I’m sure the CDC has generated models of the spread. I wonder what the hypothetical spread is if one contagious person in a large city who is out in public shopping, eating, public transportation, etc, how many become infected by that single person and then exponentially spread it from there. I don’t see how it could possibly be contained. Then the next question would be would the government even alert the public or keep quiet to avoid anticipated hoarding and riots?
Good questions. We can only guess.
I think it contains itself only by its mortality rate. Everyone dies and the virus is stopped that way.
to give you an idea of models, from one symptomatic man on an airplane the CDC is now looking for 30,000 potential contacts.
“Initially health officials wanted to trace only a few hundred passengers on two planes which had carried victim Patrick Sawyer, 40.
But – as Cabinet ministers held an emergency Cobra meeting in London – the search was widened to find up to 30,000 people who could be hosting the organism which kills 90% of sufferers.
The list includes anyone at one of four airports visited by American dad-of-three Sawyer, and those in contact with him in Nigeria’s capital Lagos, home to 17 million, where he died five days ago.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ebola-spiders-web-infection-growing-3939374#ixzz397jvhEbT
“I’m sure the CDC has generated models of the spread.”
In truth, we (humans) have never dealt with a pandemic of this virus before and can’t really make an accurate model. A key variable would be its ability to mutate . It could go airborne, it could become infectious more quickly. On top of all that, I don’t trust the CDC to give us the straight information if they are told not to.
Well, during the 1918-19 flu, one town made sure their citizenry knew the fact that the flu was in fact out there and killing people. It’s an interesting story (I read this in a biography about the flu and those who were the top names in the field of medicine) and it had the least amount of deaths.
If the government is open about this and the media doesn’t work to create hysteria, I think people would handle it a lot better. If the government hides this, then it will just create more hysteria and suspicion. People can handle stuff like this well, the rest of the public aren’t complete idiots (OBama’s election notwithstanding).
As for hoarding, yes, but riots, depends on the area. If it’s low income and community leaders scream about how whites (or blacks among some sets) are trying to poison them, then yeah, there’ll be riots, but if people have self control and know about how to basically handle themselves, I am certain that we’ll be surprised at how well things go.
During that one tri-state power outage, people actually behaved themselves really well in NY and it could have gone differently. People can change their habits if it depends on their survival and at this point in time, I think us Yanks are best at times like this. We do well and we have the ability to exchange information far more freely and easily than in the past.
You can’t hide something like this anyway. Impossible and certainly pointless to even try.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040961
Here’s a contagion model. Notice that the exponent is I the number infected. As I increases it does so exponentially.
In the 1918 flu people were fleeing the cities for the country. My grandfather and the sheriff went to the edge of Medina, Ohio and put out signs stating the infection had already reached the town and asking people to continue on. They thought they were lying to protect their neighbors. But the contagion HAD reached the town, they just didn’t know it yet. If I recall, the flu killed 22 million in its first four months. It took four years to burn itself out. Some entire, remote villages were wiped completely out.
I recall reading back when Ebola was first identified that Iran sent “doctors” who collected samples and returned home.
First, they would alert the public. The differences in spread when people exercise caution are astonishing.
Second, you were right to use the plural "models". There are things we don't know that are critical. Even a small number of super carriers (infected but not showing serious symptoms) can completely change the dynamics. Just as Typhoid Mary infected thousands, and Gaëtan Dugas may have infected 3,000 or more gay men, an asymptomatic Ebola carrier could be a game changer. Even if Africa has not had super carriers, we may still have them with our healthier population and with a larger and more genetically diverse affected population. Also, behaviors will change if Ebola hits a few hundred Americans without being contained. Spread cannot be modeled properly without knowing how those behavioral changes will affect spread.
There are refugees and inhuman living conditions in Syrian refugee camps, Gaza, Libya and countless other places. It's hard to imagine what will stop some pandemic disease from starting in those areas and spreading.
Would they alert the public? Don't wait for them. Gruesome, but start reading obits for spikes in deaths of vulnerable-to-disease populations.