One very useful task for the powerful parallelism inherent in GPUs is to perform what is known as a sensitivity analysis. We would like to know, for example, what the consequences are of there being 70,000 HIV+ adults as opposed to 80,000 HIV+ adults. Ten thousand more people taking anti-retrovirals implies more drugs being donated and some sort of distribution system, as well as initial testing and medical supervision. Given all the missing data, we can't really calculate AIDS inflection and threshold values. Generally, the former is usually between 2 and 2.5% of adults, so it is likely we can claim Guinea-Bissau is well past this milestone. That's not good. So far, for most countries the threshold value is between 10 and 12%. Our equations indicate once the threshold is passed economic collapse is inevitable. There are two considerations: so far, the equations have been correct AND no one has recovered.
In addition, we live on a small planet, so it turns out that the fate of Guinea-Bissau will exert an influence on not only several neighboring countries but also the region as whole. Without Guinea-Bissau it becomes mathematically more difficult to determine how accurate figures from Senegal and other countries might be. As we lack the mathematical sophistication and the philosophical inclination to do otherwise, our models ignore national boundaries and explicitly assign equal values to all human lives. Were one statistically so inclined, it is possible to remove the State of Maine, whose area and population correspond well with Guinea-Bissau, from calculations involving the United States of America without perturbing the overall results. We do this routinely when simulating the acceptance or rejection of educational innovations (standards-based learning) or logistics like maglevs. In western Africa routing a maglev northwest through Mali toward Libya (in happier days) does not require a link to Bissau - Conakry would do as well. However, a maglev along the coast from Casablanca south through Mauritania and on the Nigeria becomes very difficult if one must go around Guinea-Bissau.