text: 
  Latest Ebola Statistics - natural219
  http://ebolastats.info/
  ======
  lotsofmangos
  Donation pages for Médecins Sans Frontières:
  
  [http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation](http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation)
  
  [https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/](https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/)
  
  I have been posting these two links to quite a few Ebola threads. I am not
  associated with MSF, I just think it is a very good idea to send them money.
  
  If you are feeling brave and have appropriate medical experience, it would be
  even better to volunteer with them, as they are more in need of medical staff
  right now than money.
  
  ~~~
  swombat
  I made a donation of £1k in the middle of last month, when it seemed like MSF
  was the only organisation doing anything about this. Since then, the WHO and
  the US Govt look like they pulled their thumbs out of their arses... but
  they're still taking their sweet time. MSF is on the ground right now.
  
  I run a successful business. If there's one business risk I don't want to deal
  with, it's a highly contagious haemorrhagic fever spreading through the world
  like fire through gunpowder.
  
  If you run a business and you want it to continue to grow and exist, donate to
  MSF. Forget the charity - this is for your own sake.
  
  ~~~
  oskarth
  I know you make it out to be a selfish thing, and while that might be true on
  some level, it's fundamentally a selfless act. It's actions like these that
  are the opposite of the tragedy of the commons. If even 10% of people with
  means acted in a similar way, the world would be a better place in very
  tangible ways.
  
  ------
  DocSavage
  NPR has a good infographic on the infectiousness of Ebola relative to other
  agents:
  
  [http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-
  seri...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-
  how-contagious-is-ebola)
  
  ~~~
  robomartin
  The problem with averages is they can break down pretty quickly when facing
  reality. Example from yesterday: I took my kids fishing on a party boat. Lots
  of kids on the boat. They congregated around the live bait tank. I noticed one
  kid who was obviously sick. He was coughing constantly all over the place. I
  watched him cough directly into other kid's faces. And, I am not talking about
  a gentle cough at all. He coughed on nearly every surface he came into contact
  with. If this kid was carrying active ebola or something else I would guess
  twenty to thirty people may have been exposed. I made it a point to have my
  kids avoid him, yet, in that scenario, there is no way to control exposure.
  For example, everyone shared one bathroom. With over 50 people onboard, the
  "about 2" idea is just a suggestion and in two or three weeks it goes
  exponential.
  
  Yes, I tried to find the irresponsible parent and even asked the captain to
  make an announcement. He couldn't care less, which further throws off the
  "about two" rule in the face of reality.
  
  ~~~
  nostrademons
  But there's a further difference between the common cold and ebola: a cold
  spreads through aerosols, so all those kids standing around the sick one are
  breathing in live virus. Ebola spreads only through infected bodily fluids, so
  he'd have to be vomiting directly on the other kids for them to catch it.
  Usually by the time someone is vomiting or bleeding from Ebola, they feel far
  too sick to go on a fishing trip.
  
  While it's possible that Ebola could mutate and become airborne (this is the
  plot of the movie _Outbreak_ , after all), scientist believe it pretty
  unlikely. In humans, it preferentially attacks the gastrointestinal track, and
  virus loads are pretty low in the respiratory system.
  
  So yes, averages do obscure specific circumstances that affect reality.
  However, the averages are low _because_ the specific circumstances that would
  cause high averages are rare.
  
  ~~~
  asciimo
  According to the CDC,
  
  "Although coughing and sneezing are not common symptoms of Ebola, if a
  symptomatic patient with Ebola coughs or sneezes on someone, and saliva or
  mucus come into contact with that person’s eyes, nose or mouth, these fluids
  may transmit the disease."
  
  [http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas.html](http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas.html)
  
  ~~~
  vasilipupkin
  yes, but it doesn't get transmitted through the air. You have to literally
  sneeze on someone not in their general vicinity
  
  ------
  Alex3917
  Once the number of ebola patients exceeds the number of beds (which has
  already happened), won't the growth rate look pretty much linear regardless of
  the actual numbers?
  
  ~~~
  DigitalJack
  I would have thought it would look exponential.
  
  ~~~
  Alex3917
  Well if you have the capability to diagnose 500 patients per month, then you
  are going to be reporting around 500 new infections each month regardless of
  whether there are 500 or 500,000. Some of the articles from last week made it
  sound like most of the blood testing labs are already at capacity, which would
  make these numbers basically meaningless.
  
  ~~~
  maaku
  Not all patients are diagnosed in hospital.
  
  ------
  dons
  [http://cpid.iri.columbia.edu/](http://cpid.iri.columbia.edu/) uses
  statistical models of infection and has predictive capabilities.
  
  ------
  AtlasLion
  Can someone please explain to me the cause of the sudden outbreak? The ebola
  virus doesn't seem to be that new. Here in an excerpt from a Patent dating
  back to 2008:
  
  "The family Filoviridae consists of two genera, Marburgvirus and Ebolavirus,
  which have likely evolved from a common ancestor'. The genus Ebolavirus
  includes four species: Zaire, Sudan, Reston and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
  ebolaviruses, which have, with the exception of Reston and Cote d'Ivoire
  ebolaviruses, been associated with large hemorrhagic fever (HF) outbreaks in
  Africa with high case fatality (53-90%)2."
  
  [http://www.google.com/patents/CA2741523A1?cl=en](http://www.google.com/patents/CA2741523A1?cl=en)
  
  ~~~
  tomjen3
  The other outbreak has been (as far as I understand) in super remote areas
  where you are not going to infect others.
  
  This one made the leap into the slums.
  
  ------
  marvin
  Would be nice to also see these statistics on a logarithmic plot - the purely
  selfish concern in the Western world is whether the epidemic is still in
  unchecked exponential growth, or if the growth rate is slowing.
  
  ~~~
  nfg
  It's getting the stats from here:
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Af...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa#Timeline_of_cases_and_deaths)
  There's a log plot on that page:
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evolution_of_the_2014_Ebol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evolution_of_the_2014_Ebola_outbreak_in_semiLog_plot..png)
  
  ~~~
  collypops
  Here's another visualisation I put together, based on the same data collected
  on Wikipedia. It tries to mix a narrative with the growing number of
  cases/deaths.
  
  [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-31/ebola-timeline-
  deadlie...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-31/ebola-timeline-deadliest-
  outbreak/5639060)
  
  ~~~
  zhte415
  Nice. I placed a link to New:
  [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8415886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8415886)
  
  ------
  njx
  Here is a dataset on Github [https://github.com/jf22/ZEBOV-2013-WAfrica-
  data/blob/master/...](https://github.com/jf22/ZEBOV-2013-WAfrica-
  data/blob/master/SEIRDh_data_flat.txt)
  
  And corresponding visualization
  [https://my.infocaptor.com/dash/i.php?viz=njendjlm&mode=embed](https://my.infocaptor.com/dash/i.php?viz=njendjlm&mode=embed)
  
  ------
  omg2k
  Is the graph cumulative or showing the number of people who are currently
  being treated for Ebola?
  
  ~~~
  3rd3
  Correct. There are about 3300 reported deaths:
  [http://healthmap.org/ebola/#timeline](http://healthmap.org/ebola/#timeline)
  
  ------
  robomartin
  Must not ignore the footnote:
  
  "WHO has stated the reported numbers "vastly underestimate the magnitude of
  the outbreak", saying there may be 2.5 times as many cases as officially
  reported [Reuters]. Cases in remote areas may also be missed."
  
  ------
  3327
  My math is a little rusty but that reminds me of e^x.
  
  ~~~
  gms7777
  You're not far off. Not an epidemiologist, but I think these sorts of things
  generally follow a logistic (S-shaped or sigmoid) curve (1/1+e^-x). Initial
  growth is approximately exponential, then you hit a point of saturation,
  growth slows, and eventually levels off.
  
  ~~~
  tomjen3
  The key question is how long does it take for it to level of?
  
  Right now it its infecting 1.7 persons per infected person (avg) so it is
  still growing, however it is also in the slums of the poorest area on earth.
  
  ------
  taivare
  Anyone is free to use this donation poster to bring awareness.
  [http://bit.ly/1vF1COO](http://bit.ly/1vF1COO)
  
  ------
  edvinasbartkus
  Looks like Startup Growth
  
  ~~~
  TeMPOraL
  In this case I would really appreciate it having an exit and killing the
  product.
  
  ~~~
  pyre
  The real question is who can you convince to make it a talent acquisition?
  
  