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Merged So Ebola's back......

The Tooting, Durham and Carmarthen cases have all been found not to be EVD.
 
More info from the Lancet Ebola information resource centre here.
 
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From the Editorial of the current issue of The Lancet.
Media interest in the Ebola outbreak raging through west Africa has not, so far, been widely discussed or studied. In a world online, news is available 24/7. Coverage of Ebola has, understandably, been prolific, but sometimes also narrow and unbalanced. In the USA, for example, disproportionate airtime has been given to the nine confirmed American cases of Ebola compared with the massive human crisis unfolding in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. In even reputable news outlets—eg, CNN—a wall-to-wall “breaking news” culture has inevitably contributed to a sense of (unnecessary) domestic political panic.

In the UK, tabloid reporting has often been poorly informed by science and unhelpful coverage can contribute to public confusion and misinformation. Some sources have shared accurate guidance aimed at those most in need, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the BBC's WhatsApp Ebola service. But, overall, the media has tended to encourage substantial misunderstanding about the risks of exposure and where the real threat and causes of Ebola lie.

Analysis of social media traffic also tells a story of unbalance. During October, there were 21 037 331 tweets about Ebola in the USA, compared with 13 480 about Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone combined. Yet around 5000 deaths and 14 000 cases in west Africa show that the epidemic continues to dominate at source in these countries, contrary to the media footprint of Ebola.
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Ebola seems to have completely disappeared from the mainstream media outside of a few stories here and there. I fear this will create a false sense of being out of the woods; it doesn't help that people already have a stubborn attitude about disease thanks to swine flu not doing much.

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/281665611.html

Forty-eight travelers who have returned to Minnesota from Ebola-stricken nations in West Africa are being monitored by state health officials for 21 days to make sure they don’t have any signs of the deadly virus, the Minnesota Department of Health reported Wednesday...

...Wednesday’s report cited an additional 12 people who either returned recently and still are being contacted, or haven’t been located yet because of inadequate or incorrect contact information.
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http://www.ibtimes.com/northern-ireland-patient-being-tested-ebola-pha-confirms-1721272

The Public Health Agency (PHA) has confirmed that a patient is being tested for Ebola at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Northern Ireland's capital Belfast...

...It is understood that the individual has already tested positive for malaria, and a blood sample will confirm if they have also contracted Ebola.
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From the general tenor of news reports, I was under the impression in the past two weeks that the growth in cases had slowed. The total number of cases was still on the rise, but it seemed it was no longer in the exponential doubling-every-x-days realm.

And yet, the current (cumulative) number of cases as of November 7th as reported by The Economist, is about 13,000. Which remains consistent with exponential growth models posted months ago, such as this one with a doubling time of about 30 days. (What looks like a drop-off in the final November 3rd data point there is contradicted by the Economist's November 7th figures.)

The multiplication of international relief efforts in September and October should begin having a noticeable effect on the rate of new cases within the next few weeks. Whether it does or not will be a telling development either way.

As far as the media are concerned, I think we're seeing a demonstration of one paradoxical quality of exponential growth: it's too slow to keep the media interested. Provided that the outbreak continues to be contained within the currently affected countries in West Africa, I expect the mainstream U.S. media to ignore the story through the holiday advertising season, and then suddenly re-notice it in January.
 
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According to the latest edition of the More of Less podcast, the reproduction rate (I think that was the term) has dropped from 2 to 1, so exponential growth is not now happening, at least in Liberia. The local health agencies, together with outside assistance, are dealing with the outbreak, and prevented a major epidemic. The harder task is to stamp out the disease, rather than it becoming endemic.
 
wollclark said:
Ebola seems to have completely disappeared from the mainstream media outside of a few stories here and there. I fear this will create a false sense of being out of the woods; it doesn't help that people already have a stubborn attitude about disease thanks to swine flu not doing much.
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In the US the election season is over and thus the political bandwagon jumping too. There are no active cases in the US.

The epidemic is still ongoing in Africa but most of the worst case scenarios being bandied about haven't happened.
 
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/health-ebola-mali-idINKCN0IW00Q20141112

The government of Mali confirmed the country's second case of Ebola late on Tuesday and police deployed outside a clinic in the capital, Bamako, that authorities said had been quarantined....

...Officials said the man believed to have brought the second case of Ebola to Mali was an imam from Guinea. He was not tested for Ebola while he was ill in Mali and his body was returned to Guinea without necessary precautions for the disease being taken, raising the prospect of further infections that will now have to be traced.
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bigred said:
Surprised no one has mentioned the Dr in NYC yet.

I was on board with the "oh stop freaking out about this" group, but the more these "oops just a little isolated case, nothing to see here" things pop up, the less confident I am that all is under control, or will be, as the incompetence of either the people themselves and/or those who should have had them under closer scrutiny is simply unreal.
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I still don't think they are sure how many people got ill from his carelessness.
 
I listened to some interviews of Liberians from a Youtube copy of a Frontline show. It was when the Ebola outbreak had started to get under way.

It was amazing how every person interviewed said they thought it was a fabrication of the government. There was no Ebola in Liberia and nothing to worry about. I had previously read how their tradition of handling their dead resulted in much higher transmission rates, but coupled with these conspiracy theory attitudes - geez, no wonder it got out of control so fast.

Bad health care facilities at the same time of course too - what a recipe for disaster. A self-selection bias problem here: the disease transfer is not random. It is specifically transmitting through people with these high risk behaviors.

After Darwin takes care of these self-selecting into death, the rest of the people who remain are acting with more care around the disease. So there is a collapse in what was indeed exponential growth, but not in the population at large.
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
After Darwin takes care of these self-selecting into death, the rest of the people who remain are acting with more care around the disease. So there is a collapse in what was indeed exponential growth, but not in the population at large.
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Strong selective pressure against strongly-held superstitions and conspiracy theories... fascinating! I wonder if sociologists etc will be able to account for the effects of this over the next several decades? :idea:
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
It was amazing how every person interviewed said they thought it was a fabrication of the government.
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Every person whose interview was chosen for broadcast, that is.

I had previously read how their tradition of handling their dead resulted in much higher transmission rates,
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From the podcast I linked above, that does seem to be a factor, and it's affecting men and women equally. The hypothesis is that women are caring for the sick, and men are burying the bodies.
Bad health care facilities at the same time of course too - what a recipe for disaster. A self-selection bias problem here: the disease transfer is not random. It is specifically transmitting through people with these high risk behaviors.

After Darwin takes care of these self-selecting into death, the rest of the people who remain are acting with more care around the disease. So there is a collapse in what was indeed exponential growth, but not in the population at large.
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That's at odds, again, with the podcast, where it sounds it was more a matter of education about what to do, not that all those acting a certain way succumbed.
 
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