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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.

From what I hear, the R0 value indicates how many people could be infected from each infected person.

Values of less than one mean the disease will die out.

Values of more than one mean that it will increase, and as the values get greater (like the measles which is around 14)it means it will spread far faster.

I have heard that the only reason Ebola is even close to a value of 2 is because of the burial practices common in those parts of Africa where the dead person’s body is washed by their heretofore uninfected relatives, and that ignorance is high and medical resources are low.

By all accounts it should be closer to 1 than 2, or so I am told.

All in all, the R0 is only a model, and mutations and such would change it accordingly. I am no expert, but I do work in the medical field (now IT) and have a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, so I can understand the concepts better than many lay people, but...I am not an expert. I only understand what I have read and been told, and it makes sense to me.

I don’t know anything about those questions. My point was that because the virus can persist for a relatively long time outside the body, that any infection of a surface in which someone’s fingers may pick it up and they can inject it into their own systems by damaging the mucous membranes in their nose with that contaminated finger.

The fact it may or may not be spread directly from one person to another with a sneeze is a different question, and that overall, the way our government has chosen to handle this issue is criminal even if that cannot happen.