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cali

(114,904 posts)
Fri Oct 10, 2014, 08:21 AM Oct 2014

The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic

When the experts describe the Ebola disaster, they do so with numbers. The statistics include not just the obvious ones, such as caseloads, deaths and the rate of infection, but also the ones that describe the speed of the global response.

Right now, the math still favors the virus

<snip>

“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the people [who become infected] are definitely dying from this disease, and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, told the group.

<snip>

The numbers in this crisis are notoriously squishy, however. Epidemiological data is sketchy at best. No one really knows exactly how big the epidemic is, in part because there are areas in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea where disease detectives cannot venture because of safety concerns.

The current assumption is that for every four known Ebola cases, about six more go unreported..

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-ominous-math-of-the-ebola-epidemic/2014/10/09/3cad9e76-4fb2-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html

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The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic (Original Post) cali Oct 2014 OP
It's the old "checkerboard of rice" situation nitpicker Oct 2014 #1

nitpicker

(7,153 posts)
1. It's the old "checkerboard of rice" situation
Fri Oct 10, 2014, 02:37 PM
Oct 2014

A tale holds that as a reward, someone asked for a chessboard and a grain of rice on a square.

To be doubled (the rice that is) the next day.

And the next...

By day 30, this was over a billion grains (about 3500 pounds) that day.

((By day 60, this would have been 3,5 trillion pounds of rice versus about 2 trillion pounds annual production now.))

What does this mean for the world?

For the 3 countries, if we assume population 20 million, current cases 20 thousand, doubling time 20 days (and no change to that):

In 200 days, ON AVERAGE all have been infected, but some of them will have survived Ebola (but what of malaria? no food? no treated water?)

The outside world has an opportunity to Not Have It Happen To Them.

It has a half-year (hopefully much more) lead time to respond/prevent.

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