"DohaBob
10 October 2014 9:58am
It's only two months since you told us not to worry because each ebola sufferer only infects one other person, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/ebola-worrying-disease , now you're telling us not to worry because each ebola sufferer only infects two other people. So you've gone from a linear infection rate to an exponential one, presumably with the doubling rate taking place every two or three weeks at the time when the patient is obviously infected.
If the doubling takes place every two weeks, then if just one person in the UK was infected it would only take a year to infect the entire population of the country (2 to the power 26 is roughly 67 million).
You cite the 1918 flu pandemic as the sort of thing that should really worry us, rather than something like ebola. But flu has an Ro transmission rate of around 1.5-2.5 .... the same as ebola, and the mortality rate from Spanish Flu was 2.5%, compared with around 50% to 70% for ebola. This indicates that ebola is very much more dangerous than something you say "we should worry about far more".
So I think that you are being far too blase about it. We shouldn't panic but we should do everything in our power to stop this disease in its tracks as soon as possible and before it becomes unstoppable. Articles like this seem likely to undermine efforts to fight ebola as vigorously as is necessary."
source: comments, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/09/ebola-highly-contagious-virus-myths-outbreak-epidemic
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