From a sample data set, you cannot take the last two numbers and infer anything. It does not have statistical power.

The last two reported numbers are low – it may be subsiding – this is tabloid journalism, not scientific discussion.

It isn’t clear how many cases make an outbreak, and it is certainly possible to say that they HAD a tiny outbreak (smaller than any previous instance). But, at least one case was not infected in Nigeria, and the other cases are all closely related to that one case, and there are no new cases. So, Nigeria is not having an outbreak. Close call.

The last new case in Nigeria was before August 6th, so over 12 days ago. Maybe there are additional cases waiting to be discovered, but I’m going with no current activity there.

Citing you: “But Nigeria simply isn’t having an EBOV outbreak, so one could have used any large densely populated city with certain other characteristics connected to the affected area by airplane.”

? Then I’m confused about what constitutes an EBOV* outbreak in Nigeria. What about the following statistics and what virus, if not EBOV or “Ebola,”generally, as I mean that term, is being referenced by them?

(source: Center for Disease Control / 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/index.html

Nigeria

Suspected and Confirmed Case Count: 12
Suspected and Confirmed Case Deaths: 4
Laboratory Confirmed Cases: 11

and this, from Wikipedia:

“There are 11 confirmed cases of Ebola in Nigeria as of 14 August 2014.[44] The first one was an imported case of a Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who traveled by air from Liberia and became violently ill upon arriving in the city of Lagos. On 20 July, Sawyer flew into Nigeria via Lomé and Accra from Liberia, and he died five days later in Lagos. In response, the Nigerian government increased surveillance at all entry points to the country; health officials were placed at entry points to conduct tests on people arriving in the country. Initial reports noted that sixty-nine individuals previously in contact with Sawyer (including airport staff, fellow flight passengers and health workers at the hospital where Sawyer was hospitalised) were placed under close surveillance without symptoms.[45] On 4 August, it was confirmed that the doctor who treated the patient tested positive for the virus strain and is being treated.[30] On 6 August, Nigerian authorities confirmed the Ebola death of a nurse who had treated Sawyer.” …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_virus_outbreak#Nigeria

(*) Unless I’m mistaken, EBOV refers to one of the common strains of the deadly Ebola virus but my reference is to any of the five strains and not strictly and only the EBOV strain and this is the sense in which I use the term “Ebola”.

I guess that it is this distinction which is all-important for your analysis—as in *Ebola cases in Nigeria, yes, but not the EBOV.* Unless that is the gist of your point, I’m very confused about how we are in a misunderstanding.

Lagos is theoretically scary, but not empirically scary, but many are empirically scared because there have been some cases there. That is an important difference that I felt needed to be pointed out.

…”my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos — which has a population of 22 million — would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis”….

(emphasis added)

is precisely and literally true in its forecast. It may indeed not be “instantly” done, but that won’t matter if the spread of the virus (with its eventual mutations) isn’t effectively contained.

this epidemic is considerably more serious in scope than has been thought by even some in the professional ranks of epidemiology and I think–and thought Thursday–that your postings have been far too complacent about the capacity for containment and too conservative in your assumptions about the potential numbers of currently infected people.

My impression is that there are perhaps thousands who have risked exposure and who remain so far undiscovered across the affected areas. Moreover, when infected people travel in populous urban areas such as Lagos, the disease’s opportunities for spread are virtually open-ended.

I don’t know what in the world you mean when you wrote that,

“The disease … has no human reservoir.” Nor can I see any good reason to believe that the disease is “too hot to not burn itself out …”

A temporary drop in detected infections rates–that is, over the space of a mere few days–should be regarded, really, as telling us nothing effectively valid about what the disease may do in the coming weeks. Only a steady and prolonged decline in infection rates is indicative of a turn in the progress of the spread and I’ve not seen this when the affected areas as a whole are considered.

Burning out certainly is hard to do in such a relatively hoping population area.