Ebola - my visual charts & projections based on WHO data

a reply to: ikonoklast

Appreciate all your work on this. My focus is on the hopelessly inadequate CDC protocols that are allowing this thing to spread in the US. Dr Frieden needs to be replaced, and the entire CDC needs to be revamped and reorganized. Like, yesterday, as per my post, here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: ikonoklast

I wonder at what saturation point do dramatic negative affects begin?

Food/supply shortages, civil/utility service interrupted, and the general breakdown in order becoming inevitable due the number of people infected and or treating them.

We are already seeing the signs in Liberia that that nation is imploding under the weight of this disease, but it has been hell on earth there for some time now...

How long does America have if this goes unchecked?

I figured since we were getting all morbid, that I did not want to be left out...

originally posted by: bludragin
a reply to: ikonoklast

Appreciate all your work on this. My focus is on the hopelessly inadequate CDC protocols that are allowing this thing to spread in the US. Dr Frieden needs to be replaced, and the entire CDC needs to be revamped and reorganized. Like, yesterday, as per my post, here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks. I saw your thread, S&F for it. I agree 100%. A couple months ago, some people said that it wouldn't be a problem in America or Europe because our hospitals, the CDC, etc. were much better prepared for Ebola than hospitals in Africa. Then came Dallas and Madrid. Hubris doesn't seem to be a sufficient defense against Ebola.

Just today I read that a Senator from New York said New York's hospitals are much more prepared for Ebola than the hospital in Dallas...

I don't think most people get it.

originally posted by: jadedANDcynical
a reply to: ikonoklast

I wonder at what saturation point do dramatic negative affects begin?

Food/supply shortages, civil/utility service interrupted, and the general breakdown in order becoming inevitable due the number of people infected and or treating them.

We are already seeing the signs in Liberia that that nation is imploding...

How long does America have if this goes unchecked?

Good question. I've been wondering the same thing.

I'm not sure which would break down first, infrastructure systems or people. But I would expect that at some point realization would set it in for enough people. Fear would outweigh psychological denial and impacts on infrastructure would spike as people make runs on stores, banks, etc. At some point most people would stop going to work out of fear as well, spiking the impacts even more.

Collapse probably would happen long before Ebola affected almost everyone. I suspect this is a major reason Liberia has clamped down on the media.

a reply to: ikonoklast

Unfortunately, normalcy bias is a very strong bit of social inertia that is being fed and propped up by many.

There is evem a type of normalcy bias here. We tend to think everyone is as perceptive and astute as we are, but that is sadly not the case; the greatest majority are blind and believe the government unconditionally.

When I am talking about this among people I work with, most ignore me and shut me out, a few mock me, and the fewest believe me.

As a restaurant manager, I over hear lots of conversations, most are utter drivel. I've heard one family talking about this in the last month, and they are on our page (they understand the dangdr and that we are veing lied to). I wanted to give them my contact information, but got too busy to make my way back to their table.

I think that the government, aided by the herds of sheople, will try and maintain the illusion as long as possible.

Denial is not only a river in Egypt...

a reply to: ikonoklast

Wanted to share this 10/09/2014 article from the Washington Post, although I'm guessing you may have seen it: The Mathematics of Ebola. Not very reassuring, is it?
www.washingtonpost.com... l

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

At 1% of the population or 1 in every 100 things would really start to go downhill rapidly because of the knock on effect.
The general populace would start to strike and bug out or stay at home.

I think liberia is at 1 in every 500 at the moment.

a reply to: joho99

LOL - knock on effect - Had to look that up. Britishism for second and third order effects. I like it.

Favor: Post, or shoot me a PM, with any links you have on the breakdown of social order in a developing biological hazard situation. I need something to do over here in Asia whilst everyone else sleeps.

-Cheers

a reply to: ikonoklast

Thanks. The projections make a really good argument for stopping Ebola in West Africa. ....So why isn't the world throwing everything we've got at this epidemic?

[confused]

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

I've wondered about this myself. Unfortunately, whatever the timing, it now appears it will be shorter as the government sacrificed its own credibility in an effort to forstall public concern. I suspect this was done for political reasons and the November elections.

Let's hope luck is on our side.

Great work in this thread!

Incidentally....

10,000 new Ebola cases per week could be seen, WHO says

a reply to: ikonoklast

Just posted this...WHO official predicts 10,000 New cases of Ebola PER WEEK by December. My post, here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: Snarl

What would be totally cool to see (and I ask for this if it's not too much trouble) is for that dashed red line to drop and match the curves in your chart. I want to see where they begin to intersect realistically as the death toll climbs and population drops off. IOW ... show us that it's worse.

I've managed to project and chart this for one example projection for now. I haven't attempted to do it for the ranges yet, just this one projection. Doing the ranges is a considerable amount of work, but maybe I can do those ranges whenever I update the death range projections overall the next time, if it's not too time consuming.



This projection is calculated from the rate of increase in total reported deaths over time from the first presumed case in December 2013 through October 8, 2014. The global population change projection takes into account population growth over that time as well as the effect of the deaths, so global population actually continues to rise slightly until Ebola deaths outnumber population increases (which occurs on January 25, 2016 in this projection).

For Georgia Guidestones aficionados, in this projection world population would hit the 500 million population point on December 20, 2016.

Extinction is unlikely, because some survive Ebola and some would be expected to have immunity. But if it did kill everyone, in this projection that would occur where the lines meet 5 days later... on December 25, 2016. (Divine humor, perhaps?)

Merry Christmas...

a reply to: ikonoklast

Whoa ... There's no realistic time-frame to synthesize, test, and distribute an effective vaccine. There'll have to be a quarantine. ATS can't be the only place these curves have been produced. I'd expect an edict isn't far away.

a reply to: Snarl

Whoa indeed. You apparently work in the health field - What do you think a realistic time-frame is "to synthesize, test, and distribute an effective vaccine?"

I know that one of the world's leading Ebola experts, Laurie Garrett, had this very interesting comment a month ago:

We've wasted a lot of time focusing on the possibility of a technological solution. It would be nice if in a year, two years, three years from now, we have a vaccine and we have some kind of viable, curative medicine. But we don't now, and we're not going to stop this technologically. As Americans, we tend to always want to find a quick fix that's technological, and we have a hard time with answers that involve boots on the ground and harsh public health solutions.

Garrett is the Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Not that I necessarily trust the CFR, but she has a medical research background, a political think tank background, and a journalism background. So she understands Ebola from multiple perspectives. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her writing on her experience in Africa during a previous Ebola outbreak.

Disclaimer: She also doesn't recommend travel bans, but that seems to be more from a political/global economy perspective that may reflect the political perspective of her current bosses (TPTB, the powers that be...) more than the common sense medical perspective.

a reply to: bludragin

WHO official predicts 10,000 New cases of Ebola PER WEEK by December

Thanks. They don't seem to have published the situation report/roadmap update yet, but once they do I'll start updating the charts.

The 10,000 new case per week figure from WHO is within the projections ranges of my charts, but heading slightly into the red range (worsening). Not good if that's what they expect.

a reply to: soficrow

You're welcome. I think the reason the world isn't throwing everything we've got at it is because of what jadedANDcynical said: normalcy bias/denial.

People don't understand that a second case in Dallas is potentially not just one more case. It's also the first doubling in the USA. Exponential growth starts very small, but 2 to the 29th power exceeds US population and 2 to the 33rd power exceeds global population. And it's been doubling globally about every 3-4 weeks, and every 2-3 weeks in some places.

a reply to: joho99

I think liberia is at 1 in every 500 at the moment.

Hard to say. Reported cases through October 7, 2014 are (almost) 1 in 1000. But I think we probably all know that most experts estimate actual numbers are (at least) 2-5 times that. And even if it's not yet 1 in 500, it will be the next time it doubles (less than a month from now).

a reply to: bludragin

Thanks. They seem to have pulled that article down now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it.

a reply to: ikonoklastI'm considering starting a Change.org Petition to remove Dr Frieden. Your thoughts? My post on it here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Your extinction graphs are surely counting each death twice. When total deaths equal total population, you have extinction, or when total population is zero. Where they meet in the middle is when half the population exactly is dead: at current rates extinction would be the weeks later.

On another cheerful note, what is the doubling period in the USA currently?

a reply to: Micksy

When total deaths equal total population, you have extinction, or when total population is zero. Where they meet in the middle is when half the population exactly is dead: at current rates extinction would be the weeks later.

You're right. Sorry about that, I should have carried the graph out until deaths equaled the maximum population and population hit 0. So that's good news! We all have an extra 3 or 4 weeks until it doubles again after that (sorry, a little humor helps when looking way too much at all these Ebola numbers...).

I'll fix that graph when I get a chance. Thanks for catching it!

On another cheerful note, what is the doubling period in the USA currently?

If you don't count the cases that were medically evacuated (repatriated from Africa) and count Duncan as the first case (that's how WHO is counting it), then it took 16 days for the first doubling. That's from the alleged start of Duncan's symptoms to the alleged start of the first nurse's symptoms. But there are not enough reported cases in the USA yet for a large enough statistical sample to draw any conclusions about whether the rate is different here. Doesn't look like it is so far, though.

Looking at the areas affected in west Africa as a region, it more or less has grown at approximately the same straight line exponential rate since the beginnings, but the exponential line really straightened out more after about 800 cases or so, which took about 7 months.

Comparing the start in the USA to the start in Africa, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine that traced the earliest cases, when it first started it took:

11 days to double to 2
19 days to double to 4
28 days to double to 8
14 days to double to 16

(Note: I've also seen conflicting information regarding the date of the first case in west Africa.)

It should be noted though that Nigeria got off to a bad start when Sawyer brought it in by air travel, leading to 20 reported cases in Nigeria. But they seem to have finally contained it.

We don't all die - assuming everyone gets infected (which might not happen) , and with a 30% survival rate (which appears to provide resistance to reinfection) we end up with ~3 billion people surviving. I've not heard of any survivor becoming reinfected. Not to say that it can't happen - but this will affect the projections. Also, as more people survive, the disease has fewer easy targets (herd immunity).

I've appreciated the graphs.