ekianjo
Hardcore Member
We will see in a few weeks then. Im confident its a scare tactic again.
Ebola Outbreak in exponential growth
- Thread starter klapse
- Start date
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
As I said many times before, you don't qualify anything exponential just on a small time period. We"ll see in 6 months if it is still exponential. Most probably NOT, obviously.
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
LOL LOL LOL
You don't seem to remember the SARS episode. Let me refresh your memory:
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/831.full
They predicted exponential spread of SARS as well at the time and that we would basically all die from it in no time. Look at the curves in the link, that was from 2003.
And you know, your super reputable institution, the CDC, removed conveniently all links to their previous SARS stories when they realized they were completely wrong. Now this page is a convenient 404: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/ppt/globalsars.ppt
BUt hey, believe what you want and get ready for the apocalypse if that's your thing! Stock on weapons and food !
"(Reuters) - Scientists have used Ebola disease spread patterns and airline traffic data to predict a 75 percent chance the virus could be imported to France by October 24, and a 50 percent chance it could hit Britain by that date."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/05/uk-health-ebola-spread-idUKKCN0HU0CH20141005
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/05/uk-health-ebola-spread-idUKKCN0HU0CH20141005
ZXDunny
Deep avatar
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 2,585
Hands up everyone posting here that's a medical professional.
No-one? Oh, just me then.
We are surrounded by killer diseases. They're getting worse every year, though the spread isn't anything like as rapid as Ebola - but that's mostly because Ebola is spread by ignorance and questionable social practices.
In the 1970s, Staphylococcus Aureus mutated to become resistant to the wonder-drug of choice, Meticillin. It's a killer, and it's everywhere but thanks to the efforts of the WHO it's no longer serious and we can treat it. It mainly kills the immunocompromised, the elderly and the very young. It's in every home in the whole world now and the vast majority of people are colonised with it.
We developed new drugs (antibiotics) to deal with it - mostly Vancomycin, Mupirocin and for decolonisation we use things like Triclosan. It's a serious problem for surgical procedures as most people carry it and it plays havoc with wounds. Yet we still deal with it on a daily basis. Thanks to the WHO, you'll be tested for it and cured of it (for the short term, until you go home and become recolonised) prior to anything risky.
Clostridium Difficile is on the rise and that kills people by rotting their intestines. Again, it's a twat to destroy - its spores can survive in 90% ethanol for more than twenty years - but we deal with it using the same Antibiotics as we do for MRSA, Vancomycin.
Just recently we've discovered Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriacae - a mutation of low-grade bacteria which is not only resistant to our top-line antibiotics (Carbapenems) but can actually eat them, if you will. There is no known cure or remedy and it will kill at least ten percent of cases, probably more.
Then there's Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus - a mutation of MRSA that is resistant to all known antibiotics and will almost certainly (according to biochemists at Sheffield's research wing of the University) kill ten percent of the world's population within our lifetimes - and again, there's no cure.
And the most (un)surprising thing is that nobody is researching new antibiotics for these last two - biochemists have given up on them and are looking now to biological treatments (quorum-sensing looks promising, as does nanotech in current research).
Ebola is worrying, as is SARS and H1N1, because they're viruses. Our arsenal of antivirals is small, and largely ineffective. Most patients in my care are brought through a nasty viral infection not by killing the virus but by managing symptoms - reducing fever, hydration, ventilation etc. A few years ago, someone dropped dead in front of me from Swine Flu - it was horrific to watch but there was nothing we could do; he had waited too long for treatment.
The point is that we've run out of options for Bacteria - they've won the war. Viruses are even worse because we don't have any effective tools at our disposal and if just one runs out of control we're seriously fucked - it'd be influenza 1918 all over again and the death toll would be massive. That's why the WHO bleat about how serious things might be, and the media unfortunately sensationalise it.
We've been lucky so far, all the flu-variants have been rather mild. Ebola probably will be too, but can we take the chance that it might not be?
One final thought for you all - Humans' evolution has happened over a very, very long timescale as we don't tend to reproduce in binary manner. Bacteria (and to a lesser extent, viruses) evolve very, very fast - so fast you can see it happen under a microscope. So how likely is a mutation?
Thank fuck Ebola is a virus.
D.
*raising hand*
reading your post was a real joy, dunny, as you're just so right about almost everything you wrote.
still, i couldn't agree more to what you wrote
reading your post was a real joy, dunny, as you're just so right about almost everything you wrote.
now this bit is kinda misleading: iirc ebola is a ~19 kb rna virus. it's replication depends on virus based rna polymerase which is, by the way, not proofreading. luckily it's non-segmented single strand, so genetic reassortment doesn't come into play (and thank fuck for that!). but spontaneous mutation and recombination literally do happen all the time.
still, i couldn't agree more to what you wrote
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
If they are think this is THIS serious, why do we still have planes flying all over the place? It's not at all consistent with the scenario of a pandemic.
Granitehead
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2009
- Messages
- 3,011
Because planes not flying hurts business of the plane flying companies, that's why.
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
Granitehead
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2009
- Messages
- 3,011
There were laws in place which caused this automatically and nobody could deny them, they were phrased accurately enough "if this <scientific, testable fact>, then no flights".But against something like this? Much harder to proof. It's not really a testable fact, it's just extrapolation from a few data points. Anyone who doesn't like exponential growth can fit some polynomial or something else on those data points. And they might even be right, who knows? Even if it /is/ exponential growth, it could stop at any point in time, everyone knows exponential growth isn't sustainable in the real world. It could stop /now/.
It's really easy to argue like this. Some people here in this thread do.
Heck, I don't know if it's really serious enough to justify cancelling lots of flights.
But I know that the flights and other stuff which hurts profits of large corporations (and states) will only stop when it's really /undeniably/ a really, /really/ bad epidemic. And in that case it might be too late to be effective because it's in the nature of such things to only become undeniable when it's too late to act.
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
Granitehead
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2009
- Messages
- 3,011
You might have a point there, can't judge how much it would cost them.
fusion_power
Advanced Member
It's almost funny to see how hysteric people get if such a disease suddenly appears in their own Country. Nobody in the western world seems to care about Africa and their Ebloa problem, especialy not USA. Now that the first infections are reported from outside of Africa, everyone is going nuts and Ebola is present in every media. :rolleyes:
ekianjo
Hardcore Member
Everyone != the media.
The media have nothing to talk about most of the time, so they jump on whatever scary news they can get. That does not mean everyone actually cares.
comradekingu
Glowing ember
So Nigeria can put a handle on ebola, but i'm supposed to worry?
Last edited by a moderator:
Look at what Nigeria did to stop the outbreak.
"As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits."
The US (Texas) response was not nearly as aggressive.
The German health worker whom I chatted with (who claimed to have had contact with an ebola patient) reportedly developed fever and hasn't been online since friday morning. He might have been making all of it up of course. Still... Nevermind, was online and is ok.
"As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits."
The US (Texas) response was not nearly as aggressive.
Last edited by a moderator:
comradekingu
Glowing ember
The US doesnt have a healthcare system worthy of an industrial state. Their disaster plan is to not have one, and not admit being one.
levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Lol
In news of the weird, cannabis may help: http://cannabisdigest.ca/cbd-protective-ebola-virus/
Similar threads
