Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

[Ray]

Do you think Ebola will be a global pandemic? Why or why not?

Part of pandemic definition from Wikipedia: An epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.

Most WHO definitions of pandemic I could find only relate to novel influenza but there was a paper published by Fauci and others during 2009 about how to define a pandemic.

Conclusions:
"The examples given above suggest that the pandemic concept, as applied to important global events spanning many centuries, includes diseases of very different etiologies that exhibit a variety of epidemiologic features. There seems to be only 1 invariable common denominator: widespread geographic extension. However, most of the other epidemiologic features noted are common—for example, movement and high attack rates—whereas other variable features, such as noninfectiousness and severity, seem generally out of place."

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/200/7/1018.full

Some may feel that every problem must have a solution or it's not worth discussing but given the title of this forum, I thought this question would not be out of place.

 

[nola_mnr]

Re: Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

My take: Without a clear, well defined definition of 'pandemic', the question doesn't have any meaning.

We've had human-to-human transmission on three continents but the situation in Spain and the U.S. is nothing like the situation in the three hardest hit African countries.

Time would be better spent dealing with the known problems and risks instead of debating what comes down to an issue of semantics.

 

[Ray]

Re: Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

To simplify: Do you think we will see uncontrolled spread (epidemics) in regions outside of W. Africa?

 

[AnnaLisa]

Re: Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

To be honest, I am surprised we have NOT seen spread in underdeveloped nations elsewhere in the world.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

To be honest, I am surprised we have NOT seen spread in underdeveloped nations elsewhere in the world.

Same here. I really feared to see it spread to India. Very glad it has not done.

Whether or not we'll see further spread in European countries, I will say with careful optimism that I think not, or at least not an uncontrolled spread. Contact tracing is one of the major elements of control, and it's really hard to do that when a significant percentage of the population has no specified address, or at least not one that's easy to find. We're not very far from that situation in many rural areas of the US, but except for the homeless population (and God help us if Ebola hits there), contact tracing should be relatively easy here and in most European countries.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Will Ebola become a global pandemic?

20% that there will be more than 1M cases by the end of 2015