from Hacker News

Leaked documents: Ugandan government expects explosion in Ebola cases

by msyoung2012 on 11/8/22, 3:46 PM with 182 comments

  • by martey on 11/8/22, 4:20 PM

    I think the Telegraph article ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... ) that this blog post is based on is a better read. It makes clear that the idea that the outbreak will become "out of control" is from an anonymous source, not the leaked documents.

  • by cmrivers on 11/8/22, 4:55 PM

    The outbreak in Uganda is troubling, but a forecast that goes out 6+ months is silly. No professional infectious disease modeler will forecast out more than a few weeks because the trajectory of the outbreak changes in response to interventions and behaviors.

  • by exhilaration on 11/8/22, 4:24 PM

    The headline is scary but #1 Ebola isn't airborne and #2 it's super deadly which means it kills before it really has a chance to spread widely.

  • by photochemsyn on 11/8/22, 5:26 PM

    Comprehensive accessible review here:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495366/

    The virus apparently just wrecks the immune system right off the bat, allowing it to rampage throughout the body unchecked. Hence immune-system-support therapies are being worked on:

    > "EBOV is able to evade innate and adaptive (both humoral and cellular) responses by encoding for multiple viral proteins that inhibit both type-I IFNs synthesis and response, by masking viral epitopes by glycosylation processes, by deregulating inflammatory response, by preventing DC maturation, thus resulting in a catastrophic failure of innate and adaptive immunity. Thus host factors have a key role for viral replication and release, and may represent good targets for therapeutic strategies."

    The for-profit pharmaceutical system isn't that interested in this, as not many people or governments in Africa have the funds to pay for research, production, and what is it now, a guaranteed 15%+ profit margin?

  • by VBprogrammer on 11/8/22, 4:25 PM

    This title made me wonder, what ever happened to monkey pox. Turns out that it has more or less died away.

  • by msyoung2012 on 11/8/22, 3:46 PM

    Leaked documents show the Ugandan government is not expecting the current Ebola outbreak to be contained, but rather expect it to spread rapidly into the deadliest in Ugandan history, killing 500 and infecting at least 1200 by May of next year.

  • by 6stringmerc on 11/8/22, 4:40 PM

    The 60 Minutes episode that aired recently where they traveled to the hot spots in Africa is fascinating. We know about the inevitable. It is up to us humans what we do with this information. Case in point: COVID mask hostility in spite of caring for the health of fellow humans or getting it and denying it until it kills them (source: nurse friend on a cardiac ward in the Midwest). YMMV.

  • by Closi on 11/8/22, 7:58 PM

    The quality of forecasting here looks questionable IMO... Let's take the only visible leaked slide below:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/global-health/2022/1...

    1) The forecast appears to be "200 new cases per month" (i.e. Month 1 is 200 cases, Month 3 is 600 cases (3200) and Month 4 is 1200 cases (6200)). This is far too simplistic, and should probably follow an exponential/logistic curve if r>1.

    2) The graph has simple stats failures like plotting a line between a bar chart.

    Doesn't give me too much hope for the other 15 slides...

    (The above isn't to say that it isn't a scary situation - clearly this is an awful situation which needs a huge amount of support. But the apparent quality of analysis does worry me that decision makers might not be working on great information)

  • by max_ on 11/8/22, 6:52 PM

    Ebola is already out of control! There are reports of infectious people collapsing all over the Kampala(on social media) but the government hasn't initiated any covid level precautions.

    [0]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkkyFfrjv2D/?hl=en

  • by doodlebugging on 11/8/22, 7:41 PM

    For anyone who may be working in the epidemic response space I read that there may be problems getting PPE for the health care workers.

    There is a place that accepts products that are obsolete and reusable and they have a section dedicated to PPE since a lot of outfits obsoleted their PPE inventories once Covid was better controlled.

    They also have a shit-ton or more of other things that can be repurposed from their original tasks.

    Repurposed Materials - Sanitary stuff [0]

    [0]https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/sanitarystuff/

  • by alexk307 on 11/8/22, 6:07 PM

    You’re telling me Ebola-cases.com is not a reputable news source? /s

  • by nlitsme on 11/8/22, 6:10 PM

    just looking at the graph: why do they expect this to be linear?

    Their graph has two lines: (month 0 == december)

    - totalcases = 180*month+300

    - totaldeaths = 83*month+84

    Recent experience with covid shows that usually epidemics initially grow exponentially.

  • by tibbydudeza on 11/8/22, 5:25 PM

    They still have not identified the reservoir host (probably a fruit bat). African traditions of caring for a sick person and then bathing the dead is not helping either.

  • by ccbccccbbcccbb on 11/8/22, 8:46 PM

    Someone is just declaring their plans.