I believe it is ~1.5 in the heavily infected areas.
You misunderstood me. You're talking about the ratio of people infected by each sick person, which is in the range of 1.5 to 2.0.
I was responding to Diogenesis' post, which showed the distribution of times from exposure until infected people exhibited symptoms in four different countries. His point is that the 21 day period doesn't catch all of the cases--somewhere between 92% and 97%, depending on country, so that even a 21 day quarantine isn't a guarantee that a person isn't carrying the disease.
Along with the probability distribution on each countries graph was the integral of that distribution, which has to equal one if you wait long enough--that's what is called a "cumulative distribution function." So, my comment was, basically that you have a tension between the length of the quarantine and the confidence you have that the quarantined person is really disease-free. There's an obvious tug of war between how long you keep someone who isn't exhibiting symptoms quarantined versus issues of how much it costs society and how hard it is on the person. Is a 95% confidence level enough? Or should it be 99.9%, in which case the quarantine would be at least 60 days. I dunno... I'm thinking.
Originally that was true; R= 1.5, with the expectation that the disease will double every month (4 weeks).
However, WHO/CDC found out that R= 2.0, with the reality that the disease was duplicating every 18-21 days.
At one point, WHO hospitals were so overwhelmed that they were turning away 30% of people comming to them, as they had patients lining the corridors,
and increasing the number of beds in each room.
Those Ebola patients that were turned away had a 10%survival rate, and likely infectedfamily members who cared for them.
Those Ebola patients accepted at the hospitals had 30-40% survival rate which depended on the doctors, nurses, and HCW, and the supplies avialable (especially saline IV's).