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To: Scoutmaster
That may be an artifact of calculation and reporting.

If I were to calculate today's dead vs. total known cases, I would skew the mortality rate toward the low side. The infected cases today likely became infected between 4 and 21 days ago, and the outcome has yet to be determined.

Instead, as a rough guide, comparing the number of dead today vs the number of infected (total) 12 days ago would provide an estimate of those total infected versus the outcome for that group.

When you look at the steep growth curves for number of cases and deaths plotted over time, the distortion becomes evident.

In the current outbreak, there are reporting/recording problems as well, and some estimates put the number of cases/deaths as much as 4 times higher than the numbers which have been confirmed.

For past outbreaks, those which burned out and were considerably smaller, the mortality rate ranged from a low of roughly 40% to a high of 90%

20 posted on 10/06/2014 7:31:15 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
The WHO reports an Ebola fatality rate of 54%, or at least did so on September 5 of this year.

That report addressed Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. At the time of the report, the highest fatality rate was in Guinea, which experienced a 64% fatality rate. Outbreaks were still in process in all three countries.

25 posted on 10/06/2014 8:20:04 AM PDT by Scoutmaster (Today is National Contrarian Day. Go ahead, tell me it isn't.)
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