More thoughts on ebola
People keep showing up at hospitals scared that they have ebola and every one says "have you been in West Africa in the last 21 days? Has someone dying of ebola vomited on you? No? You don't have ebola."
I understand why they say that. It will be true 95% of the time. But the 21 day thing is just the two sigma spread. 5%of the cases have longer incubation periods. And semen is contagious for at least ninety days. I just read a humorous story about a West African who showed up claiming she felt sick and - haha - the pregnancy test was positive. See, that's all it was! Except, those frontline medical providers should have then asked if she had had sex with any West Africans who had (or went on to have) ebola. (And, by the way, sometimes we have sex with people whose medical history we don't have.)
Meanwhile, geometric progression. It starts out low. I heard someone quipping that more Americans had been dumped by Taylor Swift than had died of ebola. Someone else pointed out that more people were killed by toppling bookshelves and unsecured big screen TVs than ebola. And, of course, the R0 is relatively low. The implication is that only people who are paranoid need mind. But to me, all they are saying is that they are bad at math. Sure, geometric progression starts out small. They are expecting 10,000 cases a week next month in West Africa, and this is all coming from a toddler bitten by a bat last December. Geometric progression, people.
The CDC is declining to test people for ebola. Everyone has a strong vested interest in not finding it. That hospital in Dallas sustained a massive economic hit. So did Frontier Airlines, and Carnival Cruise lines, and that bridal shop in Cleveland.
So it is far more palatable to decide not to find it. Probably unexamined assumptions: it will burn itself out without much notice in our superior western world. Also unexamined: who cares if some Liberians die in Baltimore? This woman was probably an immigrant, probably uninsured, probably young and probably black. It is almost naive to think that she would be listened to, believed, credited with knowing something about ebola that the nurses in the Emergency Department don't know. They laugh at poor uneducated black women ten times a day.
I think ebola is likely to get into the community here (5% of the time the "have you been in West Africa in the last 21 days" filter will fail) and it will spread.
Because people are arrogant.
I understand why they say that. It will be true 95% of the time. But the 21 day thing is just the two sigma spread. 5%of the cases have longer incubation periods. And semen is contagious for at least ninety days. I just read a humorous story about a West African who showed up claiming she felt sick and - haha - the pregnancy test was positive. See, that's all it was! Except, those frontline medical providers should have then asked if she had had sex with any West Africans who had (or went on to have) ebola. (And, by the way, sometimes we have sex with people whose medical history we don't have.)
Meanwhile, geometric progression. It starts out low. I heard someone quipping that more Americans had been dumped by Taylor Swift than had died of ebola. Someone else pointed out that more people were killed by toppling bookshelves and unsecured big screen TVs than ebola. And, of course, the R0 is relatively low. The implication is that only people who are paranoid need mind. But to me, all they are saying is that they are bad at math. Sure, geometric progression starts out small. They are expecting 10,000 cases a week next month in West Africa, and this is all coming from a toddler bitten by a bat last December. Geometric progression, people.
The CDC is declining to test people for ebola. Everyone has a strong vested interest in not finding it. That hospital in Dallas sustained a massive economic hit. So did Frontier Airlines, and Carnival Cruise lines, and that bridal shop in Cleveland.
So it is far more palatable to decide not to find it. Probably unexamined assumptions: it will burn itself out without much notice in our superior western world. Also unexamined: who cares if some Liberians die in Baltimore? This woman was probably an immigrant, probably uninsured, probably young and probably black. It is almost naive to think that she would be listened to, believed, credited with knowing something about ebola that the nurses in the Emergency Department don't know. They laugh at poor uneducated black women ten times a day.
I think ebola is likely to get into the community here (5% of the time the "have you been in West Africa in the last 21 days" filter will fail) and it will spread.
Because people are arrogant.