Posted on 09/30/2014 7:40:47 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide
Here is the math:
Ebola had infected about 4000 known cases by 2014-09-16.
Incubation up to 21 days.
Rate of new infections during incubation period: R2.0 (i.e. roughly doubling)
Population of earth: ~7.2 billion
Number of doublings from initial ~4000 to ~8 billion: 21
21 X 21 days = 441 days from September 16, 2014 = December 1, 2015
“I hate to break it to you, but civilization is only
a thin verneer over that difference”
Yep, you are right! After I made my post I came across a thread talking about a lady who locked her child in the trunk of her car. She didn’t have a child safety seat. So she wouldn’t be cited for driving without a safety seat, she thought to stuff the kid in the trunk.
After I read that, I realized that there are enough stupid people here to spread a contagion far and wide.
The biggest problem with this form of Ebola patients aren’t that sick right up until they die.
That means they have the means to walk around and infect others. When that was first reported the CDC should have stopped all flights in and out of Africa.
While Gates has said: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” Which expresses his desire to lower birth rates rather than his expressing a desire for mass deaths.
It was Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh who said: “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Even if it was said as a joke, that is some serious evil.
Look at it this way, Philip’s kid said he’d like to be reincarnated as a tampon.
Good post. I analyze body fluids for a living. I keep posting this - droplet precautions are three feet.
No. It is already transmitted through droplets.
Thank you. I am mostly getting ripped on by self-professed experts and people demanding peer-review level links and sources when I post about this stuff. (Check my posting history and responses to those posts for some examples.) Nice to have someone validate that I am not a complete idiot on this topic.
You are welcome. Lots of people don’t want to see the disaster coming....but I work in healthcare and am horrified.
Sounds like you will need a New Year's Resolution, "No more necrophilia!"
“Lots of people don’t want to see the disaster coming....but I work in healthcare and am horrified.”
Let’s just keep our heads in the sand and keep playing another round of golf. This is one disaster that the president had better not try to “Lead from Behind!”
And be sure to read all the news about how safe we are and how prepared hospitals are. You betcha.
Amazing how they are pushing that so hardily this morning.
More likely, the similarities between The bubonic/pneumonic plague, the Spanish (1918) flu, and Ebola involve cytokine storms, where the body's immune system turns against the body itself. This would account for rapid onset and death.
When they close the bunker door, the guards will eventually leave. Then we can weld the doors shut.
You haven’t mentioned fomites. I think it is a grave mistake to underestimate the potential for fomite transmission of the virus, especially in urban areas, and even more so when the health care system is overwhelmed, if it comes to that.
Frankly, I think it depends on how much BS the population is fed about "hard to catch". The more complacent the population, the more likely the virus will spread, and the more rapidly it will do so.
Since antibiotics, we have become far more lax in hygiene as a population, despite hand sanitizers and the like.
Keep in mind, too that more complex systems can break down with the removal of a few key components, and the ripple effect on transportation and supply, on grocery deliveries, fuel distribution, electrical power, etc. could be profound. That might kill more people than the virus.
This is the first time the virus has gone wild in any major urban area, albeit those have been in Africa, but the opportunity for transmission of the disease increases as people are closer together, even in public conveyances (droplet range, fomites), elevators, escalators, etc.
I am not sure at all that the spiffines of our gadgetry will make a significant difference to the virus.
And you really think all those West African immigrants dropped that tradition when they immigrated here?
Keep in mind the WHO have been pushing to keep air access at normal levels, which is how we got cases in the wild here in the US. I am concerned that their information is not completely accurate as they may be trying to prevent the economic impacts associated with isolation.
Limited laboratory studies under favorable conditions indicate that Ebola virus can remain viable on solid surfaces, with concentrations falling slowly over several days.1, 2 In the only study to assess contamination of the patient care environment during an outbreak, virus was not detected in any of 33 samples collected from sites that were not visibly bloody. However, virus was detected on a blood-stained glove and bloody intravenous insertion site.3 There is no epidemiologic evidence of Ebola virus transmission via either the environment or fomites that could become contaminated during patient care (e.g., bed rails, door knobs, laundry). However, given the apparent low infectious dose, potential of high virus titers in the blood of ill patients, and disease severity, higher levels of precaution are warranted to reduce the potential risk posed by contaminated surfaces in the patient care environment.
I read that study. The problem with it is that the cold chain was broken and the samples which should have been preserved at -70 were not. Therefore, while positive results are indeed positive, the negative results are not reliable.
Are you kidding? People would freak out to see how Americans lived before antibiotics, and be disgusted by their lack of hygiene.
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