Ebola response delay could kill >100,000 in Africa

[RVB]

Last weekend I did some epidemiological calculations of what could happen if the response to the Ebola crisis continues to be slow. I was horrified to find that from 100,000 to 1 million could die, and that each day of delay will cost an extra 1,000 to 10,000 lives lost in the next 6 months. So I started a white house petition at:

Act Immediately and Urgently to Control the International Ebola Epidemic We the People Your Voice in Our Government

And I posted a quick website with my calculations, spreadsheets and commentary at:

EBOLA CRISIS We Need To Stop The International Ebola Epidemic NOW

If the president doesn't start taking this about 10 times more seriously right now, we will have another Ebola 2014 will be our generations version of Rwanda 1994.

We have got to sound the alarm NOW!!!!

 

[ScienceRocks]

If it would only effect that shit hole? I wouldn't see the problem.

 

[RVB]

So you don't think the genocide in Rwanda was a problem? Just trying to get a measure of your morality.

 

[MaxGrit]

In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 207 million clinical episodes, and 627,000 deaths. An estimated 91% of deaths in 2010 were in the African Region.

Questions and Answers on Ebola Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever CDC

Highlights

The 2014 Ebola outbreak is one of the largest Ebola outbreaks in history and the first in West Africa. It is affecting four countries in West Africa: Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, but does not pose a significant risk to the U.S. public. CDC is working with other U.S. government agencies, the World Health Organization, and other domestic and international partners in an international response to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. CDC has activated its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to help coordinate technical assistance and control activities with partners. CDC has deployed several teams of public health experts to the West Africa region and plans to send additional public health experts to the affected countries to expand current response activities.

As of August 20, 2014

The Guinean Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Liberia, and the Nigerian Ministry of Health are working with national and international partners to investigate and respond to the outbreak.

Guinea

The Guinea Ministry of Health announced 607 suspect and confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD), including 443 laboratory-confirmed cases, and 406 deaths.
Affected districts include Conakry, Guéckédou, Macenta, Kissidougou, Dabola, Djingaraye, Télimélé, Boffa, Kouroussa, Dubreka, Fria, Siguiri, Pita, Nzerekore, and Yamou; several are no longer active areas of EVD transmission (see map).
Liberia

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Liberia and WHO have reported 1082 suspect and confirmed EVD cases, including 269 laboratory-confirmed, and 624 deaths.
Nigeria

The Nigerian Ministry of Health and WHO reported 16 suspect and confirmed cases, including 12 laboratory-confirmed, and 5 deaths.
Sierra Leone

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone and WHO reported a cumulative total of 910 suspect and confirmed cases, including 804 laboratory-confirmed cases, and 392 deaths.
Cases have been reported from all 12 Sierra Leone districts.
About the virus

Genetic analysis of the virus indicates that it is closely related (97% identical) to variants of Ebola virus (species Zaire ebolavirus) identified earlier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gabon (Baize et al. 2014).

 

[RVB]

If we go to:
Funding and Spending - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria

We can see that at least $1 billion/year is spent fighting malaria for a disease that has 0.6M deaths/207M episodes. (about a 0.3% death rate).

Ebola has a death rate of >50%. This means if millions of people get infected, millions of people will die.

The problem with Ebola is that right now infections are growing exponentially with a doubling time of 15 days in Liberia. With an epidemic, the cost per day of delay (measured in lives) scales with the peak death rate in the future...that is because for every day of delay in mobilizing control, the future peak will last another day longer.

With a doubling time of 15 days, death rates in the Ebola epidemic could reach the thousands per day level in a couple of months. That is when Ebola gets much more serious than malaria.

But all of this is predictable and preventable, so we can and should act now.

The other thing about an epidemic that is growing 2% to 5% per day, is that the final cost of controlling the epidemic will more or less increase 2% to 5% per day. If thousands are dying per day, the US will likely be brought in eventually anyway.

Just from a purely selfish, I want to minimize the cost of government perspective, even Libertarians should want the action to be taken now so that the government does not have an excuse to spend billions more later when the crisis is really really bad.

I think everyone should want to sign the petition if they have any sense at all of what an exponentially growing epidemic means.:

Act Immediately and Urgently to Control the International Ebola Epidemic We the People Your Voice in Our Government

The CDC and WHO are supposed to be experts at this stuff, why they aren't publicizing this better to help mobilize the real amount of resources needed beats the heck out of me.