SPECIAL EBOLA UPDATE: THE “CDC AND OTHER EXPERTS DOUBLE TALK” EDITION

BASED ON THE MEDICINE AND BASED ON THE SCIENCE, SCIENTISTS AND MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THE SPREAD OF EBOLA THROUGHOUT THE U.S. AND THE WORLD

BASICALLY, THE “SCIENTISTS” HAVE MADE “EDUCATED GUESSES”  —   SOME  SEE EVERY U.S. CITY AT RISK  —   SOME SEE THE POSSIBILITY OF APOCALYPTIC SCENARIOS  —   BUT IT’S OK,  THE CDC  DOESN’T THINK IT WILL BE THAT BAD

Everybody that cares about the social-political-governmental-medical-scientific response to the growing world-wide Ebola threat needs to read an AP article that has been picked up by ABC News and the Republican oriented blog Newsmax.

Here’s how the article kicks-off: “Top medical experts studying the spread of Ebola say the public should expect more cases to emerge in the United States by year's end as infected people arrive here from West Africa, including American doctors and nurses returning from the hot zone and people fleeing from the deadly disease. ***   But how many cases?  ***   No one knows for sure how many infections will emerge in the U.S. or anywhere else, but scientists have made educated guesses based on data models that weigh hundreds of variables, including daily new infections in West Africa, airline traffic worldwide and transmission possibilities....” (See “Scientists Try to Predict Number of US Ebola Cases” by Martha Mendoza/ AP National Writer, 11/1/14, ABC News [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/scientists-predict-number-us-ebola-cases-26621993]; similar to article:  “How Many More US Ebola Cases? Predictions Vary Widely” source the AP, 11/2/14, Newsmax [http://www.newsmax.com/Health-News/ebola-prediction-US-cases/2014/11/02/id/604654/]).

That AP report said. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prefers not to focus on a particular number. But spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds said Ebola will not be a widespread threat as some outside the agency have warned. ***  ‘We're talking about clusters in some places but not outbreaks,’ she said. ***  The CDC is using modeling tools to work on projections in West Africa, but ‘there isn't enough data available in the U.S. to make it worthwhile to go through the exercise.’ ***   University of Texas integrative biology professor Lauren Ancel Meyers said there are inherent inconsistencies in forecasting ‘because the course of action we're taking today will impact what happens in the future.’...”

Quoted in the AP article is Northeastern University professor Alessandro Vespignani, who projected between one case - his most likely scenario - and a slim chance of as many as eight new cases in the U.S. though the end of November (other “experts” have a range between two [2] and over a hundred [100+] new Ebola cases in the U.S. by the end of the year).  However, one of Professor Vespignani’s  worst scenarios involves Ebola spreading unchecked across international borders outside of the United States. “‘My worry is that the epidemic might spill into other countries in Africa or the Middle East, and then India or China. That could be a totally different story for everybody," Vespignani said. ***  Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University professor and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said he's not worried about a handful of new cases in the U.S. His greatest worry is if the disease goes from West Africa to India. ***   ‘If the infection starts spreading in Delhi or Mumbai, what are we going to do?’..."

When it comes to Ebola, stricter or looser quarantines or travel restrictions probably will make a difference for most Americans, who are now alive and healthy, both in the short and longer run. Contrary to anybody’s assertions in support-of or opposition-to such quarantines and/or travel restrictions, medical-scientific statistical predictive tools are not the best methodologies  to arrive at decisions on those matters on behalf of Americans, who are now alive and healthy.