27-Sep-14 World View -- WHO: Unprecedented emergencies

[John]

Here's some speculation.

Suppose Ebola starts spreading through heavily populated regions,
including some in China. Question: Will that make a preemptive
military attack on the U.S. more or less likely?

It's possible that they'll do the calculation that with missiles
coming down on both sides, Ebola will take the lives of both
populations, and so there's no point in launching a war.

Pretty Pollyannaish, I know, but probably not out of the question.

Or, the opposite could happen. They may decide they want to make sure
that we get as much Ebola as they're getting, so they may add some
Ebola virus to the nuclear missile attacks.

[Tom Mazanec]

Let's be optimistic ( ) and say we contain it to Africa, where it kills most of the population. Many millions of them will be Muslims. Could the death of so many co-religionists, while the "infidel" world enforces a quarantine, further radicalize Islam, leading possibly to wars in Middle-East and/or South Asia that spiral into WWIII?

[gerald]

hmmm

I am currently reading "The Collapse of Complex Societies " by Joseph A. Tainter published 1988.

There is a thread in the book that complex societies by and large, collapse due to the grasping and power hungry needs of the elites, their ever expanding percentage of the population and continuous demand for more. This causes an ever increasing tax on the productive leading eventually to a decrease in tax collections, caused by restrictive actions on the productive. The productive then rebel by emigrating from the elites control or if unable to, revolt either by active physical revolt or passive revolt buy reducing or stopping productive activity. Simply stated the productive look at the elites in a cost benefit manner , What do I get in return for my productivity? Is it worth the cost? If not? Why should I support the elites?

This is based upon the study of societies, some going back almost 4,000 years.

Look around the world --- same old, same old.

interesting

[NoOneImportant]

John wrote:

Here's some speculation.

Suppose Ebola starts spreading through heavily populated regions,
including some in China. Question: Will that make a preemptive
military attack on the U.S. more or less likely?

It's possible that they'll do the calculation that with missiles
coming down on both sides, Ebola will take the lives of both
populations, and so there's no point in launching a war.

Pretty Pollyannaish, I know, but probably not out of the question.

Or, the opposite could happen. They may decide they want to make sure
that we get as much Ebola as they're getting, so they may add some
Ebola virus to the nuclear missile attacks.

John, looking back into history a bit here are a couple of observations.

1. The Spanish Flu epidemic that raged during the last year of WW-I. It is difficult to say with precision whether the epidemic had a definitive impact on the conduct of the war or not, but most of the literature about the conduct of the war doesn't even mention the magnitude of the epidemic regarding the conduct of the war.

What occurs to me is that, in so far as epidemics are concerned, there is little impact regarding strategic thinking, in that those who succumb to disease are viewed much like combat casualties -- they just disappear, and are just not available for use, such was also noted in the US Civil War. In past conflicts the disease caused "random" absence in no direct manner affected the combat mentality of the combat conduct of the war. You used what you had. The question is will this method of thinking continue? Wars have two primary reasons for termination, military defeat causing wholesale loss of life by one of the antagonists, or logistical deprivation causing one of the antagonist to no longer be able to conduct hostile operations, thus mandating suing for peace, or face total destruction in the field. It is interesting to note that though we are almost 65 years into the Nuclear Age nuclear armed nation states have not abandoned the purpose and place of national "massive" conventionally armed military organizations, in spite of the fact that since 8/6/1945 there have been no major nation state - nation state conventional conflicts, with Korea coming the closest. Proxy wars, and asymmetric warfare have evolved to be the preferred method of conducting combat operations - as they limit the prospect of unlimited nuclear escalation with the resultant direct, and indirect widely disbursed geographic destruction.

One of the maxims of warfare is: "... generals are always preparing to fight the last war, not the next war...." One of the major impediments to the use of bio weapons is that their spread is not predicable, and few nation states have the expensive capability to engineer, and produce the bio pathogens necessary to be immediately effective. The genetic structure of the pathogens also make stealth impossible - if it is your strain of pathogen killing everybody it is probably futile trying to convince anyone that you didn't do the foul deed. Ebola is different, it is in the wild, if you will. Doing a forensic analysis of the pathogen will simply lead back to West Africa, thus leaving no "smoking gun", or finger prints, as to who, specifically, is responsible for the event -- which leads us to the second observation.

2. The use of disease in war has a long history. In the middle ages plague victims were catapulted into heavily defended besieged strong points, thus causing the ravaging of those being besieged. John, your analysis re: West Africa appears accurate to me. Ebola will continue on unabated until all the vulnerable have died or recovered. Within the last few days I have come to see little differentiation between West Africa, and the rest of the world. The medical infrastructure that has been so touted in the media is a house of cards trying to contain the onslaught of a bowling ball. Having read several accounts of the Spanish Flu 1918 account at Ft. Devens, Mass., the onslaught was so fast, and so unexpected that all medical facilities were simply swept away within days. The numbers were so unbelievable that Washington send a personal representative to Devens just to verify the enormity of the numbers.

While Ebola, with sufficient effort, may yet be contained. We have been setting the stage for a pathogen like Ebola since the late 1920s. The transformation of America, followed by the world, from an agrarian society to an urban society has set the stage for some future pathogen to sweep away a large segment of humanity -- not just West Africa. If we presume that Ebola is a hemorrhagic flu, then the expertise probably exists in the pharma industry to create several hundred million doses of an immunization within 6 - 8 months. If Ebola is suffiecntly different and a vaccine cannot be created then it is reasonable to expect your West Africa analysis may be expanded globally. A quick look at the 1348 plague in Europe shows that the plague re-erupted every 8-12 years in Europe until the remaining population of Europe, as a whole, inherited a genetic immunity, after which the epidemics died out in the early 1400s (just a guess on my part).

Absent the development of a vaccine for Ebola, and/or its containment one may argue as to whether it really matters whether 2 - 3 billion people world wide are swept away by nuclear conflict, or pestilence.

[Rolf]

Spanish Flu could spread through the air, but Ebola cannot. So it shouldn't spread as quickly as Spanish Flu.

[NoOneImportant]

Rolf wrote:

Spanish Flu could spread through the air, but Ebola cannot. So it shouldn't spread as quickly as Spanish Flu.

No contest regarding Ebola not being airborne at this point; but it does infect without touching when in proximity when aerosolized -- not sure that anyone, at this point knows, just exactly what that means... does the aerosol infect within 2 feet, 3 feet, 8 feet, or 15 feet, or some other arbitrary distance? What is known is that research has demonstrated that non human primates became infected with Zire Ebola -- the pathogen of interest -- when kept in an environment where the aerosolized Ebola from infected pigs was present.

While I am just a computer/semiconductor geek with a reasonable understanding of statistics, and I certainly am not an epidemiologist (in fact in school I avoided bio like the plague -- no pun intended) the plague was not airborne either, but was in fact bacterial, and it wiped away 2/3s of Europe. Further, after its initial occurrence, it resurfaced repeatedly over the succeeding 50 year period.

The point is that we currently live in a world with people crawling all over each other; cities with literally 10s of millions of people in them, many of those cities with abysmal sanitary conditions. Like the plague, Ebola is spread via aerosolized droplets, and has persistence in the environment. Perhaps Ebola isn't the pathogen to cause a pandemic, but then again, isn't this already a pandemic? Maybe the pathogen to be feared is some other common antibiotic-resistant mutant bacteria, or some other mutant virus. The point is: how we now live is ripe for such an event; we live in a sewage soup with all the waste flowing indiscriminately into a common cesspool with only the most vigorous forms of life surviving. With Ebola maybe the global impact doesn't happen in 2 - 3 years, perhaps it takes 5, but with a 70% mortality rate, short of the formulation of a vaccine, I see no significant reason that John's analysis for West Africa doesn't circle the globe. With Texas as a model, and having lived in Dallas for years, Presbyterian Hospital is a fine hospital. The essence is that the American medical infrastructure is simply not designed, or prepared for this sort of event - my reference to the Spanish Flu is to illustrate just how vulnerable we are, not to compare the pathogens.

Having read all of the detailed pharmacological information sheets for most of the prescription drugs given to me, or my family over a lifetime I have obtained the capability to trudge, albeit slowly, my way through a medical technical info sheet, or a pathogen research report. I read them, not to become a doctor, or a researcher, but for understanding -- going to the horses mouth, as it were. Certainly it is slow reading, but all of the technical terms are found in a dictionary... its a read for information and understanding.

This is how it seems to me...but then again, what do I know?

[Trevor]

I've been looking at the ebola outbreak for some time. I doubt it's going to be 1.4 million cases by January. If you look at the pattern, the numbers of cases and deaths are doubling about every month. At that rate, we'll have 36,000 cases and 18,000 deaths. Still bad, but not the worst-case scenario that the CDC and WHO are warning about.

[gerald]

I've been looking at the ebola outbreak for some time. I doubt it's going to be 1.4 million cases by January. If you look at the pattern, the numbers of cases and deaths are doubling about every month. At that rate, we'll have 36,000 cases and 18,000 deaths. Still bad, but not the worst-case scenario that the CDC and WHO are warning about.

hmmm we shall see -- hope you are right

Ebola In Context: Liberia Needs 80,000 Body Bags & 1 Million HazMat Suits

Excerpted from Liberia Ministry of Health and Social Welfare's Ebola SitRep October 10th 2014

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-1 ... zmat-suits

Of course they could just be corrupt and see an opportunity to line their pockets.

[Trevor]

Even at its current rate, however, it's still rather terrifying. It just means reaching a million cases will take until around May or June to reach that level, assuming nothing is able to halt the infection and at this point, that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The response reminds me a lot of the AIDS epidemic, especially in the way we're handling it. Right now, the government's saying there's little threat to us, even though another health care worker has come down with it. Our assistance to West Africa is also very slow, even though the number of cases continue to skyrocket. By the time we treat it as a major threat, it'll likely be too late.

[John]

> I've been looking at the ebola outbreak for some time. I doubt
> it's going to be 1.4 million cases by January. If you look at the
> pattern, the numbers of cases and deaths are doubling about every
> month. At that rate, we'll have 36,000 cases and 18,000
> deaths. Still bad, but not the worst-case scenario that the CDC
> and WHO are warning about.

When the number of cases reaches 1.4 million depends on the
exponential growth rate. A month ago, they were saying that the
number of infections doubles every two weeks. Now I'm hearing either
3 weeks or 4 weeks.

So I'm wondering:

• Were they underestimating the time a month ago?
• Are the overestimating the time now?
• Has the doubling time actually increased because people are
  getting better educated?
• Has the doubling time actually increased because the population is
  getting saturated? (This is contradicted by reports that Ebola is
  spreading to new areas.)

The WHO spokesman said that there are 1000 new infections per week
now, and there will be 10000 new infections per week in two months.
That implies that the doubling time is log(10)/log(2) = 3.3 weeks.