It wasn't just me..the Olive Garden IS trying to KILL ME!

Details here. Well, the Olive Garden is attempting to kill its customers in slo-mo. I am not a patron of any restaurant chain.

Heck, being a New Hampshirite, it is almost sacrilegious to pass on Dunkin Donuts. Those things are for other people.

I am going to nosh. Perhaps I can dig up something sciencey whilst I dine.

Ebola transmission rate in current outbreak, similar to previous outbreaks..

If there is any positive news in the West African ebola outbreak it is that an analysis of transmission rates are consistent with those of previous outbreaks in central Africa. The reason that this is not bad news is that given the 350-400 mutations of abola virus found in the current epidemic, the same routes of transmission are likely the only ones occurring.

Meanwhile, in the DRC......

the WHO reports a doubling of the case number to 62, with a current case fatality rate(CFR) of 58%. Of course, it is not known just how many of those infected are still in danger of being added to the CFR.

If you read the first linked to article, you will not that the individual transmission rate climbed from 1.4 to 1.7 in a month. That may not sound like a huge difference, but over time the numbers continually diverge. Do the simple math over say 20 generations of infection. The small difference in the starting condition leads to a huge difference in outcomes. Additionally, since the infection rate ramped up dramatically in but one month, it is unlikely to stay at the same rate. The current infection rate may be higher or lower. The simple month long growth in infection rate is--at least on the surface--very troubling.

I did a straight line analysis of the two transmission rates to 19 generations after patient zero. Here are the results for a 1.4 transmission rate:

1 2nd 1.4 3rd 1.96 4th 2.77 5th 3.84 6th 5.38 7th 7.53 8th 10.55 9th 14.77 10th 20.68 11th 29.0 12th 40.6 13th 56.84 14th 79.5 15th 111.3 16th 155.8 17th 218.1 18th 305.3 19th 427.5 20th 598.5

And for a 1.7 transmission rate:

1 2nd 1.7 3rd 2.9 4th 8.4 5th 14.3 6th 24.31 7th 41.3 8th 119.4 9th 195.5 10th 332.35 11th 565 12th 960.5 13th 1632.9 14th 2776 15th 4719 16th 8022 17th 13637 18th 23183 19th 39411 20th 67000

That is quite sobering. Oh, the math isn't perfect as I rounded some figures lest I get lots of noise on the right side of the decimal point.

This simple math applies to interest rates as well. That's all it really is. Of course epidemics do not progress like this forever. I just wanted to illustrate the very basic data as pointed to in this article.

I am just a lay lackey. My little exercise does point to a potentially very bad outcome should the infection rate continue to progress at the higher rate.

It is 09.11.2001 all over again in the US

Why oh why do we have to be reminded year and again about the tragic events of 09.11.2001? The attacks resulted in less than 3,000 fatalities. One is 6.5 times more likely to be killed by excessive temperatures than by a terrorist attack. Cops are roughly 9 times more likely to kill you than terrorists. I know that thinking rationally is not a national sport, but as a country I think that once every decade is enough to commemorate 09.11.2001. One can call me Un-American, but I am not the one bringing up the greatest failure of national security on these shores up every year.

In other Un-American news, that duck guy apparently spilled a bunch of nonsense to some other ultra-reactionary type, but you get no link. The self-aggrandizing duck plucker gets no links to his god derived bullshit. Let us face a very puzzling fact about this or that god fellow. There has never been any independently verifiable evidence that even hints at "his" existence. Yet the cult of believers seems to go on undiminished. I will let you in a bit of what duck guy allegedly said... he said that AIDS among other things are this maddeningly difficult to pin down god bloke's revenge against homosexual behavior. If this is indeed true, why dopes god hate hemophiliacs, chimpanzees, hetero couples that happen to get AIDS, and other groups? Idiots gonna keep on bein' idiots.

Is that duck show still on? I do not know. I am all for free speech, but I am not for error riddled free speech. Unfortunately, we have to take the bad with the worse in the USofA.

One thing ends(waiting for the whyPhone) and one thing is really only beginning(the ebola outbreaks)

Apple released details and pricing of the the various whyPhone 6 yesterday. It's odd, my $30 LG Android phone w/KitKat has a microSD slot--it even came with a paltry 4GB card installed--Apple still does not offer expandability in any whyPhone. My $30 expandable phone is also unlocked. A 64GB iPhone (not the special model, but whyPhone Lite) is $300. I snagged a 64GB class 10 card for $28. Is my phone as good as the iPhione 6 Lite? I dunno. My phone is pretty fast, it is unlocked, and now sports 72GB of memory for nearly 90% less.

I should add that my phone is not jailbroken either. I am sure Apple will sell lots of them. I hope so, as two semiconductor companies in which I have a vested interest in are whyPhone chip suppliers.

No one I know is pining for the whyWatch.

That may not be saying much as the people I discuss such matters with are timepiece purists. It looks like a $350 novelty.

Time claims that we "What We Know About Ebola Hasn’t Changed Much".

I think it more accurate to state that Time does not know much about ebola. Even given that ebola first entered the lexicon in 1976, much more is known about ebola than My Pet Illness: Borreliosis.

Heck, the Russians know enough about ebola to have reportedly have recombined ebola and Smallpox(variola major) into a bioweapon. It has been reported that this macabre weapon was discarded as it did not increase the fatality rate of one of the agents. The hyper virulent India-1 strain of smallpox is really scary.

I know, insertion of genes into at least some pox viruses can be done by any real researcher in the field of virology...and even by people with less training as once one is shown the technique, it is pretty mechanical.

Time does have newer case rates than has been widely reported. Again, in this case I really loathe being correct about the trajectory of the outbreak. It is now breathtaking, and getting worse with each passing day.

I need to steer this boat back on course.

Time is certainly aware that ebola research has been going on at USAMRIID since 1976<<--that article is a smasher!

I am sure that this is a real page turner: Filoviruses: A Compendium of 40 Years of Epidemiological, Clinical, and Laboratory Studies. The pub. is dated to 2007, and lots more has been done since then. A blurb:

The author details the history of all Marburg and Ebola outbreaks during the 40 years from the discovery of Marburg in 1967 to the latest Marburg outbreak in 2007 in Uganda, including difficult-to-find information. The clinical and pathologic presentations of Ebola and Marburg diseases in human and animal models contain a substantial number of black and white and color illustrations. With the range of the Ebola and Marburg viruses still unknown and the search for the animal reservoirs ongoing, antibody serosurveys in humans and animals have been conducted in most countries in Africa and in the Philippines after the Ebola Reston outbreaks; Kuhn dedicates a long chapter to this subject. All animal species tested are presented in tables but, more interestingly, also indexed at the end of the book. This information is particularly valuable for ecologists and epidemiologists searching for the reservoir of filoviruses.

Kuhn explains the structure and replication of the filoviruses, with the actual role of each gene of the virus from entry into the target cells to production of infectious virus. He lists diagnosis techniques and experimental treatments of the Marburg and Ebola diseases, from the traditional healers to the molecular antisenses RNA approaches. In the past 10 years, preexposure and postexposures vaccinations have resulted in tremendous progress in schedules, routes of administration, and more importantly, understanding mechanisms of action. Lack or efficacy of inactivated and live-attenuated constructs is reviewed of all testing in available animal models.

The CDC has 2,880 articles that at least mention ebola in just the Emerging Infectious Diseases module of the website. As much as Time may not acknowledge it, USAMRIID, the CDC, the WHO, and others have full time ebola researchers. USAMRIID, the CDC, and the WHO had all sent teams to Africa by 1980 in the midst of outbreaks. One has to wonder if Time's writers read The Hot Zone, and thought research on ebola stopped in 1994. I should note here that Preston's book is so antiquated as to be of nearly no use in understanding the current state of ebola research.

No doubt there will be lots of really awful books about the current African outbreaks.

One really good treatment of the outbreaks may be written sans Preston's anthropomorphisms.

What is really needed for a lay audience--and this includes me--is a treatment on a par with Siddhartha Mukherjee's treatment of cancers as found in: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer or John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Mukherjee's book is a really fantastic book; as a book. Batty's book is for readers that want the whole story. It could be excruciatingly boring to some people as much of the book is dedicated to the sociology behind how modern medicine came to be practiced. If you want it all, Barry's exhaustive work is a gem.

As I typed those last few sentences out I can see a need for both types of books. Should they be penned, I will own both.

Lyme incurable in some patients?

Chronic Lyme(we call it Borreliosis) patient runs out of medical options.

All those patients telling tales of not being cured of Borreliosis just might be ahead of the medical community.

There are lots of things that run counter to my understanding of Borreliosis in the article.

The EM rash rate is listed as 30%. I still believe that roughly 70% of infected persons get the EM rash.

Then there is this:

For Childs, her situation was different. She was bitten by a tick in Aptos at age 5 and diagnosed eight years later. Since then, she suffers from daily migraines, nausea, fatigue, body aches, joint pain and muscle aches.
Childs went through five years of treatment. She did three years of oral antibiotics and 18 months of intravenous antibiotics. After none of the treatments worked, she was told that her case of Lyme disease has no cure.

"Because I've done every treatment possible I'm planning on being sick for the rest of my life," Childs said.

The current thinking is that the lasting effects of Borreliosis likely stem from an autoimmune response. BUT, as we have seen time and again, the current thinking turns out to be grossly in error. The Borreliosis goalposts are in nearly constant flux. The medical care system in the US is all about cost containment. Borreliosis is looking like the lo-boil plague of the early 21st century. The approach to sufferers and research has been a long series of foot-dragging exercises. It is almost a world wide phenomenon. Africa has ricksettia, and Borreliosis has found a home on that continent as well. So, that leaves Australia in denial about Borreliosis on that continent..it is only s matter of time before the Aussies get in the game.

I think that Antarctica is likely to remain free of Borreliosis. Perhaps I can catch a ride on a Norwegian ship headed that way.

ON EDIT: I just started rereading Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. It is as good as I recall. I read it with a proper British accent ;) Highly recommended.

My ebola break is over..

I am simply going to toss out three things concerning ebola today, as I am under time pressure.

The WHO may have a hand in understimating the CFR in the current West African outbreak. The WHO is moving towards a more accurate methodology of measuring the CFR...although given all of the health crises around this blue rock, it may be some time before a more accurate model is effectively used.

Ebola in Liberis is far worse than yet reported, and--if you can believe this--far worse than imagined. When officials at the WHO use phrasing like "exponential increase"(of future cases) and "intense virus transmission" things are likely very grim. Even more grim news about Liberia's likely future ebola caseload here.

Obama finally sorta kinda makes the right call on ebola. As I previously posted, I was pretty sure that the US would not take a leading role until after the mid-term elections in the US. As part of Obama's pledge to combat The Outbreak he oddly quipped this: "If we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa, but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates, it becomes more easily transmittable, and then it could be a serious danger to the United States." So, it seems like a mid-term election ploy after all.

Obama's statement about the threat to the US requires a lot more comment, but I have to be off. Oh, there are lots of good quotes in the Obama piece. It is definitely worth one's time to watch, listen, and read.