Posted on 08/05/2014 5:50:07 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Well the data source is the current WHO-Africa Ebola update page which makes the distinction between suspected, reported and lab verified cases.
I’m just guessing here, but probably the tallied deaths under the heading of Ebola updates are all Zaire Ebola Virus deaths. Haven’t yet come across any mention at all of Lassa or other hemmoragic disease.
The mortality rate will be low until it is calculated on a specific population for the duration of the infection until the all clear six weeks later. This is because the total infected count is really the “infected-but-not-yet-dead” number due to the lag between detection and final outcome (dead or alive) which takes a few weeks.
IMO a large infected number vs. smaller deaths may actually indicate rapid transmission.
I found the data set limited to confirmed lab cases and deaths specific to those cases, from WHO. 574 deaths in 1009 confirmed cases as of 1 August, or 56.8%, so very similar to my estimate. See: http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_08_04_ebola/en/
Using only the laboratory confirmed ebola cases and deaths by my calculations the mortality rate is:
Aug 01 887/1009 =87.90%
July 30 826/953 = 86.67%
July 27 729/909 = 80.19%
feel free to check my arithmetic.
The suspected cases have yet to be verified as being Zaire Ebola.
Three nurses dead in Liberia, from ebola:
The Lutheran Church in Liberia (a companion church of the Upper Susquehanna Synod, ELCA) is being heavily affected by the recent outbreak of the Ebola virus in the country. The incurable disease has killed 129 people in Liberia, and even more people in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone. At the end of July, the Liberia government had closed most of the country’s land borders, and was restricting public gatherings. The LCL Board of Health and the Liberian Council of Churches were meeting to consider what actions to take in order to control the spread of the virus in Liberian congregations.
The LCL’s Phebe Hospital lost three nurses to Ebola in recent weeks, and other health care workers from Phebe are undergoing care at another hospital. Phebe was temporarily closed to undergo fumigation, and is reinforcing the training of nurses in self-care.
The LCL is awaiting the delivery of additional hospital supplies from the United States. ELCA Global Mission is paying $10,000 toward an airfreight shipment, being sent by Global Health Ministries (GHM), of five pallets of materials to help prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. An additional shipment of supplies, a 40’ container shipped by ocean freight, is also being planned. It will take 45 travel days to arrive. These shipments are to be sent to the LCL for Phebe and Curran Hospitals.
Your data source is also correct, you have to use the deaths and cases from the same column, e.g. confirmed cases. You were using the deaths from the totals column with the cases from confirmed, which is incorrect.
Sanjay Gupta, that know-it-all TV doctor said this:
“This isn’t the kind of thing that they worry about spreading to other patients in the hospital, spreading to people who are walking around the hospital.”
So then how did all those people “walking around” that Liberian hospital get the illness?
At some point they’ll have to give up the laboratory confirmed and settle on suspected. They can only test so many. If it keeps spreading they’ll eventually give up on suspected too as the infection exceeds reporting abilities. Eventually they may have to just say “F-it, all these people who died of sickness from the start of this probably died due to this outbreak”. That’s what’s been done in previous pandemics like the Spanish Flu. They just don’t have an accurate count.
On August 01 there were 1009 confirmed cases of Ebola reported; of those confirmed cases there were 574 deaths reported. That means 574/1009 = 56.9%.
Alternately, on August 01 there were 1603 total (suspected, probable, confirmed) cases reported; of those total cases there were 887 deaths reported. That means 887/1603 = 55.3%. Do you see now?
Justa, agreed on all you said. They are SLIGHTLY underestmating case fatality for the reason you said, some folks are dying but not yet dead, but not as much as you may think. Most deaths occur within 8 to 10 days, and as time goes on this number becomes a smaller proportion of the total and gets effectively weighted out.
Data at the link. Confirmed = 56.8% (574 of 1009)
You’re not looking at confirmed. Those numbers are all confirmed, probable, and suspect cases. Confirmed is 574/1009.
Total death confirmed by bodies. Hard fact.
Lab verified diagnosis of Zaire Ebola Virus count. Hard fact.
Probable and suspect cases unverified. Supposition, not hard fact.
An unknown quantity of probable and suspect cases may have contracted the ZEV and WHO identifies them as such and includes this at the end of their update.
"The total number of cases is subject to change due to ongoing reclassification, retrospective investigation and availability of laboratory results. Data reported in the Disease Outbreak News are based on official information reported by Ministries of Health."
Re-read the page and see if you can find anywhere on the page WHO;s calculation of the mortality rate.
The lower figure can only be found in the mass media who are soft-pedaling all Ebola news.
Have a good day, I'm done with you.
WHO fact sheets for the others are on the right-hand side.
Should this continue the numbers will be useless. Already in Liberia the govt. isn’t counting the dead or disposing of the bodies because health ministry workers refuse to show up to dispose them. Same with doctors and nurses at hospitals -they just stop coming in.
The west central African nations have been dealing with repeated ebola outbreaks for almost 40 years. They have well trained officials and protocols to isolate and treat these outbreaks. Yet they’ve failed to contain it. How will other countries deal with it when all they know is what they’ve read?
My presumption is that first outbreaks in a locale will be dutifully verified and reported due to the fidelity of the local healthcare and bureaucratic systems. When the spread stresses either of these systems all reporting will be useless.
Because of the delay in reporting the status of the 6 NYC cases they may have already surpassed the fidelity of the NYC bureaucracy to cope with it.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/07/west-africa-ebola-outbreak-nears-900-cases
Yep. Even more disturbing is how they are trying to hush these suspected cases; if they do this when they get the first live case (if it hasn't already happened) it will be too late. If there are six hot cases isolated in NYC for example, then for a virus with a three week potential incubation period, so many people will already be infected by the time they publically confirm the first cases it will be too late for a quarantine to be effective.
Actually, Ebola Reston is the only strain that we know has gone airborne, but it only infected monkeys (quickly, actually, and completely - killed them all.)
Zaire ran via fluids. It burned itself out for the most part. The case was pretty well documented in ‘The Hot Zone’ by Richard Preston.
This is why Reston scared the bejeebers out of the CDC at the time. It happened in a suburb of DC.
I think this new strain goes in one of two ways that make this a more dangerous strain:
1. Via parasites (lice, mosquitoes, bedbugs)
2. Aerosol
On top of that, I think its contagious somewhere inside the ‘incubation’ period, and can be transmitted prior to the onset of symptoms.
It’s the only way to explain how all those people died from contact with the patient that boarded that communal cab. No way in this life they would have let her board if she was presenting symptoms. Not a chance. All five riders died.
Captain Jenks is out of the bag.
(40,000 men and women every day)
(40,000 men and women every day)
(Don’t fear the reaper)
(Baby take my hand)
(Don’t fear the reaper)
Yes, but a stand-alone fact. "All dead bodies" does not equal "Ebola deaths."
We can divide confirmed Ebola deaths by confirmed cases or total deaths by confirmed, probable, and suspect cases but not total deaths by confirmed Ebola cases. Well, we can. But what would be the point?
That woman was feeling sick when she took that cab. She was likely beyond the incubation period and likely symptomatic. Ebola can survive on surfaces for a couple of days. The other passengers likely contracted Ebola from contaminated surfaces in the cab.
I’m not disputing your theory/suspicions. I’m just looking at alternatives.
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