The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings

>since most of the worlds problems today stem from overpopulation

Why do you think that most of the world's problems today stem from overpopulation? What problems?

If you're talking about hunger, that's demonstrably false. There is plenty of food produced to feed the entire population. Even African produces plenty of food to feed itself. Famine occurs in times of war and natural disaster, or other great upheavals. Most of the causes are man-made and have nothing to do with overpopulation.

The author of the article kindly submitted here, which I found quite interesting and informative, notes that she used to write for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) based at my alma mater university. Sure enough, CIDRAP has its own current write-up on ebola[1] that is a good supplement to the information in the Wired article we are discussing here.

"The possibility of an airborne-transmissible Ebola virus is one 'that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private,' wrote Osterholm. In its current form, the virus spreads only through contact with bodily fluids, he noted, but with more human transmission in the past few months than probably occurred in the past 500 years, the virus is getting plenty of chances to evolve."

The current rather high rate of transmission of the disease from one patient to another is alarming, and is perhaps preventable by better public-health practices aided by significant overseas funding, but if the virus haphazardly mutates into a form that spreads though more modes of transmission while still being as lethal, the world is in for a very severe challenge. As it is, the predicted number of cases by the end of the year will overwhelm several countries in the region where ebola is now spreading.

[1] http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/experts-r...

My fear is that we're not able to stop a simple stomach flu which is spread almost the same way, through bodily liquids, so I don't think it will be easy to stop once it hits first world countries like most people currently assume...

Here's one of the previous largest outbreak, 2000-2001 in Uganda. (Note unlike the Wikipedia one, it's not cumulative). Looks like a sudden decline in new cases right after a CDC intervention -- very sharp inflection point. The cumulative version would be roughly a sigmoid.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/parasites/ParaSites2012/Lassa%...

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5005a1.htm

Looks like there were about 10 new cases/day at its peak; the current outbreak is at 150/day.

A couple things stood out to me:

    Fourteen (64%) of 22 health-care workers in Gulu were
    infected after establishing the isolation wards; these
    incidenses led to the reinforcement of infection-control
    measures.

So that's not novel to the current outbreak at all!

    During the 4-month outbreak and response period,
    approximately 5600 contacts in Gulu District were under
    surveillance for 21 days by approximately 150 trained
    volunteers.

I think the fact that AIDS has not going airborne in 30 years is very good news. But eboloa is different, we don't how easily it will become airborne.