Ebola projection modelers: We are caught with our pants down!

But the modelers are hampered by the paucity of data on the current outbreak and lack of knowledge about how Ebola spreads. Funerals of Ebola victims are known to spread the virus, for example—but how many people are infected that way is not known. “Before this we have never had that much Ebola, so the epidemiology was never well developed,” says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “We are caught with our pants down.”

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Disease modelers project a rapidly rising toll from Ebola ..

The unknowns here is what actually likely could swamp the whole of human civilization because of air travel in this situation. The whole world could be infected in every single country with one or more cases and likely then you would have 10, or 20 or 30 in a country before the disease was reported anywhere locally and by then it might be too late to stop it from spreading further in that country. We presently are looking at a potential disaster that we haven't seen since the 1918 flu epidemic that killed more U.S. soldiers than World War I.

 

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic - virus

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

History of this pandemic, the public health measures taken to limit it, and the efforts of scientists to pinpoint its cause.

‎Statistics from the Influenza ... - ‎New sciences - ‎The Public Health Response

1918 flu pandemic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

Wikipedia

The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza ...

‎H1N1 - ‎Cytokine storm - ‎Influenza pandemic - ‎Aspirin poisoning