
Ebola is 'entrenched and accelerating' in West Africa - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29563530
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dzdt
There seems to be a big problem with innumeracy in responding to this
epidemic. The number of ebola cases is doubling every 15 to 20 days. I guess
people don't "get" exponential growth. Otherwise how are there so many
statements about resource needs without a time tradeoff mentioned? Liberia
needs about 3000 beds today to isolate patients, but only has about 600
currently. The US is helping to build more treatment centers totalling about
2000 more beds... but on a 5-12 week timeframe (to accomodate using Liberian
engineers and local resources). In 5 weeks, the need will be for around 12000
beds! Do the leaders just not get the math? Or how else isn't the answer "do
it the fastest way possible and nevermind who gets slighted or misses their
cut of the business"!

~~~
freehunter
It's not about helping, it's about making a political statement. I can buy
pink gear from Susan G Komen and everyone will think I'm wonderful for it,
even though Komen is one of the worst cancer charities you can give money to.
A politician can vote to build a number of beds that sounds great to voters,
but also gives kickbacks to their friends and doesn't actually do anything
because doing something costs real money.

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Shivetya
What strikes me odd about the Ebola problem is this seemingly fear to do
anything about it. With SARS we had many countries preventing people from
traveling, we had border checks, and the restrictions affected air travel.

Yet Ebola while not airborne is far deadlier, so where are the travel
restrictions? Is there some PC element to this, or is there some fear of
perceived over reaction? Considering two recently publicized cases involved
people who should have known better (if not the organizations they are part
of) screwing up how are we to deal with people who don't know better
understanding the signs and risks?

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drivingmenuts
Africa is a continent that the Western, mostly-white-run world has an
incredibly troublesome history with. I suspect this is giving us (in the US)
internal fits when we try to decide what to do. Almost anything short of
sending direct aid makes it look like we are abandoning them and sending
direct aid looks suspiciously like a military invasion (because we'll be
sending armed troops).

We haven't even figured out how to "deal with" black people here in the US and
those guys over there, well, they're _foreign_ black people.

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awakened
You wrote: ___" We haven't even figured out how to 'deal with' black people
here in the US..."_ __

That 's an absurd statement. The US has an African American president. He was
elected twice by a large majority.

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Nux
I doubt mr Obama is at all African, he was born in Honolulu for crying out
loud. All this crap with African-American is annoying and needs to stop. You
don't call white citizens European-American, do you?

~~~
cbennett
“I doubt mr Obama is at all African”

<Baracks> father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Kenya

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama)

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DanielBMarkham
Some very interesting things are going to happen in international politics
over the next six months, driven by Ebola. And I use the word "interesting" in
the same way as it's used in the curse "May you live in interesting times"

I think by early next year it'll become obvious that we're going to lose
millions of folks to the disease. What remains unknown is what the containment
ability of western societies are. R is overall around 2, but in Europe maybe
it's just .2 -- or maybe 1.2. The difference between those two numbers has
staggering implications for the future of many societies.

I also do not believe that some sort of massive intervention would work to
contain Ebola in Africa right now. Mathematically, yes, you can make the
numbers work to show that a huge intervention could contain it. But
practically? Not happening. The world is heading down this road whether we're
prepared for it or not.

~~~
coldcode
I read some senator wants to hold up the US investment for helping out in
Africa for political reasons. I suppose there are no voters in Africa so why
spend money there. Not in my back yard often goes both ways. People are dying
in Africa, why should we care. Of course this is a world problem but
politicians seem unable to grasp that.

~~~
maxerickson
It's a nice idea to only repeat things like that if you can find some decent
source for it. Here's one:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/09/us-health-ebola-
us...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/09/us-health-ebola-usa-senator-
idUSKCN0HY27L20141009)

(Well, I think it's useful to provide a source for something like that, it
cuts at least 1 step out of the game of telephone that may ensue.)

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danieltillett
I hate to be negative, but really I expect a little better from the BBC on a
story as serious as this. Do we really need an interactive photo of someone in
an “ebola suit” with such informative labels you can click on that say things
like “boots” or “goggles”?

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calgoo
Yes we do need these things, as here in spain they have cut all spending on
hospitals, to the level of having simple "supermarket fruit section gloves"
when working with patients. Its really fu __ __up and the government, are
trying to hide it by saying they are ready etc etc etc. There is not a single
public hospital in spain that is technically able to handle the virus, as they
dont have the level of isolation units necessary.

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hga
It's telling that that hospital's infectious disease ward was closed a few
months before, e.g. see [https://www.thespainreport.com/11651/spains-health-
minister-...](https://www.thespainreport.com/11651/spains-health-minister-ana-
mato-must-resign/) which echoing other reports says, quoting someone, it was
reopened " _in a rush, urgently and at top speed_ ".

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icantthinkofone
I read a book about Ebola in West Africa 20 years ago or more ago so
"entrenched" is very old news and "accelerating" is last month's news.

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hga
It's zoonotic
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis)),
and in fact rather poorly adapted to humans (kills us way too often and
quickly, one big danger from this outbreak is that less lethal strains will
develop).

So it was "entrenched", or, rather, endemic in we guess fruit bats, the index
case was a child in a household where some "bushmeat" was butchered, but not,
until now, in human populations.

Note this is believed to have started with one child who died on December 6th,
2013. Exponential growth since then, and nothing specifically foreseeable is
going to change that any time soon.

ADDED: if you assume, as many do, there are about 20,000 cumulative infections
as of now, that equals a doubling rate of 3 per week ([http://www.doubling-
time.com/compute.php?lang=en](http://www.doubling-
time.com/compute.php?lang=en)), which also matches some other estimates I've
seen.

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taivare
I was down-voted last time for this,but Please share this Ebola awareness
poster. [http://bit.ly/1vF1COO](http://bit.ly/1vF1COO)

