Ebola – What’s the panic all about?
Recently there has been a massive amount of panic and media coverage over the disease Ebola. While we are sure that the disease is in fact infection, why is there all of this panic? In the Washington Post article below, accompanied with a simulation, we can see the rates of infection compared to those of other diseases such as Smallpox, Measles, and more.
When we view the simulation, we can see the rates of change of Ebola compared to other diseases. The sample is of 100 people. At first, in the early numbers, the harm doesn’t seem much different than other diseases. However Ebola has a very high acceleration of spreading. So by the end of the simulation, many more are killed due to that disease than others. Additionally, what makes Ebola especially dangerous is its fatality rate
We can view this as a network study. In class we have seen the structures of networks and how various nodes have more influence over the network than others. In a node that represents socially connected people, we can view socially connected people as the most dangerous potential members. Let’s imagine this model of a community, where each person has a “ranking” that is its “danger rating,” with the rating being the amount of (nodes) people that person is connected to.
Granted, Ebola is very contained and the cases emerging in communities are taken incredibly seriously, isolating the person from the rest of the community during the infected period. However, it is difficult to diagnose this disease. In a situation in which someone in a community of people become infected, the most dangerous people to be infected are those who have a high danger rating. If symptoms do not show immediately, that person may be spreading to all of his/her nodes without realizing. In order to minimize the amount of spreading, we would ideally want the infected node(s) to be the ones with the lowest danger rating.
This situation we are seeing in the news every day is quite similar to the scenarios we have studied in class. The idea of a network is simply a model to understand a real world situation; in this situation that idea is the concept of the spreading of a West-African disease. In class we have studied the idea of nodes having “power,” the idea that its power is proportionate to the amount of nodes it shares. Similarly we have seen the idea of a network flow, the idea of encapsulating the transferring of data amongst a network. These models are very similar to this one in that it is the study of the behavior of nodes of a network and how they affect the overall network itself.
The spreading and widespread of panic is something to be aware of, but given the cautiousness of officials and the contained nature of the disease, we can all rest easy for the time being.
Links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/health/how-ebola-spreads/