Triathlon, Ebola and Critical Mass

We have written on how to improve triathlon performance and posted articles ad nauseam mentioning how to work toward improving performance, that it is fine and dandy! The only but is that the culture will dictate the accuracy of the plan. How hard and accurate we work to achieve goals is in the culture (the team culture).  Team culture is the critical mass that makes the team work the way we want:

Critical Mass and Tipping

ROBERT V. DODGE

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199857203.003.0018

This chapter is about how some things catch on while others do not. These situations are explained by the model “critical mass,”sometimes referred to as the “bandwagon effect.” An explanation of critical mass in a nuclear reaction is related to social science. The success or failure of many things is determined by whether “critical mass” is achieved so that increasing numbers are encouraged to join. An example of something achieving critical mass is presented, and this is McDonalds. The competition between Betamax and VHS for home video cassettes is discussed, and the 1989 critical mass achieved when Communist countries began collapsing is outlined. A subset Schelling introduced is presented and that is “tipping.” This typically refers to racial groups tipping in and out, as a previously homogeneously racial neighborhood becomes integrated. Tipping can describe any critical mass phenomenon. The “tipping point” is the exact point at which the reaction becomes self-sustaining. The chapter provides a number of instructions on converting numbers into a curve and determining the location of the tipping point, plus stable outcomes. A problem presented that deals with the Rodney King trial, which makes for a dramatic example of how much control of the tipping point can matter as a policy issue.

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199857203.001.0001/acprof-9780199857203-chapter-18

We are always looking for the Critical Mass, in places like Mexico we need to start from zero generating a critical mass to produce a team of winners (a powerhouse).  A critical mass is needed for an illness to become a pandemic; a number of bacteria (critical mass) is needed to produce a disease; around or above 15 million spermatozoids are needed to become pregnant.

A generalized model of social and biological contagion

P.S. Doddsa,_, D.J. Wattsb,c

aInstitute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, MC 3355, New York, NY 10027, USA

bDepartment of Sociology, Columbia University, 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA

cSanta Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA

Received 27 May 2004; received in revised form 15 September 2004; accepted 15 September 2004

Available online 6 November 2004

Abstract

We present a model of contagion that unifies and generalizes existing models of the spread of social influences and microorganismal infections. Our model incorporates individual memory of exposure to a contagious entity (e.g. a rumor or disease), variable magnitudes of exposure (dose sizes), and heterogeneity in the susceptibility of individuals. Through analysis and simulation, we examine in detail the case where individuals may recover from an infection and then immediately become susceptible again (analogous to the so-called SIS model). We identify three basic classes of contagion models which we call epidemic threshold, vanishing critical mass, and critical mass classes, where each class of models corresponds to different strategies for prevention or facilitation. We find that the conditions for a particular contagion model to belong to one of the these three classes depend only on memory length and the probabilities of being infected by one and two exposures, respectively. These parameters are in principle measurable for real contagious influences or entities, thus yielding empirical implications for our model. We also study the case where individuals attain permanent immunity once recovered, finding that epidemics inevitably die out but may be surprisingly persistent when individuals possess memory.

r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Contagion; Epidemic; Memory; Treshold; Dose response

Europe and America knew about the presence of Ebola in Africa since the early 70’s or before.  We knew about the presence of AIDS in Africa since the 19^th century; in Medical School, I learned about the regions where Kaposi’s sarcoma was endemic in Africa; such sarcoma was killing people in less than two years, it was compared to the Mediterranean Kaposi’s sarcoma that was present in Europa. The European sarcoma was relatively benign and it was present in old persons. It took 30 years for us, medical students, to know that it was AIDS; until the American patients were treated in California (1984).  Few cases were seen in the 40’s in the USA, they were treated for pneumonia; the radiologists used to call the thorax X-ray, gay’s lungs.  The few patients dying from AIDS in the USA did not make the critical mass in the 40’s and 50’s; it happened until the 80’s.  Ebola has the following chronological appearance according to USA CDC:

1989	USA	Reston virus	0	0	Ebola-Reston virus was introduced into quarantine facilities in Virginia and Pennsylvania by monkeys imported from the Philippines.
1979	Sudan (South Sudan)	Sudan virus	34	22 (65%)	Occured in Nzara, Maridi. Recurrent outbreak at the same site as the 1976 Sudan epidemic
1977	Zaire	Ebola virus	1	1 (100%)	Noted retrospectively in the village of Tandala.
1976	England	Sudan virus	1	0	Laboratory infection by accidental stick of contaminated needle.
1976	Sudan (South Sudan)	Sudan virus	284	151 (53%)	Occurred in Nzara, Maridi and the surrounding area. Disease was spread mainly through close personal contact within hospitals. Many medical care personnel were infected.
1976	Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo - DRC)	Ebola virus	318	280 (88%)	Occurred in Yambuku and surrounding area. Disease was spread by close personal contact and by use of contaminated needles and syringes in hospitals/clinics. This outbreak was the first recognition of the disease.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/history/chronology.html

We have been working on the critical mass to produce the powerhouse we want to be able to improve triathlon performance.  Education plays the major role and nothing can replace it.