Ebola - my visual charts & projections based on WHO data

Just to let all of you know, the DOD says that monoatomic silver is the only proven killer of the Ebola virus. It literally tears open the viruses cell wall rendering it moot. If it does end up stateside, go get yourself some Sovereign Silver spray. It just may well save your life.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: ikonoklast

Brilliant, of course. Thanks much. ....Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says the rate of infection in West Africa is now exponential, not linear. Do you have exponential projections from August 1 with the new infection rate? [Not to be pushy and demanding but I'd love to see them.]

Thanks, and you're welcome.

Just to clarify, it's actually been exponential since the beginning, except for mostly brief periods. That's why what looks like an upward curve on a linear y-axis produces a relatively straight line sloped up when plotted with a logarithmic y-axis.

But I've been working on a better way of doing the projections for the last few days. The original projections were all too manual. Now I've got it to where the projections are generated automatically from the data in a spreadsheet.

Your request just happens to come at a time when I'm ready to post the first results of the new projections. I don't know how to estimate R0 from these, perhaps someone else can. But hopefully these graphs can at least give you a picture of how things are changing.

These new graphs show actual and projected total cases and total deaths. Each is shown with a y-axis that is logarithmic and then with a y-axis that is linear. On each graph there are several projection curves/lines. The legend to the right of each graph explains what each curve/line represents. Basically I computed the projections based on several time sets of known data:

1. Data since the first known case on December 2, 2014 through August 31, 2014
2. Data since May 27, 2014 through August 31, 2014
3. Data since July 2, 2014 through August 31, 2014
4. Data since August 1, 2014 through August 31, 2014 (as you requested)

To check how they correlated to the old projections, I checked the cases curves against the old manual projections. the green line on the old Chart 4 matches the line on Chart 4B produced from the data from July 2, 2014 through August 31, 2014. I think the results actually tell us a lot, and they definitely confirm that it's been accelerating again since August 1, 2014.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Charts and future projections were done by me, not by WHO. I am not an Ebola expert, epidemiologist, virologist, or MD, but I manually compiled the data used to create these graphs from news updates on the following WHO and New England Journal of Medicine websites:

SOURCE: WHO website 1

SOURCE: WHO website 2

SOURCE: WHO website 3

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine

The numbers in the charts do not yet include the Ebola outbreak in the Congo. Currently that is believed to be a different strain and it is believed to be unrelated to this outbreak. If that situation changes or if the Congo outbreak is not contained, I may add it to these charts or create separate charts.

DISCLAIMER: Please do not do anything you might regret based on projections. Hopefully efforts to contain, quarantine, treat, prevent, or cure Ebola will eventually be successful, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Reuters:

The death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone totalled 2,097 as at Sept 5, out of 3,944 cases, a WHO document said.

A further eight people have died in Nigeria, out of 23 cases, and 1 confirmed case in Senegal. That puts the death toll at a total of 2,105 and the number of patients so far at 3,968.

Source

And of course these numbers are not on the WHO website yet. Seems like part of a strategy to me.

So we have officially passed the 2,000 deaths mark.

a reply to: ikonoklast

Hi,
I have to ask if you do consulting work for data analysis ( writing a paper that could use some help)?? These are amazing!
This is a link to an article floating around in the phd blogs today. I have not read all of it but they did give an estimate for Ro.
Local transmission and the EVD dynamic in West Africa To estimate the key parameters, we consider data after 7 July 2014. As of that date, the outbreak had already been unfolding for several months and we can consider that interventions to reduce transmission were already in place, and thus included in the effective value of the transmissibility. By using the approach detailed in the Methods section for the EVD model including hospital and funeral settings 10, we estimate an overall basic reproductive number R0 = 1.8 [1.5 − 2.0] (interval at the 1/10 relative likelihood). The parsimonious SEIR model estimates R0 = 2.1 [1.9 − 2.4], although its relative likelihood is less than 1/100. In the Legrand et al. model 10 the basic reproductive number can be written as the sum of three terms relative to the transmission in the community, hospital and funeral settings, yielding RI = 0.8 [0.3 − 0.9], RH = 0.4 [0.2 − 1.4] and RF = 0.6 [0.2 − 1.0], respectively. The results suggest that although containment measures have been in place for several months, the likelihood of appreciable transmission in all settings is relevant. It must be noted however that the transmissibility in the various settings is difficult to determine as different partitions of the transmissibility can provide similar growth rates for the epidemic, and the available data may not be enough to discriminate otherwise. In Fig. 2 we plot the average behavior of the selected models compared to the WHO official data. The new data collected from the WHO after 9 August are within the 95% reference range of the projected behavior. Although this hints that the model is capturing the EVD dynamic in the West African regions, it also indicates that surveillance and containment measures are not yet sufficiently lowering the transmission rate to push the number of observed cases below the projected value.

a reply to: bella2256

I have to ask if you do consulting work for data analysis ( writing a paper that could use some help)?? These are amazing!
This is a link to an article floating around in the phd blogs today. I have not read all of it but they did give an estimate for Ro.

Thanks, glad you like the charts! I was an engineer for 20 years now, and I do some consulting work on the side. I'm not sure exactly what you need help with, or if it's something I would be able to help with. But once you have made 20 posts on ATS (I think that's still the requirement), you can send me a private message if you would like to discuss it.

Thanks for the info, maybe next time I update the graphs I will use July 7th rather than July 2nd for the one line if that's what the epidemiologists are going by now for projections.

Your link was broken, but I found the paper at this link.

a reply to: negue

And of course these numbers are not on the WHO website yet. Seems like part of a strategy to me.

Agreed. Trying not to balance panic and motivating fear.

a reply to: bella2256

I created a chart that is zoomed in to show the curves for July 1, 2014 through November 1, 2014 (based on data through August 31, 2014. I included a curve for the data since July 7, 2014 as that paper suggested.

Click to view full-size...

Here's what I see in these latest curves: Data generated using all data from the presumed first case projects the worst scenario. Data generated starting May 27, 2014 or later shows scenarios that are not as bad - but the later I start sampling the data, the worse the curves look, and the last official data from WHO continues that trend.

As soficrow suggested, it's getting worse faster (again) now. It's definitely not being contained yet. If this trend continues, the worst case curve may actually turn out to be the most accurate over a longer time period than is shown in this graph.

Unless something drastic changes, the models suggest the following:

By October 1, 2014 there will be between 6700-12,100 cases but most likely approximately 7500-8500 cases (7830 is what the data from July 7, 2014 through August 31, 2014 projects).

By November 1, 2014, there will be between 13,800-29,000 cases but most likely approximately 16,700-20,100 cases (17,748 is what the data from July 7, 2014 through August 31, 2014 projects).

Does anyone else find it a tad disturbing that media reports on the outbreak seem to have tapered off almost in line with the increasing severity of this situation? Certainly here in the UK I've neither seen or read much more about the outbreak barring a 30 second report on BBC News this morning. There is a four day quarantine being set up in Sierra Leone in order to try and contain this. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but 4 days of quarantine doesn't feel like it's going to help much??

a reply to: ikonoklast

I have updated the Ebola outbreak charts with the newest data from WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 2 that was released on September 5, 2014 (covering through the same date).

I'm going to split the charts over several posts since there are starting to be a lot of different charts now.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Chart 3 still has the unchanged line projections but with the new known data added.

The same disclaimers and references apply to all of these charts:

Charts and future projections were done by me, not by WHO. I am not an Ebola expert, epidemiologist, virologist, or MD, but I manually compiled the data used to create these graphs from news updates on the following WHO and New England Journal of Medicine websites:

SOURCE: WHO website 1

SOURCE: WHO website 2

SOURCE: WHO website 3

SOURCE: WHO website 4

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine

Please do not do anything you might regret based on projections. Hopefully efforts to contain, quarantine, treat, prevent, or cure Ebola will eventually be successful, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

The numbers do not yet include the Ebola outbreak in the Congo. Currently that is believed to be unrelated to this outbreak. If that situation changes or if the Congo outbreak is not contained, I may add it to these charts or create separate charts.

More of the Ebola outbreak charts with the newest data from WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 2 that was released on September 5, 2014 (covering through the same date).

I'm splitting the charts over several posts since there are starting to be a lot of different charts now. These are the case range projections.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Chart 4 is the same projection range as previously but with the known data updated.

Charts 4B-4E are new projections generated automatically from known data through September 5, 2014.

See the post above with Charts 1-3 for the standard disclaimers and references that apply to all of these charts.

More of the Ebola outbreak charts with the newest data from WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 2 that was released on September 5, 2014 (covering through the same date). I'm splitting the charts over several posts since there are starting to be a lot of different charts now.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Chart 5 is the same deaths projection range as previously but with the known data updated.

Charts 5B-5E are new death projections generated automatically from known data through September 5, 2014.

See the post above with Charts 1-3 for the standard disclaimers and references that apply to all of these charts.

More of the Ebola outbreak charts with the newest data from WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 2 that was released on September 5, 2014 (covering through the same date).I'm splitting the charts over several posts since there are starting to be a lot of different charts now.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Chart 6 has the y-axis in powers of 2 so you can see the total cases and total deaths doubling.

Charts 7-10 show new cases and new deaths.

See the post above with Charts 1-3 for the standard disclaimers and references that apply to all of these charts.

These are the last of this batch of the Ebola outbreak charts with the newest data from WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 2 that was released on September 5, 2014 (covering through the same date). The charts have been split over several posts since there are starting to be a lot of different charts now.

Charts 11 and 12 were not updated, as they would not have really had any new useful information until there is more data for this new month.

Click any graphic below to see it full-size.

Charts 13-14 show total cases and deaths by country.

Chart 15 shows how the doubling rate has varied over time. The y-axis shows how many days it took for cases to double for any given date on the x-axis. So reading this chart is essentially the opposite of other charts - high spikes are good (it's not doubling as fast), low spikes are bad (it's doubling faster).

See the post above with Charts 1-3 for the standard disclaimers and references that apply to all of these charts.

originally posted by: Oannes
...the DOD says that monoatomic silver is the only proven killer of the Ebola virus. It literally tears open the viruses cell wall rendering it moot.

Do you by chance have a link to somewhere where the DoD actually says this? I went searching for such a statement by the DoD and could not find one. But I did see an article stating that the Nigerian government was going to try treating Ebola patients with colloidal silver. I have not heard of any results of that testing, good or bad.

Just wanted to say that you are doing an amazing job with this. Thank you, OP!

a reply to: YodaCoda

Thank you, and you're welcome.

I appreciate the feedback!

Thank you for ALL your hard work, it is truly amazing!
Although I may not understand everything at least seeing a
visual puts things in perspective for me.

I think we have a great "Ebola Team" at work here...
especially between you Jaded & Soficrow! A great thanks!

Cheers
Ektar

a reply to: Ektar

Thanks, and you're welcome. Yes, a lot of people (especially Jaded and Sofi) are doing a great job on the Ebola threads.

originally posted by: ikonoklast
a reply to: Ektar

Thanks, and you're welcome. Yes, a lot of people (especially Jaded and Sofi) are doing a great job on the Ebola threads.

Thank you both!

It's always quite satisfying to know that one's contributions are worthwhile.

a reply to: Ektar
a reply to: ikonoklast

Thank you both and back atcha.

....5 days since the WHO has posted a report. Means it's getting bad, right? Or are they just waiting for thje US and other nations to respond to their last plea? And then there's this:

Ebola in India: Over 1,000 Indians being tracked for Ebola
Editorial Team September 8, 2014

And this (almost pure bs -already fully recovered but never reported?- the headline and date say a lot...)

Lagos records another ​Ebola ​case

September 8, 2014

Nigeria has recorded another Ebola case, the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Monday. Mr. Chukwu​ ​​said the new case is the fiance of one of the primary contacts of the index case, Patrick Sawyer.

….Mr. Chukwu said the primary contact had, however, made a fully recovery.

….He ​said​ Nigeria ​currently ​ha​s only one Ebola patient — the wife of Mr. Enemuo — whom he said was already recovering and would soon be discharged.