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Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by pasta on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:23AM (#18953150)
What I read is that most outbreaks spread a kind of linear while Ebola spreads exponetial.

That's what is scary about Ebola. And ofcourse the fact there is still no cure.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by Retric on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:09AM (#18953354)
> no cure

Sort of, their are treatments that increase survival rates significantly. Supportive hospital care might not seem as useful as a wonder pill, but an IV drip can make a huge difference.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by api on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:46AM (#18953506)
Luckily it looks like having it once confers immunity.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/ask-well-immune-to...

Also bodes well for our ability to make a vaccine.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by pariahHN on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:20AM (#18953404)
There are vaccines being deployed but stocks are extremely limited. If I remember correctly, they are focusing on inoculating the social circles of known infected. But you can only inoculate someone's social circle if you know they have it...

It also doesn't help that medical teams sometimes get attacked by locals.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by egeozcan on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:31AM (#18953449)
EDIT: Ignore my question, apparently rumors and skepticism about modern medicine is why they attack medical teams: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-congo-attack...

> It also doesn't help that medical teams sometimes get attacked by locals

Who is attacking them for what reason? Anti-vacciners or something?

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by selectodude on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:34AM (#18953460)
Rural Africa has had bad luck when it comes to white people coming in and telling them what to do.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by jtbayly on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:14AM (#18953662)
Eating portions of their dead? I never heard that. I just heard that they weren’t able to do traditional funerals. Presumably that could be part of the traditional funeral, but I’ve got close friends and family I would have expected to hear that from. Do you have a reference?
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by davidmr on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:50AM (#18953934)
I just finished Virus Hunters of the CDC, a 1996 book written by a couple of CDC epidemiologists, one of which had led a couple of Ebola responses in (what was then) Zaire and CAR. (He was even on the team that named the disease for a river near the town the outbreak was in.)

He certainly didn’t mention cannibalism. They were most concerned about the ritual washing before burial. Apparently the bodies are cleansed, bowels washed, etc. Given how Ebola spreads, this was virtually a guarantee that anyone handling the dead would contract the disease.

Their biggest successes were in teaching families how to use gloves, masks, and bleach. Any danger the CDC teams were in seemed to be mostly limited to political instability.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by slowmovintarget on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:07AM (#18953614)
Another problem with the last outbreak is that one of the things Westerners were telling them to do was to stop eating portions of their dead. This is a tradition there, and local shamans started saying they were getting sick because they weren't honoring the tradition.

The last outbreak started from people eating infected bats. I'll have to read up on this one.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by wbl on Sunday January 20, 2019 @03:22PM (#18955358)
You are thinking of kuru.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by nkurz on Sunday January 20, 2019 @04:34PM (#18955752)
That too, but bats are also frequently associated with ebola: https://www.google.com/search?q=ebola+bats
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by dhh2106 on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:11AM (#18953360)
I thought all diseases spread exponentially, with the rate being determined by how contagious on one side and how deadly on the other?
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by lb1lf on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:32AM (#18953451)
...plus the -hm- incubation period?

That is - for how long you can transmit the disease without showing symptoms.

The nightmare, of course, being a highly contagious, very deadly disease which let its victims infect others for weeks or months before falling ill themselves.

I recall having read somewhere that a 'good' thing about ebola is that it mostly gets its victims before they've had a chance to travel very far, thus limiting its spread.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by toufiqbarhamov on Sunday January 20, 2019 @01:22PM (#18954574)
The nightmare, of course, being a highly contagious, very deadly disease which let its victims infect others for weeks or months before falling ill themselves.

That’s a very good description of Variola Major, and one reason (along with lethality and disfiguring effects) that it was so terrifying.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by ams6110 on Sunday January 20, 2019 @03:01PM (#18955246)
HIV/AIDS also.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by thaumasiotes on Sunday January 20, 2019 @04:07PM (#18955603)
HIV isn't very contagious. That is why dying of AIDS was a strong indicator that you were gay. If it had been able to spread easily, everyone would have had it rather than just a tiny subpopulation.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by api on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:47AM (#18953510)
Yes, what you describe is the classic doomsday disease.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by alien_ on Sunday January 20, 2019 @01:48PM (#18954758)
Sounds much like rabies.

The other critical feature is how easy it is passed on to a new victim, the worst scenario is being airborne.

Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by marcosdumay on Sunday January 20, 2019 @02:12PM (#18954925)
The simplified model is a sigmoid function, if it looks like exponential growth, exponentially dampened, or linear depends on where you are on the curve.