Ebola 2014

[Suff]

Not a lot of time at the moment, family focus forces no PC time.

Remember the strident headlines, 10,000 Ebola cases per week by Christmas???

My latest review of the statistics tells us that the number of cases from Oct 24th to Dec 24th was less than 8,000. In Two Months.

Yep it's horrible. No they can't really cope now that it has hit populated areas. But it is far from a world spanning deadly disaster. Which is what we were being led to believe.

The countries who had small outbreaks and dealt with them directly are completely Ebola free now. Those who did not are still struggling. However, we're back to around 130 new cases per day and the deaths keep dropping for daily stats.

So long as everyone is vigilant and nobody makes stupid decisions, it will burn itself out.

Hopefully 2015 will soon be free of Ebola and even more hopefully, this current outbreak will have spawned research which will finally banish this kind of disease from Africa. If only as a defence for the western countries from the disease travelling.

Have a great New Year everyone and I'll be more online when I get back to work.

[Workingman]

Give the virus its due..... it is damned persistent and rather resistant to attempts to contain it. A lot of that is down to the area where it has become so infective and also local customs, but still.....

So what is the news? On December 29, the United Nations confirmed cases exceeded 20,000 and confirmed deaths exceeded 7,800. Those figures are nothing like the 'Wolf' cries of October, and this graph

paints a more truthful picture of the progress of the virus than the "hockey stick" version of October which showed the virus going off the scale.

The virus might not yet be said to be under complete control, but it has not broken out in ways many feared just a few months ago. With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work we should get on top of it in 2015. It is already showing signs of having stalled in some areas.

[Suff]

I must admit I don't like the log scale diagrams for communication. They do work when you want to see trends so long as everyone understands what 1x10^4 and 2x10^4 mean.

This one is a bit more enlightening. But, again, it should be held in mind that at 20,000 cases seen, the rise should start to go more logarithmic and it isn't, it's more linear with, in fact, a much slower trend that Viruses usually show. Local customs and beliefs, have a lot to do with the fact that it is not already resolved.



Note how the log scale shows the beginning well and the lack of acceleration later. The linear tends to hide the beginning when the numbers become too big.

[Workingman]

It will be with the way my brain works, Suff.

I can see the trend with the first graph, the semi-log, and it goes the way I expect.

The second graph at first glance, which is how so many will 'read' it, looks alarmist. I know that it is not and I know what the numbers are saying, but as a "picture" it coveys something different.