User:Craigster0/sandbox

BlueArc Corporation is a network storage device manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California. BlueArc was founded in 1998 or 1997 by Geoff Barrall, Jeff Pinkham and Jon Meyer. Initially named Terastack Limited and based in the UK, it changed its name to Synaxia Networks Limited August 1999 and then to BlueArc UK Limited in February 2001. Initially based in the UK, BlueArc transitioned its HQ to the US (Mountain View) in 2000 and became a US corporation at that time although still maintains a sizable engineering facility in England. The company moved to San Jose in July 2001. BlueArc was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems on September 7, 2011.

BlueArc Corporation is a network storage device manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California. BlueArc was founded in 1998 or 1997 by Geoff Barrall, Jeff Pinkham and Jon Meyer. Initially named Terastack Limited and based in the UK, it changed its name to Synaxia Networks Limited August 1999 and then to BlueArc UK Limited in February 2001. Initially based in the UK, BlueArc transitioned its HQ to the US (Mountain View) in 2000 and became a US corporation at that time although still maintains a sizable engineering facility in England. The company moved to San Jose in July 2001. BlueArc was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems on September 7, 2011.

Projected Casualties and Deaths
The WHO released its first estimate of the possible total casualties (20,000) from the outbreak on 28 August 2014 as part of its road map for stopping the transmission of the virus. The WHO did not provide details of how it made this total casualty estimate or a more detailed projection of how Ebola casualty statistics might evolve over time. The WHO's road map includes an assumption that some country or country will pay the required cost of their plan, estimated at half a billion dollars. It also includes assumptions that some experts have called "extremely aggressive".

On 24 August, four days before the WHO released its projection of total Ebola outbreak casualties, an independent analyst, Robert Van Buskirk, released a preliminary set of forecast scenarios of total Ebola casualties in a short technical report and a spreadsheet with the detailed calculations. The spreadsheet allows for detailed evaluation and replication of the forecast results. These detailed calculations provide forecasts of weekly casualty statistics for the several scenarios that he examined.

The technical paper detailing Van Buskirk's forecast projections (which were made before the release of the WHO roadmap) describes the total number of casualties (cases of infection) and total number of deaths deaths based on four different scenarios. The scenarios he characterizes as "likely" range from ~34,000 to ~532,000 cases and ~18,400 to ~290,000 deaths. He states "The most likely scenario is a total casualty count of one to several hundred thousand cases, with a fairly high probability of more than 100,000 deaths.

Van Buskirk also describes a "Nightmare scenario" with ~2,500,000 cases and ~1,300,000 deaths.

The following paragraphs summarize the paper published by Van Buskirk.

The Ebola epidemic is growing at an exponential rate and will likely continue to do so until sufficient resources are applied to impact the chain of transmission. Since no effective treatment is available the total number of deaths continues to grow at the same rate as the number of cases (in other words, if ~52% of the people infected die and the number of people infected doubles than the number of deaths also doubles).

The growth rate of total cases (casualities) across all countries upto August 2014 has been a fairly steady 2.2%/day - 2.4%/day while in August it has increased to ~3.1%/day. Van Buskirk points out that the increase is probably due to the fact that cases in Liberia have been growing at ~4.5%/day since Ebola took hold in an urban setting there and casualities in Liberia are therefore becoming an increasing fraction of the total casulities.

An exponential growth rate means that the number of casualities tomorrow grows as a fixed percentage of the number of cases today.
 * a growth rate of 2.3%/day means the number of casualities will double after 30.5 days and double again 30.5 days after that. It will increase by a factor of 10 after 101 days and after another 101 days will increase by another factor of 10, for a total factor of 100.
 * a growth 3.1%/day means the number of casualaties will double in 22.7 days and increase by a factor of 10 in 75.4 days.
 * a growth rate of 4.5%/day means the doubling time is 15.7 days and a factor of 10 increase occurs after 52 days. After 104 days, both casualties and deaths would increase by a factor of 100.

Given a projected growth rate and the projected amount of time until the growth rate is brought under control (not the epidemic as a whole, just the growth rate) it is possible to project the number of casualities and deaths that will result from this outbreak.

Van Buskirk notes in his paper and a "Call to Action" that every day saved in reacting to the crisis will save 800 to 17,000 lives/day in his likely scenarios and ~88,000 lives/day in his "Nightmare Scenario"

Simultaneously with the release of the forecast scenarios Van Buskirk started a petition on the White House "We the People" website on 24 August 2014 that It asks that the President and the CDC to take leadership to control the exponentially growing outbreak by:
 * references the forecast results
 * notes that cases in Liberia are doubling every 15 days (which is the 4.5%/day growth rate of the nightmare scenario, which Van Buskirk projects will result in 1.3 million deaths)
 * releasing periodic forecasts official forecasts from the CDC
 * setting a goal of minimizing total outbreak casualties, and
 * mobilizing US military logistic resources as necessary.

WHO's announcement of the plan includes a statement that "Nearly 40% of the total number of reported cases have occurred within the past three weeks".