Dear Editor:
I have always found the subject of number duplication to be fascinating. If you were to take $1 double it and each successive day each dollar doubled itself you would in thirty short days have amassed a fortune of $536,870,912. Numbers doubled and redoubled increase exponentially.
In infectious disease, it quickly becomes apparent why number duplication is an important issue. Considering that a person with infectious disease can infect two people, they each infect two people so then the chain rapidly grows with each successive infection potentially infecting at least two additional people. One rapidly becomes two, four, eight, sixteen and so on.
Those who know history will tell you that the flu pandemic of 1918 caused the infection of 500 million people worldwide. Fifty to one hundred million died as a result.
In the case of Ebola in West Africa, duplication is becoming more apparent with the larger number of reported infections. Even if each infected individual does not infect another person each following day, and as the incubation period is 21 days, the duplication factor is of concern at some point in time. Those infected will likely eventually infect others with the result of explosive exponential expansion without the ability to quickly identify and isolate those known to be infected.
What was at one point in time a tenfold disease spread over months can become the tenfold spread over weeks due to the duplication factor.
In geopolitical terms, even if the U.S. is able to contain the infection here, political models show that if poor countries in Central America experienced a severe Ebola outbreak many infected people would migrate north in order to find a place they believe can give them a cure with medical treatment. The arrival of large numbers of infected people here could create a very difficult situation on a major level overwhelming U.S. medical institutions. A suspected Ebola isolation situation requires five times as many medical staff members as does the ordinary non-infectious hospital stay.
Even if Ebola does not infect people in these United States to any great degree, the factors associated with this outbreak could create political turmoil worldwide that could potentially destabilize or collapse governments. That added to other current political instability around the globe could reach biblical proportion. It is obvious the U.S. government needs to take action to deal with this matter both at home and abroad as it is a very real national security issue.
You might not be able to save the world, but can you as an individual do anything in order to protect yourself right now? Always keep in mind that you should always practice basic sanitary standards. Simple hand washing, often, with an anti-bacterial soap or the use of a convenient product such as a pump bottle hand sanitizer is always a good course of action to protect yourself, family and others from the spread of all disease. Also, having a regimen designed to keep your own immune system strong is important.
Michael Seyfried