Monday, October 27, 2014

Crunching Numbers

 

So, tiring of the Usual Gang Of Idiots screwing up everything they can with both malignant incompetence and depraved indifference, I thought I'd look at the updated numbers on the primary outbreak in West Africa (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and momentarily, Mali) for a little mental respite.

The numbers are quite simply bollocks.
The consistency is their inconsistency, which is what happens when you depend on the honesty, intelligence, literacy and numeracy of countries where a flush toilet is an object of suspicion and wonder, and books are for kindling fires.

Liberia regularly skips entire weeks, getting their numbers to WHO on the local equivalent of "Island Time": "It gonna git dere when it get dere, brah."
And that's before it embarrasses some oafficial (not a typo), or inconveniences a family with an extra chicken for bribing whoever's filling out the death certificates today, or someone waves their arms and yells "customary burial rituals". (And here you thought Diversity was only a PITA in the U.S. of A.)

The rule of thumb has been that the actual tally of infected and dead is 2-2.5 (and lately they're saying more like 3 a  lot) times the number of "official" cases of Ebola.

Looking at the case expansion rates since September 1st, both overall and by countries, the actual modifier should be between two and eleventy. Any other attempt at precision, or claims of same, is a cross between monkeys throwing darts at a graph, and witchdoctors doing magic. It's probably in fact monkey witchdoctors throwing darts at a magic graph.

The trendline is that cases are now doubling every six weeks, instead of the former doubling of every three. Except that such happy news is modified by the fact that everyone there is screaming about how much worse it's getting, which is why they put windows in cockpits, along with instruments. When the dials all say you're doing great, but the windshield is full of the ground rushing rapidly to meet you, it isn't the windshield that's not working.

So it's gotten so bad at this point over there, that we have no idea how bad it is, or how much more rapidly that's happening.

Just to complete this coup of The Retarded led by the Illiterate, we're evidently importing fresh Ebola cases here at about the rate of 1 per week or two, pretty much precisely as the recent Lancet study suggested was going to happen.

And while our own retarded leadership is entirely to blame for that, just random probability says that pretty soon, it's going to start happening in London, Paris, Rome, and Australia, where they at least have lots of medical care worthy of the name. And in Cairo, Mumbai, Delhi, Manila, and Jakarta, where they most certainly do not.

What can be guaranteed, is that Mali will not be the exception. The caseload there will not stand at 1. Australia will not keep ducking this bullet. And eventually, it's going to get somewhere with an enormous population density, crap medical care, and zero public health ability, and drop 20 or 50 or 200 cases on them like a house falling in Oz from Kansas.

And if we keep juggling the lit road flares while standing in the gasoline-filled wading pool, we're going to get another imported Index Patient here who infects 10 or 20 people, and quietly expires in his flophouse without running to the ER, because he can't, or won't. And those people are going to float around thinking they have the flu, because flu season, and they won't be African, or have made any recent African journeys, and they'll get the Duncan Protocol.

So when, two-eight days later they come back in, bleeding out of everywhere from their eyes to their asses, all the shit-eating grins at CDC, the White House, and the hairdo news programs won't help them, or you, or anyone else. There won't be any BL4 beds for 10 or 20 people, because we don't have them. There won't be any isolation at the local hospital.
And the smart people who work there will GTFO, because they're not all the same dumbshits as Doctor Ebolawalker Spencer, or Nurse Typhoid Mary Hickox. So they'll clock out, and the people left behind will be the least bright, not the most bright. Every occupation has that ten percent at the bottom of the gene pool, including healthcare.
Just ask a malpractice attorney.

The administrators and spokesholes who've lied to everyone about "handling this problem" won't have anything to point to that explains how they can take care of people when their clinical staff elects to say "Hell no" and heads for the employee parking lot. (And if you think there's going to be loyalty to those institutions after the last few years of belt-tightening and having ObamaCare shoved down their throats, let me offer you a dose of reality: they're going to trample people on the way to their cars, and with smiles on their faces.)

And at that point, everyone else will have choices to make: go to work, knowing what assholes people are when it comes to staying home with the flu; or go on in, and risk getting a lot more than just that from the guy who's always coughing and wiping his nose on his sleeve from November to April.

Then stores start emptying out. Interstates fill up. Trucks and trains and power and water stop flowing. And government either starts putting up barricades, or abdicates, and lets the mob run the show.

How rapidly that all happens is anyone's guess, including mine.
Think of how calm and orderly people are for Black Friday shopping a Wal-Mart, or driving out of the parking lot after the ball game, and you tell me how warm and fuzzy you feel about things staying calm.

Everybody's had a dozen warning shots across the bow over this.
It's all fun and game until it lands in your lap.

So what it comes down to, as always, is what you're prepared to do to deal with this.
Ain't nobody ducking that choice indefinitely.

Carpe diem, bitches.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you wholeheartedly, and whether it's even real or not? doesn't matter. They will get the results they want. The stage is set. Actors/patients and all.

Anonymous said...

Hey Aesop. Funny you mention us over here in Manila, Philippines.

Some fun Ebola facts for you.

The Philippine gov is repatriating a little over 4000 Filipinos from Sierra Leone and Liberia. They have no idea where to quarantine them.

Even better is that the department of health here says it is only a matter of time for Ebola. The top officials are privately scared shitless.

PPE gear is sold out. As in totally sold out. Even the chemical suits and the tyvek suits at the fiberglass chemical shops are nearly sold out. You can't even find those Rubbermaid dishwashing gloves or the Chinese copies at the supermarket.

The local press is pushing prepping. Not in the negative American way demonizing it but rather in a "holy crap everybody better be doing this"

Despite it being a Saturday night and everybody out doing the trick or treat thing here, the show about prepping on the local tv was widely seen.

Your articles are being copied and distributed widely here in the Philippines.

The debate now here is how long after an outbreak hits until we can re-enact "I am legend" not if or any sort of BS hope and wishing.

Frankly the only people who will be relatively unaffected are the backwards island people and people living out in the sticks.

I was asked by a reporter what should she do when it happens. I replied "Get out of the city, go live with your family members out in the country. Bring food, bring garden seeds and plan on a really long vacation. Don't show up empty handed at their house"

Aesop said...

Thanks man, I needed the extra pressure of knowing people 8000 miles away are depending on what I blog! :)

Seriously though, glad if any of it has helped, and thanks for the on-scene reality check and man-on-the-street perspective. Feel free to keep 'em coming.

And sincere best wishes when $#!^ gets real there.

Anonymous said...

How is anyone going to know when to leave town for the sticks? Any tips?

Piercello said...

Crunching Numbers, Hidden Dragon.

Gonna be a wild ride.

Anonymous said...

My opinion--

When it is 'wild' in your local population, ie. people are getting sick, but don't know where they were exposed.

'Course then it might be too late.

nick

Aesop said...

@Anonymous 11:38
Do you have someplace to go?
If not, you're the problem arriving there, not the solution leaving here, and you can expect no welcome unless you're making a permanent relocation to someplace you own.

"Running to the sticks" with no prior safe haven is a good way to get the Stickians to want to nail your hide to a barn.
If you doubt this, go camp in your neighbor's front yard, and see what the response is.

If one can afford, financially and logistically, to go now, I would already have done so.
If one can go in the very near term, I would do so at the earliest opportunity.
If one waits until the time is obvious, they are probably 5 minutes too late.

Guessing wrong in this case could be a Darwinian mistake with life-changing consequences.
So the questions are
a) Can I? and
b) How much is my hide worth?

That's a question for each person to answer on their own.

I suspect when the question is worth asking, you already know the answer.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I have someplace to go. Either to my in-laws place two hours away or my parents' house which is more like 18 hours drive. What I keep thinking is, do we leave the big city and plan to never return? Should I just plan to quit my job in the city and look for work in a very rural area?

Aesop said...

A) Can you?
B) Can you afford to?
C) How do the relatives feel about you showing up on their doorstep seeking long-term refuge?
D) If things got sporty, what do you bring to their picnic?
Skills? A trailer full of canned goods?

Remember Ben Franklin: "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

Ex-Dissident said...

Yup, I don't have much to add to what you said. No point trying to rehabilitate our administration. Only reasonable plan at this point, is to prepare an exit strategy.

Anonymous said...

I got a place to go to. Farm with one of the local prepper/search and rescue groups. Most everybody has at the minimum paramedic training, real heavy on the skill sets. Let's just say it meets all the James Rawles retreat criteria...

Filipinos are less squeamish about taking in family members compared to the west. If Kuya James comes to visit and he is a lazy SOB they will still take him in. No welfare social net here. Only family.

Anonymous said...

We ridicule the local preppers who have a grand plan to "bug out to the mountains" without actually having a clue. Dengue, snakes, polluted water, and lack of roads will keep most people from going a km or 2 away from the main roads.

The hills are mostly gov land and relatively empty except for the indigenous people's. (think lazy apaches on the reservation without the welfare handouts) who are also armed to the teeth.

Rather when I say go to the family's farm in the country it is cause most Filipinos are only one or maybe 2 generatios removed from the farm and most families have some sort of small farm inherited and divided among the family members with the usually idiot brother staying on the farm.