More Ebola!

As I suspected(see most of my any entries concerning the West African ebola outbreak), things are likely far, far worse than the official reports that have simply implanted numbers in lieu of confirmation of additional cases. Now the WHO is reporting that the West African ebola outbreak could exceed 20,000 cases before it is extinguished. The dope:

The World Health Organisation said Thursday it aimed to reverse the spread of Ebola within three months, but warned that the caseload in West Africa's epidemic could eventually top 20,000.

In a new anti-Ebola plan, the UN health agency said it aimed to reverse the trend within three months, with the final aim of stopping "all residual transmission within 6-9 months".

It said the current case-count -- 3,062, with 1,552 deaths -- was likely several times lower than the actual number, and that the number of infections "could exceed 20,000 over the course of this emergency".

"This Roadmap assumes that in many areas of intense transmission the actual number of cases may be 2-4 fold higher than that currently reported," it said.

"It acknowledges that the aggregate case load of (Ebola) could exceed 20,000 over the course of this emergency," it added.

The plan called for a massive ramping up of efforts to contain and defeat the epidemic.

It put a price tag of $490 million on a six-month campaign, saying the money would need to come from WHO coffers as well as other aid agencies and governments.

Now that is sobering. The "final aim of stopping '"all residual transmission within 6-9 months"' is really eye opening as that time frame is to begin once the new influx of monies and personnel are in place and working.

I think that it can safely be said at this juncture that no one really knows just what the fuck is going on with this new strain of ebola and just how large of an issue this epidemic is becoming.

Since lots of my speculations do come to pass(anyone buy an Amazon Fire phone?) I will allow myself a bit of speculation here. This strain of ebola--with its nearly 400 mutations--has become more easily transmissible in human-to-human contact. I make no claim as to which route this transmission takes, but if one looks at the clues, one can see that it really does strongly appear different this time.

New strain. Staggering amounts of health workers infected, and once the mutations were published in Science, countries started pulling medical personnel out the embattled area. Now none of this is evidence of a new mode off transmission, but I must speculate every week or so about something.

So far I think that my observations concerning the West African Ebola Outbreak of 2014 have been quite accurate.

Oh, a couple of things.

Yesterday, I used the acronym "CFR" without an explanation. In that instance CFR stood in for "Case Fatality Rate."

I should add that my speculations are only that. I certainly hope that this new strain of ebola has not made the species jump into easy human-to-human transmission. That would be really bad. I only offer an easier mode as pure speculation backed up by no facts. I really, really hope that my speculation proves false.