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Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases
- msyoung2012 4y agoLeaked documents show the Ugandan government is not expecting the current Ebola outbreak to be contained, but rather expect it to spread rapidly into the deadliest in Ugandan history, killing 500 and infecting at least 1200 by May of next year.
- blkhp19 4y agoOnly 500 by May?
- martey 4y agoI think the Telegraph article ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/ugandas-ebola-outbreak-projected-kill-500-response-repeats-mistakes/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... ) that this blog post is based on is a better read. It makes clear that the idea that the outbreak will become "out of control" is from an anonymous source, not the leaked documents.
- dang 4y agoThanks! changed to that from https://blog.ebola-cases.com/leaked-ebola-projections-uganda/ https://blog.ebola-cases.com/leaked-ebola-projections-uganda....
- exhilaration 4y agoThe headline is scary but #1 Ebola isn't airborne and #2 it's super deadly which means it kills before it really has a chance to spread widely.
- dwheeler 4y agoRight. Ebola spreads via contact with infected blood or body fluids. That's terrible for those infected, and we should definitely take steps to counter its spread. But that's not at all the same level of risk as airborne spreading.
- lucioperca 4y agoIt spread through multiple countries till it was contained at one outbreak with thousands of dead.
- pelorat 4y agoAnd the only reason it spreads is due to lack of education.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kramerger 4y agoIs there a particular program or degree that makes me immune? Because multiple members of Doctors Without Borders died in the previous outbreak.
- dopidopHN 4y agoThey should have had worked harder in schools. I thought the message was out by this point
- kspacewalk2 4y agoBasically, having universal or near-universal access to modern sanitation is the "program". If you're not in a community that has this, being a member of Doctors Without Borders is insufficient as a guard against getting infected. Conversely, having running water and flush toilets as the norm makes it far less likely for dieases like ebola to spread even among non-members of Doctors Without Borders. So, while "lack of education" is not the right diagnosis here, lack of basic amenities certainly is.
- wkearney99 4y agoThat's entirely disingenuous, and you know it. There's a huge difference between the uneducated public in the developing world (or, clearly, everywhere really) and those that choose to enter into those challenging conditions to try and help people.
- throwaway920102 4y agoI mean it could evolve to be airborne in the wild or in a research lab doing intentional gain of function research (a practice for which funding was temporarily halted by Obama) and hybridization much like has been done at BSL-4 facilities worldwide unchecked including by EcoHealth alliance with bat coronaviruses via US funding at the WIV prior to the Covid outbreak in Wuhan. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-failed-report-experiment-wuhan-created-bat-virus-made-mice-sicker https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01209-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01209-w https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu... But it's probably fine and we probably shouldn't worry about the possibility of a global pandemic or of mutation of Ebola into a more transmissible form.
- benreesman 4y agoWhy is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.
- mikeyouse 4y agoIt's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do exactly what Covid19 did.
- benreesman 4y agoI think there is a lot more controversy than you’re implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN comment thread is probably not the right place to litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan political football. I’ll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do their own research on this and try to look past the elephant in the room of the politics angle.
- Silverback_VII 4y agoI don’t know if you have read some of the tweets but it seems that ebola can remain dormant in some of the recovered individuals and then be transmitted(sexually in this case) years latter.
- dendrite9 4y agohttps://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/ebola-may-have-lurked-in-someone-for-5-6-years-before-sparking-new-outbreak/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/ebola-may-have-lurke... About a 2021 outbreak: "The Ebola virus is known to persist in some survivors, particularly in places where it can lay low from the immune system, such as the testicles or eyeballs. A 2016 study reported resurgence of the virus in a survivor’s seminal fluid more than 500 days after the initial infection. Still, the more than five-year span was “shocking” to many virologists and public health experts. And it raises a variety of concerns for the many survivors of past outbreaks, some of whom may have had mild cases of Ebola without realizing it. In particular, many people known to have survived Ebola face stigmatization, and the possibility of years-long persistence is likely to amplify that problem."
- bergenty 4y agoI mean it’s not all that hard for it to become airborne. If that happens it’s doesn’t kill fast enough to not spread like crazy.
- SoftTalker 4y agoIsn't it? Some viruses are airborne, and some are not. I'm not aware that it's "not all that hard" for one type of virus to become the other, but I'm no expert. As far as I have heard, ebola outbreaks are almost exclusively in poor third world areas with generally bad sanitation and cultural practices (such as washing the recently deceased body) that contribute to transmission by contact with infected bodily fluids.
- giantg2 4y ago" it's super deadly which means it kills before it really has a chance to spread widely." I generally agree. I believe there is some lag time before dropping dead. Fast air travel seems like a good way for this to spread over a wide range. If I remember correctly, CDC was involved in some Ebola cases about 10 years or so ago due to travellers. The manpower required for the precautions to prevent US spread for just 2-4 infected people was massive. I would guess we would be overwhelmed and it would start spreading here if the numbers were in the dozens. I'm not saying that would be likely this time, but the likelihood would go up if there was a less deadly mutation. Operating on previously true beliefs is likely to cause the most damage.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoThis title made me wonder, what ever happened to monkey pox. Turns out that it has more or less died away.
- _djo_ 4y agoIt was handled well by global public health authorities, with education campaigns, targeted vaccinations, early warning, treatment, and growing immunity in the most at-risk populations.
- mschuster91 4y agoAdditionally, most of the most-at-risk population has lived through the AIDS horror. A good gay friend of mine roughly summarized it as "we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as important as is my life". Once it was clear that MSM were (once again) a high-risk group, they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. In contrast, the last time the general public has had an issue with a pandemic has been so long ago that deniers and downplayers had an easy game with their bullshit. Had wearing fucking masks not been that politicized, I'd wager a very good portion of the 6.6 million people that died to COVID would still be alive. And to come back to my gay friend, at least in his community there were almost no COVID cases.
- delecti 4y ago> they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. Also vaccination drives. I'm good friends with a few gay guys, and they all rushed to get vaccinated, even despite being in committed long term relationships. There was, metaphorically speaking, absolutely no fucking around with this one.
- _djo_ 4y agoGreat point, and yes that sort of behaviour change and awareness was hugely important.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
- 6stringmerc 4y agoThe 60 Minutes episode that aired recently where they traveled to the hot spots in Africa is fascinating. We know about the inevitable. It is up to us humans what we do with this information. Case in point: COVID mask hostility in spite of caring for the health of fellow humans or getting it and denying it until it kills them (source: nurse friend on a cardiac ward in the Midwest). YMMV.
- cmrivers 4y agoThe outbreak in Uganda is troubling, but a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. No professional infectious disease modeler will forecast out more than a few weeks because the trajectory of the outbreak changes in response to interventions and behaviors.
- jryhjythtr 4y ago>a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. Sure is, which is why it's odd we've been bombarded with endless graphs with months of predictions, over the past 2.5 years.
- hamburglar 4y agoWe have? I’ve certainly been bombarded with graphs showing trends, but six month predictions? Where are you seeing these? Can you point me to some?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jryhjythtr 4y agoSure. https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+covid+predictions&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+covid+predictions&tbm=isc... There are plenty that stretch out for a year.
- hamburglar 4y agoA naive google search is ... not a helpful reference.
- jryhjythtr 4y agoWhy not? It's the most efficient way I could think of, to display the sheer quantity, timeline, and content of the "Covid predictions" that we were shown in the UK. They are easily clickable, to show the original context (typically a news story or press release). You'll also note that practically all of them extend for at least 6 months. Also, you "asked for some". There they are - there's a lot of them.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoThey still have not identified the reservoir host (probably a fruit bat). African traditions of caring for a sick person and then bathing the dead is not helping either.
- photochemsyn 4y agoComprehensive accessible review here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495366/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495366/ The virus apparently just wrecks the immune system right off the bat, allowing it to rampage throughout the body unchecked. Hence immune-system-support therapies are being worked on: > "EBOV is able to evade innate and adaptive (both humoral and cellular) responses by encoding for multiple viral proteins that inhibit both type-I IFNs synthesis and response, by masking viral epitopes by glycosylation processes, by deregulating inflammatory response, by preventing DC maturation, thus resulting in a catastrophic failure of innate and adaptive immunity. Thus host factors have a key role for viral replication and release, and may represent good targets for therapeutic strategies." The for-profit pharmaceutical system isn't that interested in this, as not many people or governments in Africa have the funds to pay for research, production, and what is it now, a guaranteed 15%+ profit margin?
- Blahah 4y ago"right off the bat" is unfortunately apt for ebola!
- alexk307 4y agoYou’re telling me Ebola-cases.com is not a reputable news source? /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nlitsme 4y agojust looking at the graph: why do they expect this to be linear? Their graph has two lines: (month 0 == december) - totalcases = 180*month+300 - totaldeaths = 83*month+84 Recent experience with covid shows that usually epidemics initially grow exponentially.
- Closi 4y agoYou are right - the government analysis looks like garbage IMHO. The slide shows that they are actually just forecasting (month * 200) cases which is obviously not the way you should do this. The slide also has a bar chart with a line between the bars, which is a stats-bad-smell too (at least shows that whoever pulled this together doesn't understand how to display data). I know this is a developing nation that won't have the same level of availability of statisticians and epidemiologists, but it's worrying how basic this is.
- max_ 4y agoEbola is already out of control! There are reports of infectious people collapsing all over the Kampala(on social media) but the government hasn't initiated any covid level precautions. [0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkkyFfrjv2D/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/p/CkkyFfrjv2D/?hl=en
- doodlebugging 4y agoFor anyone who may be working in the epidemic response space I read that there may be problems getting PPE for the health care workers. There is a place that accepts products that are obsolete and reusable and they have a section dedicated to PPE since a lot of outfits obsoleted their PPE inventories once Covid was better controlled. They also have a shit-ton or more of other things that can be repurposed from their original tasks. Repurposed Materials - Sanitary stuff [0] [0]https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/sanitarystuff/ https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/sanitarystuff/
- Closi 4y agoThe quality of forecasting here looks questionable IMO... Let's take the only visible leaked slide below: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/global-health/2022/11/08/IMG_5175_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRo0U4xU-30oDveS4pXV-Vv4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=1280 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/global-health/2022/1... 1) The forecast appears to be "200 new cases per month" (i.e. Month 1 is 200 cases, Month 3 is 600 cases (3200) and Month 4 is 1200 cases (6200)). This is far too simplistic, and should probably follow an exponential/logistic curve if r>1. 2) The graph has simple stats failures like plotting a line between a bar chart. Doesn't give me too much hope for the other 15 slides... (The above isn't to say that it isn't a scary situation - clearly this is an awful situation which needs a huge amount of support. But the apparent quality of analysis does worry me that decision makers might not be working on great information)
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y agoSomeone is just declaring their plans.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]