Posted on 08/14/2014 5:31:04 PM PDT by dayglored
Staff with the World Health Organisation battling an Ebola outbreak in West Africa see evidence the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimates the scale of the outbreak, the U.N. agency said on its website on Thursday.
The death toll from the world's worst outbreak of Ebola stood on Wednesday at 1,069 from 1,975 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, the agency said. The majority were in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, while four people have died in Nigeria.
The agency's apparent acknowledgement the situation is worse than previously thought could spur governments and aid organisations to take stronger measures against the virus.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," the organisation said on its website.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
You don't have to have an ounce of empathy for anybody to care about this, although some empathy might be appropriate, it would be simply sufficient for you to act in self interest. Self interest dictates that plagues are bad news all around and should be combatted aggressively.
Don't forget New York. Also Paris, Brussels, Rome, London, Frankfurt, Dubai and Singapore, among others.
*Ping* - you’ll find this interesting, based on your comment on the other Ebola thread.
Of course it is far worse than it has been measured to be. People often do not seek out a doctor, especially in that part of the world. Many fear the ministrations of a doctor more than the disease, itself. Many victims are hidden away so as not to draw official attention to themselves and their neighbors and families.
A fairly good rule of thumb is to believe the opposite of what the mainstream media says when it comes to major news stories.
When one enterprising doctor treating SARS in Anatolia decided to check the entire population of the village where 2 or 3 had died rather than just the ones who presented symptoms, he found that ALL tested positive. From that we learned, or those of us that saw that bit of information learned, SARS was no more than a moderate flu sort of thing. Ebola is obviously worse but the death rate is probably way overblown because there are likely very many who have the virus or had it with no symptoms, their bodies deleting it from the system smoothly and quickly.
We’ve had at least one period equal to the incubation phase of the virus since the first infected person came to the U.S.
No outbreak yet tells me worst case scenario didn’t happen.
WHO knew?
I’m pretty sure we ALL did.
WHO spilled the beans?
I wish you were right, but I don't think you are. The severe hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola have been studied enough in other more informed circumstances in the past, that we can know that the quoted death rates for this outbreak are pretty much expected for Ebola virus. There is no large unreported population of infected survivors.
What is not reported because of the horrible conditions in Africa are the additional number of people who are infected, both survivors and those who die. My point is that those unreported people most likely die at the same rate (percentage) as the ones we know about.
Several years ago my son, DIL, myself and my husband got very sick after attending a banquet. We just thought it was food poisoning and when we had purged enough we’d be okay, which did happen. We never even thought of going to the doctor.
As it turned out over 50% of the people there got sick and the state got involved. When they interviewed us they were horrified and a little miffed that we hadn’t gone to the doctor.
What we all had was a norovirus that we got from the waiter who had just returned from working on a cruise ship.
I don’t have any confidence in Anyone’s reporting unless someone does what that doctor did in Anatolia- test everybody in a community and see how many have the antibodies versus how many show the disease. It could be the 40 to 50% advertised. Or it could be something else altogether. I suspect the reduced death rate compared to previous outbreaks has something to do with the wider testing that seems to be happening this time but general testing is still not done, or none has been reported.
Remember SARS had an advertised death rate of 50 per cent but in that Turkish village the rate was actually more like <2 per cent.
I do share your skepticism at this early point with the reported figures, and your reasoning is sound with regard to the need for more comprehensive testing. I don't think it's possible in that superstitious, backward, third-world environment, but that's a different practical issue.
My understanding is that Ebola typically amplifies and kills more quickly than the body can react and manufacture the necessary antibodies to fight back successfully. A lower kill rate such as is reported for this outbreak could be from any of many causes, but one possibility is that it amplifies more slowly than other Zaire strains, thus giving the victim's immune system more time to react and fight back.
I don't know (and so far have not read) any figures on how many Ebola infectants (virus particles) are required to cause the production of antibodies, and of course that also varies from person to person. But given that it allegedly only requires a very few particles to cause the disease to take hold, it may also be that that same quantity is insufficient to cause the body to react quickly.
So much we still don't know.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
I’m waiting until 21 days after the departure of the African Summit before I consider All Clear.
My suspicion is that Nigeria is flat out lying about the number of Ebola cases in that country.
According to OFFICIAL (and underestimated) stats, the rate of Ebola cases has gone from 36 per day to 64 per day in just the past week. At this rate the average per day new Ebola cases will be over 100 per day in just a week from now. And that is based on OFFICIAL stats which according to this report underestimates the real total.
FYI
Sounds reasonable.
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