Ebola Deaths Could Top 100,000

by JASmius

....and rising:

New Ebola cases in West Africa could explode to nearly 100,000 — even as close to 200,000 — by the end of the year, according to a new study.

If the virus were to continue at the current transmission rate of 1.4 to 1.7 people for every new person infected, West Africa could gain 77,181 to 277,124 more cases by the end of 2014, Gerardo Chowell-Puente, a researcher at Arizona State University, told the Arizona Republic on Friday.

"The above scenario is highly unlikely as the intervention response is definitely improving," he said.

Sounds like every empty, BS assurance I've ever heard in every pandemic movie I've ever seen.

And sure enough....

But to illustrate how rapidly the epidemic is surging, the New York Times reported Friday that earlier predictions of 20,000 cases in a year had now worsened to projections of 20,000 a month. The fatality rate of Ebola is now somewhere between 70% and 90%, meaning most of those cases represent projected deaths.

Lone Simonsen, a research professor of global health at George Washington University, told the Times that estimates by the World Health Organization seemed conservative and the higher projections more reasonable.

“The final death toll may be far higher than any of those estimates unless an effective vaccine or therapy becomes available on a large scale or many more hospital beds are supplied,” she told the Times in an email.

His numbers envision a worst-case scenario, Chowell-Puente said. Each person infected with Ebola spreads the virus to as many as two others on average....

WHO officials consider the current numbers underestimates, because the outbreak is so widespread — and the situation so chaotic in so-called "hot zones" — that the agency cannot fully count the cases, the Canadian Press reports. [emphases added]

Can we just acknowledge that this Ebola outbreak has become a pandemic before there's nobody left to do the acknowledging that isn't a puddle of chunky salsa?  Of course not.  It's not in human nature to get in front of problems rather than futiley and languidly chase them from hopelessly behind.

It's also never good politics.  Speaking of which:

Piot and Kucharski called the Ebola epidemic a worldwide crisis that demanded a global response....

None of the efforts to contain the Ebola virus, however, will be successful until everything is centralized and coordinated through the United Nations, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Translation: the United States.  Because that's where the world turns for....leadership.

Damn, we're screwed on this as well, huh?

The U.N., he said in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, "is the only international organization that can direct the immense amount of medical, public health and humanitarian aid that must come from many different countries and nongovernmental groups to smother this epidemic.

Yep, we're screwed.  Or at least the Jews are, with Christians next in line.

"Thus far, it has played at best a collaborating role — and with everyone in charge, no one is in charge."

Sounds like the UN is already running the show to me.

Osterholm called for U.N. Security Council resolution giving the organization full responsibility for controlling the Ebola outbreak, "while respecting West African nations’ sovereignty as much as possible." [emphasis added]

Translation: While using this opportunity to turn West African nations entirely over to Islamic jihadist rule.

Maybe Boko Haram started this pandemic after all.  But it will get over here eventually, if it isn't already.  ISIS will see to that.