The Ebola curve

EVD Outbreak Week 40 (PDF):

The total number of confirmed, probable, and suspected cases (see Annex 1) in the West African epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) reported up to the end of 5 October 2014 (epidemiological week 40) is 8033 with 3865 deaths. Countries affected are Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the United States of America. A confirmed case of EVD has been reported in Spain, but because the case was confirmed during the week ending 12 October (epidemiological week 41), information on this case will be included in the next Ebola Response Roadmap update.

The past week has seen a continuation of recent trends: the situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone continues to deteriorate, with widespread and persistent transmission of EVD. Problems with data gathering in Liberia continue. It should be emphasized that the reported fall in the number of new cases in Liberia over the past three weeks is unlikely to be genuine. Rather, it reflects a deterioration in the ability of overwhelmed responders to record accurate epidemiological data. It is clear from field reports and first responders that EVD cases are being under-reported from several key locations, and laboratory data that have not yet been integrated into official estimates indicate an increase in the number of new cases in Liberia. There is no evidence that the EVD epidemic in West Africa is being brought under control, though there is evidence of a decline in incidence in the districts of Lofa in Liberia, and Kailahun and Kenema in Sierra Leone.

Recall that back in July, it was reported: “The current outbreak is the worst ever. So far 467 people have died and
health staff have identified at least 292 other suspected or confirmed
cases.” That was back in Week 25, so in the subsequent three months, we’ve seen the officially confirmed number of cases increase by 10.6, or if you prefer to put it in scary percentage terms, 958 PERCENT! According to this doubling calculator, the time in which it takes the outbreak to double is 4.39 weeks, so we’ll know that if the Week 41 report contains more than 9,862 confirmed cases, the outbreak is picking up its pace. Either way, the slope of that curve in confirmed cases from Week 25 to Week 40 looks rather problematic.

As for the likelihood that anything but a complete travel ban will stop the continued spread of the virus, consider this report from the CDC entitled “Epidemiology of Travel-associated Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Infection in 116 Patients, Singapore”:

The fact that one fourth of the case-patients in our study boarded a plane after becoming ill and traveled despite having symptoms illustrates the role of travelers in disseminating infection in a highly interconnected world. It raises the question of whether exit screening should be considered. However, the effectiveness of exit screening will depend on the role of asymptomatic persons in transmission, and such screening will still miss persons who are incubating the infection. Exit screening would severely hinder international travel, and because of its questionable efficacy, it may not be justified and may be contrary to the intent of the International Health Regulations 2005.

So, wash your hands, stock up a bit, and avoid any unnecessary travel, that would be my advice. School vacation time is coming up in many countries in Europe in the next two weeks, so a lot of people have travel plans as a result. If things are going to go seriously south, we should know it in the next 4-6 weeks. To the right is a zoomed-in curve based on the actual confirmed cases reported by WHO from Weeks 34 to 40, added onto an averaged curve from the reported cases in Week 25. WHO only began releasing the reports in Week 34, but during those six weeks, the outbreak has gone from 3,000 to 8,000 officially confirmed cases.

Leave the volunteers in Africa

As one Australian parliamentarian points out, it is absolutely absurd, and unconscionable, that aid workers are brought to the West for treatment, and in doing so, are permitted to put their entire country at risk:

Ms Kovack’s humanitarian efforts have been slammed by outspoken Federal MP Bob Katter.  The member for Kennedy – whose electorate takes in the southern area of Cairns and the town’s airport – said her volunteering pursuits had put the nation at risk.

Mr Katter said it was ‘unbelievable and incomprehensive’ how a person could get into Australia from an Ebola-infected country.

‘There cannot be any compromise with this,’ Mr Katter said. ‘If you want to go to one of these countries, however laudable your motivation, I am sorry but when you return to Australia, you must be quarantined for three weeks – not home quarantined.’

Mr Katter said Australian aid workers travelling to west Africa, including Ms Kovack, were putting Australia at risk.

‘We love these people, and we honour these Australians for being self-sacrificing, but compared to the risk they create for our country, it is not remotely comparable. One person’s moral and humanitarian ambitions are being carried out at a very grave cost to Australia,’ he said.

I very much respect those people, many of whom are Christians, who are selfless and sacrificial enough to go over and help infected Africans. But part of being sacrificial is making the sacrifice.  If you get sick over there, you stay over there.  Period. It’s that simple.

They have the right to risk their own lives. They don’t have the right to put others at risk, nor should they ask others to do so.

DISQUALIFY! is not discourse

I’m adding a new reason for insta-spamming, as this shameless and ill-informed attempt to disqualify the military expert and Castalia House author William S. Lind should suffice to demonstrate:

DISQUALIFART: I think I’ll take my advice on military affairs from someone slightly less fucked up in the head.

VD: The more fool you. Lind is highly respected by Marines with extensive combat experience from lieutenants to Commandants.

DISQUALIFART: Spend much time among Marines, do you? Let’s be honest. The chances that a marine knows who this lunatic is, is somewhere next to zero. Tell them what he believes (“We ought to have a king in America and darn it those blacks would be better off as slaves) and you’ll get a really sense of what marines think of such a Cau Cau.

VD: I have spoken to two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last week alone who are not only personally familiar with Mr. Lind, who was lecturing at Quantico this weekend, but think very well of him. The co-author of one of Mr. Lind’s forthcoming books is an active-duty LtCol in the USMC. You know literally nothing about this subject.

STILICHO: Yep, and I are one too! Lind has been well known and respected in the
Corps for decades. I certainly knew of him in the late 80’s and I
understand he was a regular lecturer/consultant at Quantico well before
that. Al Gray was well known as an admirer of Lind’s theoretical work.

Al Gray, of course, being the former Commandant of the Marine Corps. In addition to being the foremost among the fathers of 4th Generation Warfare, Mr. Lind is also the author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook, which formalizes and explicates John Boyd’s theory that has been incorporated into formal USMC and British Army warfighting doctrine.

But none of that matters to a left-liberal troll who is hellbent on DISQUALIFY despite not only being in complete ignorance of the relevant facts, but continuing to attempt to do so after being warned of his ignorance.

No discourse is possible with people this ignorant and shameless. From now on, any attempt to DISQUALIFY is going to be met with instant spamming. There is absolutely nothing wrong with disagreeing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with attempting to demonstrate why your position is superior to another one.

But DISQUALIFY is the singular tactic of the stupid and the shameless. It is what they reliably resort to because they cannot successfully make a rational case for their own positions or construct a rational critique of the positions presented by others. This is no place for them and I have no intention of suffering such fools in any way at all.

Travel in Europe

So, I’m back from my latest trip, and I made a few observations:

  1. Thanks to Ebola, no one wants to sit or be anywhere around Africans. It would no doubt horrify the usual suspects to see how an African could clear out seats in all four directions simply by sitting down in both countries I recently visited.
  2. More people and startups are struggling than the newspapers want to admit. No one except those dialed directly into the stock market spigot being pumped by the Fed/ECB are doing what they consider well. This is true of even the very, very rich and successful who are involved in things rather than paper.
  3. If women want to stop looking like useless idiots in the business context, they really need to stop talking incessantly about their sex all the damn time and the “problem” of there being insufficient vaginas in [insert practically any industry, activity, or organization here]. We all know the drill. It doesn’t make you look smart. It makes you look clueless, irrelevant, and totally off-topic.
  4. The venture capital market is showing clear signs of 1999/2008 in a variety of ways. This doesn’t indicate an immediate crash, but one before 2016. Right now, it’s more feverish than 2008 but not as crazy as 1997-1999.
  5. New little technology project. It’s pretty cool and the Dread Ilk can definitely be of assistance in this regard if anyone is so inclined. More about this anon.

Too little, too late

Now that Ebola has arrived and killed people in the USA and Spain, the Obama administration belatedly attempts to look like it is doing something:

Federal health officials will require temperature checks for the first time at five major American airports for people arriving from the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus. However, health experts said the measures were more likely to calm a worried public than to prevent many people with Ebola from entering the country. Still, they constitute the first large-scale attempt to improve security at American ports of entry since the virus arrived on American soil last month.

The thing is, if you don’t want people to panic, you should not lie to them and tell them they are safe when they are not.

On invasion

One of America’s foremost military thinkers explains that immigration can be MORE dangerous than a conventional military invasion:

Regrettably, the colossal mess created by “multi-culturalism” affects all Europeans and Americans, Right as well as Left. I will say again what I have said before: in a Fourth Generation world, invasion by immigrants who do not acculturate is more dangerous than invasion by the army of a foreign state. In America, a similar invading army took to our streets last week, demonstrating against any attempt to stem the invasion. Few of the flags they carried were American.

That was written by Bill Lind back in 2006. We were warned.

Dutch slaughter

So much for the concept of “never again”. Between abortion and the end of life and euthanasia at the end of it, modern secularists are beginning to make the National Socialist approach to mass killing look downright moderate:

The number of mentally-ill patients killed by euthanasia in Holland has trebled in the space of a year, new figures have revealed. In 2013, a total of 42 people with ‘severe psychiatric problems’ were killed by lethal injection compared to 14 in 2012 and 13 in 2011. The latest official figures also revealed a 15 per cent surge in the number of euthanasia deaths from 4,188 cases in 2012 to 4,829 cases last year. The incremental rise is consistent with a 13 per cent increase in 2012, an 18 per cent rise in 2011, 19 per cent in 2010 and 13 per cent in 2009.

The rise is also likely to confirm the fears of Dutch regulator Theo Boer who told the Daily Mail that he expected to see euthanasia cases smash the 6,000 barrier in 2014. Overall, deaths by euthanasia, which officially account for three per cent of all deaths in the Netherlands, have increased by 151 per cent in just seven years.

Most cases – some 3,600 people – involved cancer sufferers but there were also 97 people who died at the hands of their doctors because they were suffering from dementia, the figures show. The figures, however, do not include cases of so-called terminal sedation, where patients are given a cocktail of sedatives and narcotics before food and fluids are withdrawn. Studies suggest that if such deaths were added to the figure then euthanasia would account for one in eight – about 12.3 per cent – of all deaths in the Netherlands.

So, Dutch doctors are murdering people with “severe psychiatric problems” as well as dementia. At this point, it won’t be long into it is decided that everyone with an IQ under 99 is removed from the gene pool.

The idea that modern post-Christian society is any less barbaric than the Middle Ages is becoming increasingly risible. 

They don’t get it

White Americans around the country are startled to discover that no amount of liberal happy talk and income redistribution is sufficient to make African-Americans want to be like them or even consider them to be part of the same tribe.

Alice Singen had always seen her home town as an integrated, harmonious place. Like many other white residents, she prided herself on staying here even when others began to leave.
But since the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a white police officer, some African Americans are calling it segregated and racist. Now Singen has found herself talking in terms of “us” and “them,” “we” and “they.”
“I didn’t have any problems with anybody or any color, and all of a sudden it feels like we are being held responsible for something that’s not our fault,” Singen, 70, said as she left Faraci Pizza, a 46-year-old Ferguson business that has become a focal point of racial tension. “I don’t get it.”

Just because you don’t have any problem with them doesn’t mean that they don’t have any problem with you…. How fortunate it is that no one but white people living in Republican states who fail to parrot the latest SJW dogma can be racist!

The State is losing

William Lind presciently anticipated which side would have the advantage back in 2006:

Among the critics and reinterpreters of Fourth Generation war, the bad is most powerfully represented by Thomas Barnett’s two books The Pentagon’s New Map and Blueprint for Action. Barnett divides the world into two parts, the Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap. This is parallel to what I call centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, and I agree that this will be the fundamental fault line of the 21st Century. Barnett’s error is that he assumes the Functioning Core will be the stronger party, able to restore order in places where it has broken down. In fact, the forces of disorder will be stronger, because they are driven by a factor Barnett dismisses, the spreading crisis of legitimacy of the state. By ignoring Martin van Creveld’s work on the rise and decline of the state, Barnett’s books end up anchoring their foundations on sand.

The implications go far beyond the obvious regions of the Middle East and Ukraine. What we’re seeing in Spain, in Belgium, and in Scotland are the early phases of crises of the State which will likely result, eventually, in either a) a different, more decentralized order or b) disorder.
And the increasingly rapid growth of diversity in the USA is a distinct sign of incipient crisis of State legitimacy and eventual disorder.

Inequality and Piketty

Yesterday I was asked about Piketty’s argument that free trade reduces income equality. This requires an answer on several levels.

First, income inequality matters. The Keynesians claim that it doesn’t matter if Peter owes Paul or Paul owes Peter. This is observably false, just as it matters if there is a middle class that is economically active versus an economically dominant aristocracy that is primarily interested in conspicuous consumption. This isn’t some sort of new Levellism, merely a logical observation of fact.

Second, this is a literally Marxist perspective. It may surprise some to know that free trade is a Marxist position. Look it up. Free trade is not anticommunist, it is one aspect of communism.

Third, like most Marxist principles, this is wrong. Opening up an economy to additional outside players, most of whom have proved to be the apex predators in their native economies, means that the average individual’s income is going to go down because the outside player is not going to enter the market if it cannot extract sufficient resources to justify their capital expenses in penetrating it.

Now, I haven’t read Piketty and I see no reason to do so in the future. This is because he is attempting to sell a concept that is neither new nor true.