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CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

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Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#281

Post by crpatino »

rimantas wrote: post #255
enraged_camel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The CDC estimate is 100k-1.4m by the end of the year. No no, you see, the world has seven billion people, so 100k-1.4m is still a tiny portion and therefore it's all sensationalism! /s The fact of the matter is that the current ebola outbreak is a disaster of epic proportions. Whether it becomes a pandemic is irrelevant: it's already devastating several countries in Africa and is likely to move to other underdevelo…

Define "epic proportions", because it seems that your threshold for "epic" is way too low. 10x more people are killed on US roads each year.

If the ghosts of people who died in the road began to spook drivers and cause more accidents, you would see a rapid spike of mortality in the short term, followed maybe by change of behavior where ~90% of traffic is composed of professional bus/truck drivers that are hardened and not easily affected by ghosts.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#282

Post by giarc »

kenjackson wrote: post #244
giarc wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated by the director of the CDC in the press conference, all air passengers departing the affected countries are screened for fever. Fever is most often the first symptoms present, and therefore you can logically believe that if the passenger left Liberia and is on a plane, he does not have Ebola (or is not symptomatic for Ebola). Therefore I would be fine sitting beside him.

Europe isn't an affected area. No one on my flight from London was checked. It certainly wouldn't be hard to get from Liberia to Europe with no fever, and then board a plane with fever and sweats.

I can speak to the Canadian process. Public Health Agency of Canada is stationed at all major airports and screen passengers that trips originate in an affected country. We had a suspect patient that had arrived from Germany that begin in Nigeria. Due to the routing, they were screened here when they landed in Canada.

Theoretically someone could fly from an affected country to Europe. Spend a few days and book another trip to North America and not be screened. However triage process in hospitals is that patients with fever greater than 38.6C are asked if they have spent any time in an Ebola affected country within the past 21 days (high end of incubation period).

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#283

Post by joshdance »

lee wrote: post #75

Am I one of the minorities who believe that this hype about Ebola is more sensationalism and news than an actual pandemic we should be fearful for? Let's take a lot at what we can agree on: * The number of cases of infected patients is fairly small. * The vector of transmission is fluid exchange, so that reduces its ability to spread. * The virus doesn't appear to lie dormant, and is only contagious when the patient…

Have you even been to Africa? I lived in Western Africa for 2 years. It is a big deal, and very bad. It is less bad for the US, but that is due to supplies, medical system, education, and other infrastructure improvements.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#284

Post by clarky07 »

tripzilch wrote: post #265
lee wrote: post #75

Am I one of the minorities who believe that this hype about Ebola is more sensationalism and news than an actual pandemic we should be fearful for? Let's take a lot at what we can agree on: * The number of cases of infected patients is fairly small. * The vector of transmission is fluid exchange, so that reduces its ability to spread. * The virus doesn't appear to lie dormant, and is only contagious when the patient…

> Am I one of the minorities who believe that this hype about Ebola is more sensationalism and news than an actual pandemic we should be fearful for? If you only care whether the disease is going to hit at home, or (even worse) only if it hits a "western country", then yeah. Hundreds of thousands are dying, and it could hit millions. I'm pretty certain it won't hit that bad "at home", maybe a few isolated cases, we h…

>Hundreds of thousands are dying, and it could hit millions.

3000 have died so far. 6500 have been infected. It certainly could grow much bigger, but it hasn't yet.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#285

Post by crpatino »

orbifold wrote: post #267
crpatino wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying that this will grow exponentially for ever. For what I know, disease expansion is modeled with a sigmoid curve: exponential at first, then slows down once a saturation level in the population is reached. According to Wikipedia, the total population of the 3 most affected countries - Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - is roughly 20 millions. So there is at least that upper bound. The real risk of pande…

Well the sigmoid curve you are referring to would be for the case that patients who have contracted the virus and survived would be immune or die. In an SIR model ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemi... ) that takes death rate and population number into account you would then expect a disease to either reach a disease free equilibrium or a endemic equilibrium. What I was suggesting is to cou…

Thanks, I was not aware of the SIR model.

Regarding your original question... if you can identify individual regions where the model can be applied, maybe you could use Markov chains to model the transitions between states in each region. I am not qualified enough to do that, but I imagine that the result would be a few endemic nodes where the disease is always present (with different degrees of intensity over time) and from where outbreaks get sporadically "exported" to disease free nodes.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#286

Post by bripeace »

mrgriscom wrote: post #160
lee wrote: post #75

Am I one of the minorities who believe that this hype about Ebola is more sensationalism and news than an actual pandemic we should be fearful for? Let's take a lot at what we can agree on: * The number of cases of infected patients is fairly small. * The vector of transmission is fluid exchange, so that reduces its ability to spread. * The virus doesn't appear to lie dormant, and is only contagious when the patient…

It's almost as if people don't understand the concept of exponential growth...

People understand exponential growth, but the US is not conducive to spread of Ebola. The problems found in Africa that prevent effective management of the situation do not exist here: Lack of hospitals, suspicion of outsiders/doctors, general hygiene, etc.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#287

Post by robomartin »

ctdonath wrote: post #274
robomartin wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, prayer & science have similar influence over curing someone of Ebola. This is so ridiculous I had to separate it just to say: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING! SURELY YOU MUST BE BECAUSE NO INTELLIGENT EDUCATED PERSON COULD POSSIBLY HOLD THIS RIDICULOUS BELIEF. The fact that we have people on this planet in 2014 who can actually believe something like this is the root of many of our problems.

Current treatment for Ebola is little more than hydration and quarantine, hence my comment. When ZMapp et al are shown effective, I'll change my comment.

And you are still missing the point.

You are equating praying to medical treatement. That is utter nonsense on the face of it, regardless of whether or not an established and effective treatement course exists for an ailment. I'm sorry, it's just plain stupid. Would you pray to Thor, Apollo, the Tooth Fairy, Zeus? Why not? So, pray tell, why does your brain magically stop working when your favorite god is invoked?

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#288

Post by bripeace »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #96
res0nat0r wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person left Liberia on 19 Sept and arrived here on 20 and had no symptoms when entering the country. On the 24th he developed symptoms, on the 26th he sought care and the 28th was admitted to the hospital. This is from the CDC briefing happening now.

So everyone he came in contact with for four days between the 24th and 28th is potentially infected. Hopefully a small set of people.

No, ebola is not contagious while it is asymptomatic.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#289

Post by ChuckMcM »

bripeace wrote: post #288
ChuckMcM wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So everyone he came in contact with for four days between the 24th and 28th is potentially infected. Hopefully a small set of people.

No, ebola is not contagious while it is asymptomatic.

You need to read the article, he started showing symptoms on the 24th, he was put into the isolation ward on the 28th

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#290

Post by csbrooks »

pdeuchler wrote: post #187
djcapelis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * The number of cases of infected patients is fairly small. This is no longer true. We have no idea how many people are infected anymore because Liberia has too many patients to even keep track. They're literally thousands of beds short and it's actively doubling. The CDC estimate is 100k-1.4m by the end of the year. > * The vector of transmission is fluid exchange, so that reduces its ability to spread. To some de…

> "The U.S. government and international organizations recently announced commitments to support these measures. As these measures are rapidly implemented and sustained, the higher projections presented in this report become very unlikely." From the abstract of the report[0] you're citing. Essentially, it's rising exponentially (at smaller numbers) right now so of course if you extrapolate over long enough you're goi…

Don't epidemics generally spread exponentially? Is it normal for that growth rate to slow as the size of the epidemic increases? (Honest question, not being sarcastic.)
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