There are several scenarios for how this plays out. One is that the conventional methods of containing Ebola — isolating patients and doing contact tracing of people who might be exposed — lower the rate of new infections until finally the epidemic burns itself out. That has been the case in all previous outbreaks of Ebola, although no outbreak has ever been nearly as extensive as this one.A second scenario is more dire: The conventional methods come too late, the epidemic keeps spreading, and the virus is beaten back only when vaccines can be developed and scaled up to the point where they can be widely distributed. As the number of infections increases, so does the possibility that a person with Ebola will carry it to another country. This is known as an export. "So we had two exports in the first 2,000 patients,” Frieden said in a recent interview. “Now we’re going to have 20,000 cases, how many exports are we going to have?"
Friday, October 17, 2014
Bad case scenario or worse case scenario?
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Quarantine. Do It Now.
ReplyDeleteIt's baffling that the Nigerian response in Lagos was better than the one in Dallas. Granted, one expert believes that they got lucky with the index patient showing symptoms on arrival, but they still tracked all his contact ASAP and followed the appropriate protocols extremely well.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-did-nigeria-quash-its-ebola-outbreak-so-quickly/
The international response should have been thorough from March, but at this stage, I don't get why it is unreasonable to limit flights from Sierra Leon and Liberia to absolutely necessary ones. And even with that, set in a very rigorous screening protocol so anyone like the late Duncan couldn't simply just lie and enter another country so easily.