e.coli stats for perusal

[woodsmoke]

IF A MODERATOR WANTS TO REMOVE THIS POST PLEASE DO SO WITH NO NOTICE TO ME.

Hi
Since I teach biology, I did a similar thing with the cholera outbreak in Haiti.

I replaced an "exercise" from the text with the data each day and they graphed it and we discussed it.

********* aside which may be skipped if desired it is contextual information ******

As a note: the cholera data was not presented in "graphical" form by anybody that I could find at the time. The best "representation" was from the WHO and they made "circles" around centers of outbreaks in different parts of the world. The larger the number the larger the circle.

The data was presented in PDF "updates" that had to be downloaded and each number extracted from the morass of text.

One could be a conspiracy theorist and say that no graphs were provided because the powers that be don't want stupid people like you and me going into panic mode. In other words they would rather we stay uninformed, not panic, and possibly die, as opposed to being completely informed, taking preventative measures( as they may be) and maybe not die... hmmm

********** end of aside ********

Anyhow, I sat down in earnest today to try to find the numbers. Almost all articles say there are X cases in Germany and Y cases in Spain and Z cases in such and such, but no totals.

I was not able to find a particular article that said that the thing "started" particularly on such and such a day.

One BIG problem is that e. coli outbreaks occur all the time and so this new strain(now shown to be an absolutely NEW strain) may have occured earlier or later.

The absolute FIRST article that I could find said that "between April 30 and May 22; the number of cases increased to 138" . So, I, personally, choose to "start the data" at April 30, others may argue with that and I won't be insulted.

Since this was off the radar up until a few weeks ago, there are big gaps between the dates, but, if one graphs, one has to space it out on the spreadsheet to represent the days, it one can see the beginnings of "an exponential curve" if it keeps on going up at the same rate.

It has already met the technical definiton of a "pandemic" in that it has crossed national borders but it is not being CALLED that yet, and it may not be necessary to do so.

April 30 taken as a "start" 0 cases.
May 22 - 138 cases
May 23 - 200 cases
May 24 - 400 cases EARLY IN THE DAY
May 24 - 460 cases LATE in the day(possibly this could be moved to May 25).
June 1 - 1600 cases
June 3 1800 cases

As of June 3 there were 18 fatalities.

It might be instructive to use Gnumeric or Kspread to enter the numbers and look at the produced graph.

If anyone wants to post further numbers in subsequent posts they might do so...or not.... no need to cause a panic here.

It's just that I am one for thinking that almost all people ARE intelligent and should be informed.

I REPEAT THAT IF A MODERATOR WANTS TO REMOVE THIS POST PLEASE DO SO WITHOUT CONTACTING ME.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

Interesting. When I was doing anti-cancer metabolite research I used a strain of E-coli to test for anti-bacterial activity as the first step in toxicity tests. If it killed the E-Coli the next step was to test it against rodents. It turned out that the compound I was synthesizing was active against E-Coli at 1 ppm (1 gamma/ml, a person with a weight of 250Kg would take 250 mg a day) and showed no toxicity at hundreds of times that level in rodents. Unfortunately, the pharmas looked at it but didn't like the terms of the agency which funded my work, The Welch Foundation (ya the grape jelly people), which required that any and all discoveries made by grantees were public domain. The purpose, of course, was to make it easier for pharma to manufacture the compound without license problems and thus make available to the public yet another broad spectrum anti-biotic. The pharma had other ideas. They were looking for something they could patent and .... well, you know the rest of the story.

I was reading Stephen Wolfram's book, "A New Kind of Science", using SAGE to test his hypotheses.

I am going to switch to modeling this E-coli event with SAGE.

[woodsmoke]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

LOL
Ya know GG you are just waaayyyyyy to smart for moi!

The latest stats are:

19 fatalaties

"2000" cases.

sad, sad.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

Wolfram studied at Eaton, Oxford and Cal Tech. He earned a PhD in Theoretical Physics in 1979 .. at the age of 20

THAT is being smart.

I am like Salieri, who saw in Mozart what he himself could never be. I am only smart enough to recognize true smartness when I see it.

BTW, that book of his is like two books in one. The "General Notes", 348 pages of dense, small print text and small images, elaborating on the content in the regular text, contain as much information as the first 850 pages of the regular text.

[GreyGeek]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

It looks like it is becoming a non-event. Only 4% of those who contact it have died so far. And, they've detected a decline in the rate of infection, although without field data it is impossible to verify. So, with so little data available about the only thing one can do at this point is a plot a crude graph from which some ball park (? maybe continent size) infection parameters could be inferred. Without actual day-by-day numbers, even more specific than the information in the Wikipedia article or its links, such a graph would be a pure guesstimate. No doubt by design to avoid baseless panic and fear. The original reports about the "bad cukes" being from Span, and emblazoned on DrudgeReport, were wrong. It has cost Spain several hundred million in lost ag sales, and now they are looking around for someone to sue.

[woodsmoke]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

I will defer to you on the above, but having spent so much time to find so little indicated to me that there was either a) a conspiracy! or b) possibly just a big spike in what normally goes on.

don't know.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: e.coli stats for perusal

With over 200,000 cases of E-Coli illnesses every year, the only thing that makes this 0140 strain so effective is that it holds onto the intestinal mucosa more efficiently than other strains do, allowing its waste products (toxins) to more time to do their work on the kidneys and other organs. The treatments normally used, to control diarrhea, are the exact opposite of what they are finding to be an effective treatment.