{"id":20295,"date":"2014-09-10T13:15:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T18:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=20295"},"modified":"2014-09-10T13:15:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T18:15:35","slug":"update-on-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/update-on-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-getting-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Update on West Africa&#039;s #Ebola Outbreak: Getting worse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The news is bleak. I don&#8217;t have a lot of confidence in the reported numbers.  At one time it was said that on a nice Saturday in the summer, four out of five cars driving around in downtown Boston were looking for a parking place.  This is somewhat like the situation in Liberia and possibly other affected areas. There may be as many Ebola victims driving around in taxis looking for a clinic as there are in clinics.  Or maybe a fewer.  Or, maybe more.  Maybe a lot more.<\/p>\n<p>But, we have to work with the data we have.  There are two charts based on the information provided by WHO for up through September 6th.  I&#8217;ve projected each data set out 90 days.  Since there is no abatement in frequency of new cases, and in fact the number continues to increase on average, and since <a href=\"http:\/\/who.int\/mediacentre\/news\/ebola\/8-september-2014\/en\/\">WHO is claiming that the situation in the worst hit areas is pretty much out of control<\/a>, a 90 day projection seems reasonable. In other words, there is no reason to think that the relative rate of new infections is going to change because of any outside intervention or internal change in the situation.<\/p>\n<p>The first chart shows the number of new cases. This varies a great deal from report to report. Some of that variation over time is probably real, reflecting the internal complexities of disease spread.  But I suspect it is mostly administrative. If a bunch of cases don&#8217;t get into one report, the get into the next report.  This explains a nearly perfect alternation between increase and decrease between successive reports.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-10-at-1.03.44-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-10-at-1.03.44-PM-620x427.png?resize=604%2C416\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 1.03.44 PM\" width=\"604\" height=\"416\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-20296\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe second chart shows the number of cases over time, accumulated.  This Projected outwards, we can guess that by around the beginning of 2015, there will have been over 10,000 people who have been infected by Ebola in West Africa (including Nigeria and Senegal as well as the main area of the outbreak), and over 5,000 deaths.  Since I know you are curious, if this is projected out over a year or so, the number of infected people goes to between 60,000 and 70,000.  I have no idea if this is realistic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-10-at-1.02.24-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-10-at-1.02.24-PM-620x470.png?resize=604%2C458\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 1.02.24 PM\" width=\"604\" height=\"458\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-20297\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The situation is bad and getting worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news is bleak. I don&#8217;t have a lot of confidence in the reported numbers. At one time it was said that on a nice Saturday in the summer, four out of five cars driving around in downtown Boston were looking for a parking place. This is somewhat like the situation in Liberia and possibly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/update-on-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-getting-worse\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Update on West Africa&#039;s #Ebola Outbreak: Getting worse<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[49,2159,689,3391,3414,103],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-5hl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}