Wake me up when it reaches epic proportions. 4500 is the common cold.
The issue is that at 10,000 cases and 4500 deaths, the systems are overwhelmed. This means that they will not be able to contain it much longer.
This is why the WHO suggested many thousands more cases coming every week.
It is not an issue of the numbers not being huge (dengue fever has killed more than twice that much in India in the past few months). It is an issue of control.
Max (and everyone) you are missing a very important point...
this started at 1
then 2, then 4 and so on...
8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096
For 6 months it has repeated this doubling pattern every 21 days, and the graph trend is NOT even slowing down. It is still increasing, at an increasing rate.
in another 6 months it could be 2 Million (2,097,152)
and in another 6 months- 1 Billion (1,073,741,824).
In another 6 that’s the whole world, but way before then all essential services would be gone- no running water, gas, or electricity, or food.
So, worst case- in 6 months we will know if there is only another 6 months left to live for most everyone.
I'll wake you up in January or February. By then it will be on the exponential part of the curve. It just has to kill some more of the rare medical personnel in Africa in order to completely break down the system. Then it will spread throughout the major western African cities. It's not that it's contagious but it's lethality is what makes it a nasty little bugger.
It has a reproductive number >1 so it will spread.
I'm just hoping that those that are willing to bring this in the country get to see it up close and personal. Schadenfreude would be delightful in that little occurrence.