Alessandro Vespignani is a physicist from Northeastern University in Boston.. He worked up a model of how Ebola has spread so far and how it may continue to do so in the coming months. Presented in these numbers: A very horrid time is coming to West Africa. And maybe the world thereafter?
SCIENCE has the full story of the study.. Kai Kupferschmidt writes this to summarize the troubling potential visitor of death at the planet’s door step:
Alessandro Vespignani hopes that his latest work will turn out to be wrong. In July, the physicist from Northeastern University in Boston started modeling how the deadly Ebola virus may spread in West Africa. Extrapolating existing trends, the number of the sick and dying mounts rapidly from the current toll—more than 3000 cases and 1500 deaths—to about 10,000 cases by 24 September, and hundreds of thousands in the months after that. “The numbers are really scary,” he says—although he stresses that the model assumes control efforts aren’t stepped up. “We all hope to see this NOT happening,” Vespigani writes in an e-mail.
This would be dramatic..
What troubles me, as well, is how little we may know of Ebola is some locales. Consider this news today, for instance: Sudan is banning truth reporting about Ebola in the nation..
The director of the CDC confirms what we all sort of know: Ebola is spiraling further out of control.. The world is about to lose the containment battle, and NEW cases of Ebola appear to be unrelated to the current strain, according to a FORBES report today written by David Kroll..
That is important.. and that is bad. New strain.
If any strain goes airborne? well.. all bets are off.
And the betting so far has been off anyway..