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Not very useful because it doesn't take into consideration the most significant causes (or restrictions) of spread of Ebola or similar diseases, which relates t
by steven777400 12y ago
Not very useful because it doesn't take into consideration the most significant causes (or restrictions) of spread of Ebola or similar diseases, which relates to cultural interpersonal interactions (such as handling and washing the dead), education, and poverty levels.
Take a dozen Ebola infected persons and drop them in New York. The infection will be eliminated in a few transmissions. Take a dozen Ebola infected persons and drop them in the poorest quarter of Monrovia in Liberia, and well... we're watching what happens.
- doomrobo 12y agoThat's a good point and the author kind of anticipates this with an umbrella "this isn't legit" clause at the end. Though I must say just as a demonstration of (albeit simple) predictive disease modeling in Mathematica, this article still stands on its own. It would be interesting to see how organizations like the CDC characterize and formalize all the variables that this article is forced to ignore for simplicity's sake. Are there maps of health care quality in use? Are there other important factors related to transmission other than infectiousness and population density of a given area? etc