[skmurphy]

The CDC model http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/24900 assumes that a sick person in a hospital or containment unit spreads the disease to 0.02 people per day (vs. 0.3 people per day "in the wild") if you have enough Ebola patients in the hospital for a long enough period of time you are going to see a lot of medical personnel infected. For example if this epidemic lasts another 6-12 months in West Africa (which is the CDC's current estimate) some hospitals or containment facilities may operate for 100-300 days with personnel exposed to new sets of Ebola patients every five to ten days.

I am surprised that there has not been more written about recruiting survivors to work in the facilities (on the theory the they are much more likely to be immune to re-infection at least on many basic cleaning and patient care tasks (not inserting IV's or doing complex procedures).

Edit/Update Medscape did a detailed write-up on Ebola at http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/216288-overview and includes this note on recovery time, which may explain why even those who survive may take months to recover:

In those patients who do recover, recovery often requires months, and delays may be expected before full resumption of normal activities. Weight gain and return of strength are slow. Ebola virus continues to be present for many weeks after resolution of the clinical illness.

[danieltillett]

Very interesting modelling work here by the CDC. The transmission rate has been estimated using the following three assumptions:

(i) No additional imports of infection.

(ii) Patients maintain the pattern of either going to a hospital early in infectious period, or at home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk of disease transmission (includes safe burial when needed).

(iii) Maintenance of effective isolation and barriers-to-infection at hospitals and at home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk of disease transmission (includes safe burial when needed).

Both (ii) and (iii) are already wrong so I don’t know how much faith we can put in the modelling accuracy.

[ghshephard]

You can put faith in the modeling accuracy, while at the same time noting that given the current conditions, it does not have great predictive ability.

[danieltillett]

The modelling is actually really good and almost perfectly matches what has actually happened. The problem is they are expecting that things are about to change to fit the three assumptions. If we model the situation using the current conditions on the ground then things look a lot less rosy.