3 ms·

I understand what you are saying, and if this were the Flu, then I would totally agree with you. But this is a terrible disease that has a lot of people's atte

I understand what you are saying, and if this were the Flu, then I would totally agree with you. But this is a terrible disease that has a lot of people's attention. The WHO is about to invest $100 Million (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/07/calling-ebola-outbreak-unprecedented-who-plans-100-million-fight/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/07/calling-ebola-outbrea...) in curtailing it. I have to believe that this disease would spread completely differently, under the scenarios (A) No external intervention, (B) WHO invests $100 mm in stopping it, and (C) World community jumps on this immediately and invests $1B to immediately curtail it. In each of those three different scenarios, the epidemic would progress differently. Perhaps it's being modeled under (A), and things will work out better than expected. We can only hope.

Fomite 12y ago
First, its an entirely reasonable thing to model a disease under the assumptions of no interventions, as there's a great deal of value in knowing "Where is this headed if we don't do anything", and to find out whether or not the time and resources you're spending are actually having an impact. Second, while the international response to this is good, putting in money doesn't have a linear return on reduction of disease. Consider HIV or Malaria.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  HIV and Malaria are both broadly endemic in Africa, including some conflict areas - it's going to be a long tough slog to rid the world of them. This breakout of Ebola is geographically isolated, and its nature (short infection period, burns out quickly, hard to catch) - makes it something that a strong effort right now would absolutely shut down. Regarding modeling the disease - yes, of course - from that perspective I can see how useful it would be to model, but the assumption should be pretty explicit. I.E. "Assuming traditional regional responses to this disease, this is what we would expect" - to make it clear that this is a model, and not a prediction.

Fomite 12y ago

First, its an entirely reasonable thing to model a disease under the assumptions of no interventions, as there's a great deal of value in knowing "Where is this headed if we don't do anything", and to find out whether or not the time and resources you're spending are actually having an impact. Second, while the international response to this is good, putting in money doesn't have a linear return on reduction of disease. Consider HIV or Malaria.

ghshephard 12y ago
HIV and Malaria are both broadly endemic in Africa, including some conflict areas - it's going to be a long tough slog to rid the world of them. This breakout of Ebola is geographically isolated, and its nature (short infection period, burns out quickly, hard to catch) - makes it something that a strong effort right now would absolutely shut down. Regarding modeling the disease - yes, of course - from that perspective I can see how useful it would be to model, but the assumption should be pretty explicit. I.E. "Assuming traditional regional responses to this disease, this is what we would expect" - to make it clear that this is a model, and not a prediction.