Posted on 10/09/2014 1:23:20 PM PDT by fruser1
Hi folks, just ran some math with Ebola numbers.
According to WHO, there were 3053 cases back in 25 Aug and 8033 cases in 5 October.
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/
This gives an average daily increase of 3.9806%.
At that rate, given a world population of 7.125 billion, EVERYONE will be infected in 349 days.
Have a nice day!
My take on this is that this is by no means ‘the big one’, but that our terrorists enemies are watching this, and that someday the big biological attack will come and we better take this current threat as a wake up call, to get ready, to finally take all this seriously and demand reality in our preparations, not all this feel good stuff that we spend billions on, with little actual results, and this goes for all civilized nations.
That might only be temporary. Even the new Obama citizen army wouldn't want to get potentially infected blood and goo all over the place.
My 2 month, 3-country database shows slowly rising new daily confirmed cases of 125-150/day averaging a 2% daily increase over the previous day’s total case numbers (150/8000 = 1.9%), which roughly doubles my total in 35 days. The bad news is the ministry of health numbers I use are probably just 50% to as low as 33% of the actual daily numbers, as hundreds of victims never get to a care center or are turned away from hospitals and return home, unrecorded as new cases, and later as deaths.
The assumptions that can be made regarding the effect of unreported new case numbers are unclear and subjective for me: if there are actually, say, 300 new cases/day and one assumes the real total now to be 16,000 cases, the growth is still 1.9%: does that roughly indicate a 22 MIL case total in 365 days assuming EVD goes worldwide and grows 2%/day, or maybe I have wandered off the mathematical reservation?
I’m more interested in looking for large infection rate changes indicated by the relationship of 5 and 10 day smoothed moving averages of the daily new case MOH numbers, incomplete, poorly reported and understated as they may be.
YMMV (your math)
There are a few thousand folks in West Africa who might dispute “hardly anyone”. And even the Black Death took time to spread and didn’t have intercontinental jet flight to hitch rides on. But here’s hoping it will be contained. Just like the BD, it’s a particularly nasty way to go.
The ebola outbreaks over the past 40 years have been well contained. If AIDS had been so well contained, we wouldn’t be spending millions (billions?) to combat it.
Likewise, if this ebola outbreak were as well contained, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Yes, it’s taken a while for it to become apparent that this one has gotten out of hand. But like compound interest, its rate of spread reaches astounding levels quickly.
And while AIDS kills many, many people, most of us have a “behavioral immunity” to it. Like the Black Death, ebola is not so picky about its victims.
You are a long way from being able to make posts like you did, comparing this to a third of Europe’s population dead and the Black Plague.
Yes, but 10% will survive.
Imagine how much roomier the place is going to be!
Post 19 made it’s point and it was accurate.
The post you just made isn’t really relevant to it.
“”You are comparing almost 40 years of outbreaks and about 7 or 8 thousand deaths to “”This is like being around in the 14th century watching daily news reports as the Black Death moved from the Middle East to southern Europe to eventually kill off entire towns and villages, perhaps a third of the entire population of the continent.””
The thread after this is “Dallas-area deputy does not have Ebola”
I plugged this into Excel. If this trend holds even for an instant, no one will have Ebola even halfway into that instant.
Thank God, for this heroic deputy.
I think many of those case will die eventually, so maybe the death rate is higher than what yo figure.
I’m sorry, but if you don’t put this in terms of Common Core math, I will never understand what this means...
You’re right, thanks! I double checked and must’ve fat fingered the calculator.
I was using a different equation, though, from calculus which models exponential growth and get a number closer to yours but still different (2.36%, 621 days). I’ll probably repost this tomorrow for grins. Maybe update the numbers w/new ones, only if the rate stays high, of course.
Bottom line, nothing to fret. Using this model presumes all get infected which won’t be the case. The simple, linear, exponential model is really more suited to the rate of exposure - numbers we don’t have. Not everyone exposed necessarily gets infected. It’s not like everyone got smallpox, the spanish flu, or the plague. Also, the rate (percentage) will likely decrease over time as controls are implemented.
Of course, I could be wrong about that and we’re all screwed.
Anyway, here’s my math:
With f(n) = number infected at day n
f(0) = day zero count (starting from Aug)
EXP = exponential function
LN = natural log function
k = rate of increase
The equation I use is:
f(n) = f(0)*EXP(k*n)
Solve for k with
f(41) = f(0)*EXP(k*41)
8033 = 3052*EXP(k*41)
k = (LN(8033/3052))/41 = .023604 (used excel this time)
Now we want to know when it increases to 7.15 billion, using same equation with our value for k.
7.15*10^9 = 3.052*10^3*EXP(.023604*n)
n = (LN(7.15*10^6/3.052))/.023604 = 621.3723
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