When Officials Say The Infection Rate of Ebola is 2 Be Afraid, Be very Afraid

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
By Paul Martin

Liz Bennett
Undergroundmedic.com
Oct 01, 2014

All communicable diseases have a number assigned to them that tell scientists and doctors how fast a disease is spreading. This number is always based on past outbreaks to start with and then, as n outbreak continues numbers are produced for the current outbreak. These will be revised as an epidemic continues.

Depending on whom you are talking to this number is referred to as the infection rate or the reproduction rate, they are the same thing and can be interchanged in a medical context.

The number to remember is 2.

The number 2 represents exponential spread in the medical world. A two or higher is very bad news. the higher the reproduction number the harder it is to control an epidemic.

Assigning the number 2 to a disease means that every one person who has the condition passes it to two others. Those two will then infect four people between them, those four will infect eight and so on. this is what doctors mean by exponential spread.

As the reproduction rate heads up towards 2 then the doubling time of known cases reduces, this is what has been seen in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Based on the latest figures from the World Health organization, if the outbreak continues at it’s current pace then the reproduction rate for Sierra Leone could be as high as 2.26, 2.01 for Guinea and 2.02 for Liberia. (source)

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