One problem. In the last two weeks the new infection rate has plummeted.
It is looking more and more like this is just another third world disease.
I hope so.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/11/05/is-ebola-outbreak-entering-new-phase/
http://time.com/3556049/ebola-infection-sierre-leone/
But I suspect (hope) that it will eventually “burn out” there as well.
The thing about many of the purely mathematical models projecting future infections and deaths that I’ve seen posted here is that they assume, are based on a set point of current infection rates, a steady and constant rate of the spread of infection over time. That is not however typically how viruses work – and there are way too many human and microbial variables at play such as people changing behaviors that contribute to its spread and the very nature of viruses.
For reasons not fully understood, after a period of intense spread, they tend to burn out and retreat. The 1918 Spanish Flu and the Bubonic Plague did very much the same. There was no reason why the Spanish Flu retreated and vanished nearly as quickly as I came and killed – it could have raged for decades instead of only two years, except that it infected as many people as it was going to infect. And enough people who were infected survived and built immunity and created pockets of “herd” immunity. If we were to use the estimated infection and death rates of the Justinian Plague or any of the “Black Death” plagues that followed, by all rights none of us here should be alive today.
Also viruses, once they infect enough people, tend to mutate into less lethal forms. Sometimes they also mutate to become more easily transmitted but overall they tend to become less lethal.
I don’t think that Ebola is going away and predict there will be more pockets of outbreaks in coming years and a few cases here. But as evidenced by the Americans and Europeans who contracted it either in West Africa or by treating Ebola patients here, receiving early and good medical care makes all the difference as does living in a country were our dead are not washed by and prepared for burial at home, not eating bats and monkeys, indoor plumbing and an overall a much cleaner manner of living.
Or as a friend posted to me on FB, “More Americans have been married to Kim Kardashian than have died from Ebola”.
That is not to make light of Ebola. It is certainly a very deadly disease. But to put things somewhat into perspective; in this current outbreak of Ebola, the worst to date so far, has infected 13,000 people and claimed at least 4,951 lives. But then there was an estimated 627 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2012. In 2006, an estimated 242,000 people in Africa died of measles; about 217,000 of these deaths were among children under 5 years of age. And maternal and neonatal tetanus is responsible for an average 110,000 deaths a year in the African Region. And Rabies kills 24,000 people every year in Africa.