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the numbers of ebola cases were no longer exponential since mid Sept. instead they stay almost constant with ~900 new cases per week since Sep.14 This should have been clear to WHO and researchers at least since mid-Oct. Still they publically repeated the "exponential" forecasts , based on papers using old data. Ban ki Moon (on 2014/10/09) and Chan(on 2014/10/14) and Aylward said it. WHO until now puts forward their containment plan based on 5000-10000 new cases in the first week of december. They didn't correct it yet.
according to Fukuda on 2014/10/23, the WHO-committee on 2014/10/22 on the third meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee regarding the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa stated that there continued to be exponential increase of cases in Guinea,Liberia,Sierra Leone
so, what are the risks ? Is it secret ?
in USA they can fill in 20 secondary causes on the death certificates and all the anonymized death certificates since 1959 are available online from NCHS in computer-readable form to check/search for conditions. Irregularities usually appear when there is a switch from one ICD-Code to a new one, so in 1969,1979,1999. Other irregularities are often checked, compared with other states,countries,conditions and the reason discovered
let me add a link (communicating uncertainty) http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/fischhoff/IST%20Communicating%20Uncertainty.pdf
and a discussion: http://psandman.com/gst2013.htm#numbers
I just found this with google. I spent much time in 2005-2007 to get experts assign a subjective probability to a severe (H5N1) pandemic with >100M deaths. This was a strange experience. Experts didn't want to give probabilities but painted a somehow dark picture in interviews.Economists ignored the problem in their models (mortality bonds rating). Among the few who gave estimates were Bob Gleeson and Michael Steele with ~20% per year. The same problem occurs in other sciences : ask your surgeon for the probability that you'll die or your lawer for the probability to win the process or your teacher for the probability that you'll pass the exam or the candidate for his probability to win the election or the president for his probability of a nuclear war or global recession etc. These would be useful information, even if only subjective, informal. Yet people usually won't give them. Make a better society with people giving probability estimates !
pandemic probabilities: http://www.setbb.com/fluwiki2/viewforum.php?f=10&sid=2d1caa0fad5093a8c4291f45e0d39b67&mforum=fluwiki2