Replies

Do you know what time period that R0 value for ebola is set as of? In other words, clearly ebola is more contagious as symptoms increase and persist. Is the R0 value of 1-2 through the entire time the person is contagious, or is that as of when the person is most contagious?

To me, that is important to understand. None of the people living in the apartment with Thomas Duncan are infected (at least, as far as we know), but the 2 nurses at the hospital near his end stages did get infected.

The people trying to downplay the contagiousness focus on the fact that ebola is alleged not contagious when you are asymptomatic, and less contagious when you are only beginning to show symptoms.

Some alarmists keep bringing up mutation and say the disease could mutate to become more contagious. Putting on my alarmist hat, my concern would be a mutation whereby the disease becomes more contagiousness sooner and more quickly. My understanding is that sort of "mutation" is less a sudden, uncaused strengthening of the disease (a leap from R0 1-2 to R0 3 or 4, if you will), but sort of the "natural" progression of a virus in its development.

Another concern is the fact that different people are affected by viruses in different ways. Two people can catch the same strain of a flu virus and suffer from different levels of severity of symptoms. Thus, it is possible for someone who is seemingly asymptomatic (i.e., having only a low-grade fever and maybe a runny nose) and be at a high level of contagiousness than another person who is highly feverish, vomiting, etc.