compact not all of the 3000 are in contact with people that the others arent. When we grow the numbers to 20 000 the infection rate number will go a bit down. Because more people of the new ones to be infected are in contact with just more of the already infected. So if we reduce the speading rate from one to five to just one to three that is perhaps more realistic. that would give 20 0000 X 3 which is 60 000 within a month. If they again only will infect two people each we soon reach 120 000. Even if we reduce the number of newly infected per ebola patient drastically this will be completely impossible to contain given the time frames and geographical problems of keeping people in a contained area. This is very bleak indeed. I hope this lesson at least will teach the world to bother more about disease in poor countries. They might be less worth than us. But it is still very smart to give them proper medicines, vaccines and health care. By the way the contamination rate I use in this math is just hypothetical though rather moderate estimates I would say. bbc/news/world-africa-28755033
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 01:15:33 +0000