5 ms·

Ebola: The tolling bell

60 points by superfx 12y ago

Havoc 12y ago
While the situation is serious - it will be contained eventually in my view. As cynical as it sounds I think there are many positive effects being overlooked here. People need a good wake-up every now and again. We suddenly realized that there is zero global coordination. There is just no global immediate response mechanism in place to deal with this type of stuff. In the Hollywood movies you see the American tanks roll in as a show of force to contain an area...but where are the American tanks in Nigeria? Sure eventually UN & US mechanisms kicked in (which is great) but I still feel it was subpar. Not in the sense of the people under-performed (they're great) but rather that the structures in place under-performed / don't exist. Personally I think there should be a global response team. i.e. one group that has the ability to declare an emergency (Ebola) and then specific governments can buy in or not (and delegate power & funding). Based on that buy-in the team either has power or it does not. In this case, with EU and US buy-in such a team would have vast of power over many nations - and many other nations will follow a US/UN/EU alliance blindly (imagine finding yourself on the wrong side of that). With THAT kind of response you can counter an epidemic. Thats a bit of a pipe dream sure, but it illustrates what I mean by saying we lack a global immediate response team. Now I'm not suggesting the above should be implemented - its more of a thought experiment...the fact remains that the current model is not capable of deal with Ebola let alone other stuff (that shall remain unnamed in the interest of keeping things on track)
- noonespecial 12y ago
  I have been thinking the same. It seems that America desperately needs an enemy sometimes. If there isn't one available, it kind of makes them up to keep busy. This is a golden opportunity for the USA to bring the world together and fight a real enemy worth defeating and perhaps regain some of it's lost luster. Well I'm hoping anyway.
  - Havoc 12y ago
    >USA to bring the world together Not quite what I had envisioned when I talked about a global response team. I guess thats why we don't have a global response team. :( And thats not meant as an anti-american comment but rather as a realization that countries don't get along all that well.
  - rasz_pl 12y ago
    >USA to bring the world together oh you already did, together AGAINST USA
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Actually the US has been amazing in bringing the world together against ISIS: muslim countries fly bombing missions along with the west, France is in, for a moment it even looked like Iran and just possibly Russia would join.
      - rasz_pl 12y ago
        How about Israel? now think about that one.
- jerf 12y ago
  I often think that people just can not conceive of the scales of disasters that are possible and can befall anybody, including the US. You look at the frankly incredible measures that may be necessary to prevent an outbreak, and it's easy to imagine the costs, the screaming from the affecting (and, given the topic, possibly the literal screaming on the evening news of perfectly innocent people against their will being confined in their own houses unto literal death), the economic costs of shutting things down and quarantining people, etc., politically and economically all very expensive, and in the face of an imagination unable to truly, fundamentally believe these things are possible, the will to take the necessary actions can not be found, because the benefits are literally inconceivable. And there are oh-so-many things that are so much more fun to spend time on for those in authority, and the odds that their fundamental preparations will be found wanting so low during their tenure, that the appeal of shifting all resources and money away from basic prep is tempting to the point of irresistibility. Unfortunately, the disasters that can occur are not bounded by our imagination. (And I do mean fun for those in authority. Contemplating emergencies is not fun. Exerting primate dominance over others in the so very many varied ways that humans are capable of is so much more fun.)
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    People need an emotional connection to a disaster or emergency before they begin to contemplate the effects and either take action or donate time/money/resources to help. Asking for money to help prevent a future disaster is a lot harder connection to make with donors. A recent NPR Planet Money podcast highlighted the difficulty in raising money to fight Ebola: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/22/349962559/why-raising-money-to-fight-ebola-is-hard http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/22/349962559/why-rais... "Donors like being part of a recovery story. In Haiti, buildings and lives were destroyed. The pitch was, let's help them rebuild. In the case of Ebola, it's been harder to make a pitch."
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    And, of course, the conspiracy theories. "They're doing this to institute martial law and kill us all! NWO FEMA death camps! Obama's HitlerStalin on a rampage! JEWS!" The more extreme versions won't gain much traction, but the smaller ones which tie into pre-existing crap like anti-vaccine sentiment will gain enough to make life difficult for the people trying to improve things.
- thegreatness 12y ago
  "We suddenly realized that there is zero global coordination. There is just no global immediate response mechanism in place to deal with this type of stuff. In the Hollywood movies you see the American tanks roll in as a show of force to contain an area...but where are the American tanks in Nigeria?" This is why I have to apologize on behalf of Americans when I meet foreigners from any of the dozens of countries the US has recently invaded. They know not what they do.
Sebpereira 12y ago
This could become the new trend, as populations concentrate more and more in cities, creating slums, the conditions to catalyze outbreaks increase exponentially. I agree with the author that the cause of the recent epidemic has to do with the geographic location of the initial cases.
Alex3917 12y ago
I think the author is overestimating how prepared the US healthcare system is to handle a real threat if one arises: - The U.S. has been advertising that we're the ones with the cure for ebola, so where is anyone with money going to go as soon as they get exposed? And while most of the victims are among the urban poor, there will be more wealthy people who become infected as the epidemic increases in scale. - Even if we have better technology, the cost of treating each victim here is exponentially higher. The cost for each patient could easily be close to a million dollars if you count 2+ weeks in the ER, licensed biohazard disposal and decontamination, network tracing, quarantining exposed contacts, etc. - Nearly 50M Americans don't have health insurance. If going into the ER risked you getting kept there while waiting for test results, possibly losing your job, and getting getting stuck with a bill for tens of thousands of dollars even if you don't have ebola, it's hard to imagine that many of those people aren't going to just wait a few extra days. - In the US healthcare workers are generally paid well enough that they can just leave their jobs, maybe not comfortably, but with enough money to at least feed themselves and get by. It's hard to imagine that we won't have large numbers of healthcare workers just taking off if this ever gets serious. Especially since US healthcare workers aren't trained to deal with ebola, and largely aren't interested -- notice how most of the people going to west Africa to volunteer in this crisis are missionaries, not doctors. - We have all sorts of religious fundamentalists in the US who think it's god's will that the US be destroyed for condoning homosexuality or whatever who would be more than happy to help the process along, and more than enough people abroad who would gladly sacrifice their own lives to disrupt our foreign/domestic policy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 12y ago
"The current Ebola epidemic may well become the worst human disaster in this century. And we are not doing enough about it." Ok, I think anyone here generally understands how dangerous Ebola is and could become if it continues to spread. That being said, already this century: Smoking has killed roughly 60 million people HIV / AIDS has killed 20 to 25 million Malaria has killed eight million Diarrhoea has killed perhaps 15 million We're a long ways yet from Ebola competing as a worst human disaster candidate. To put it in stark perspective, it could kill a million people before it's contained (100+ fold more than it likely currently has), and it still wouldn't get near the health disasters I listed. I don't really understand why people persist with inflating Ebola's stature (or downplaying the other health disasters, however you want to look at it). The only conclusions I've come to, are that Ebola has been sensationalized for years by Hollywood and the media (on-going), and its mortality rate and rapid nature are obvious fear points. I still don't see how the fear adds up when compared to millions of children dying from diarrhoea, except that these are things most people think they can't get / won't die from.
- jeffdavis 12y ago
  But the other problems have been with us for a while. Stacking Ebola on top of them is really bad news. We've already underestimated Ebola in a number of ways. The assumption was that it's not easily transmissible, but it's spreading, so perhaps that assumption is not as true as we thought. The fact that doctors are getting infected is certainly a bad sign. Perhaps this strain is more easily transmissible, or will be soon due to a larger infected population within which it can evolve. Also, none of those other problems require drastic measures like a 3-week quarantine, which is costly, disruptive, and doesn't scale well.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  We've discussed this before. The key differences are that the first two things take quite a long time to kill you; the second two things are very easy to treat/prevent and we know they tend to improve as infrastructure is added. All four of these problems can be managed with current knowledge, at varying degrees of expense. Our failure to eliminate them or other obvious causes of mortality is largely due to a failure of political will, inadequate capital, or some combination of the two. HIV/AIDS is the best example because we don't have a definite cure, and we let it get much worse than it needed to because originally it was treated as a moral disease. In contrast, we lack the capability to treat Ebola reliably, and it acts fast enough and powerfully enough that patients can't get meaningfully involved in their own treatment the way many HIV patients did in the early days of that epidemic. Our best strategy against Ebola right now is to just isolate people and hope that it burns itself out. Given the size of the area where it is rampant, this is a highly unreliable strategy.
jliptzin 12y ago
I read somewhere about a black market for ebola survivor blood. At first I misread the title and thought it meant a black market for ebola-infected blood (or ebola-infected cadavers). Now that is a truly scary possibility - terrorists intentionally infecting themselves with ebola, then going into airports and other high density areas, infecting surfaces and as many people as they can before succumbing (or maybe even blowing themselves up with a suicide bomb - who knows). I think that's one possibility that's been overlooked and underscores why we really need to be funding greater vaccine/cure research (in addition to the obvious reason of potentially saving millions of lives in Africa).
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Terrorists could have done that years ago with AIDS or Hepatitis C but they never have - it's not obviously an effective propaganda tool and religious terrorists are likely to have hangups about dying in an unclean fashion.
  - ivanca 12y ago
    Why you are being down voted is a mystery to me. (I upvoted you but I have been vote-banned AKA my votes do nothing at all)
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    > it's not obviously an effective propaganda tool It's actually a terrible propaganda tool, the "goal" so far as there is one is to strike terror into your opponents (and gain supporters) while not doing something so heinous that you call down the wrath of your target since terrorism is usually the far weaker side opposing the stronger side. I think for example IS/ISIL/ISIS are just about to cross that line if they haven't already.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
startupfounder 12y ago
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” - John Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) It's important that we realize that theses people being affected by viral spread of Ebola are people just like you, me, our families and friends.
- sal_paradise 12y ago
  What are the odds that I see this quote twice on one day for the first time ever? http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/2i418w/every_person_sees_the_world_in_a_unique_way_when/ckyokj9 http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/2i418w/every...
  - jMyles 12y ago
    I actually want to know the answer to this question. Mostly because I think the odds are remote, yet it happens more often than is reasonable to predict. Thus, I suppose I believe in a sort of synchronicity. I'm not sure if I realized that before.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      > Mostly because I think the odds are remote, yet it happens more often than is reasonable to predict. It happens as often as you should be able to predict it. This usually indicates a limited access to relevant data rather than some kind of exotic mechanism.
      - startupfounder 12y ago
        It's at the bottom of the article we were discussing... http://stanfordlawyer.law.stanford.edu/2014/10/ebola-the-tolling-bell/ http://stanfordlawyer.law.stanford.edu/2014/10/ebola-the-tol...
jostmey 12y ago
Stopping Ebola now could be one of the single most important decisions the world makes this century. Just imagine what would happen if Ebola emerged in lets say India. It doesn't sound so far fetched now that we have seen a case in America. Exponential growth tends to catch people off-guard. Just like Moore's Law lead to a rapid emergence of the home computer, a deadly disease could reshape the world overnight.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  The viral factor of ebola is 1.7, but it is also is the place in the world where there is the least amount of medical staff. In addition it would be a lot easier to ban plane travel out of Africa than it would be to end the ebola outbreak. Both options would prevent ebola getting into India. In addition I am not that terrified of India - the kind of people who live about the airline are the kind of people who have access to medical resources. I don't want to live in India, but it is not entirely a third-world country, certainly not for the middle-class and above. Now if it got into the slums of Calcutta we might a bigger problem.
  - 616c 12y ago
    Unfortunately, with all do respect, you do not know the current plight of Indian and South Asian population. Many of them work in the Persian Gulf in labor camps. ANd I do not mean a couple thousand. In Qatar, there is 10 million plus population, the population is overwhelmingly male, and the Qataris are less one million of that population. Male South Asian laborers are the largest demographic group in the whole country. This is an increasingly common pattern in the region. There is little or no medical care, and despite first class medical care for expats, it would be way too late for the unprepared MoH units, which receive basically minimal training from the CDC to react in time. This area, specifically Qatar, has become a major transportation for hub internationa flights, hence the real underlying panic for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). If South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, etc.) were hit in any real way, the world would be fucked ... probably in the course of weeks.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Donation pages for Médecins Sans Frontières: http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/ https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/ Better to cough up cash now...
ivanca 12y ago
The fact that this article has been flagged (is no longer in the front page despite being way up there minutes a go) and the lack of upvotes (compared to other less important articles) makes me fear for the future of humanity. Because despite being made of fairly smart people not even the HN crowd still realizes the gravity of the situation.
bjornsing 12y ago
Does anybody know how the (immune) survivors are engaged in the health care system of the affected countries? The treatment itself doesn't seem so advanced, it's main challenge being not getting infected. Being immune would be a huge advantage.
- bjornsing 12y ago
  Seems there are quite serious plans to even tap their blood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410437
oxioxi 12y ago
I am sad that Ebola has become an epidemic, but worried that it might be used as a weapon by a fundamentalist. Our cavalier attitude in treating that man from Liberia who developed Ebola in the US Presents a difficult problem to prevent. That was an accidental event. What precautions can we take against intentional events?

60 points by superfx 12y ago

Havoc 12y ago

While the situation is serious - it will be contained eventually in my view. As cynical as it sounds I think there are many positive effects being overlooked here. People need a good wake-up every now and again. We suddenly realized that there is zero global coordination. There is just no global immediate response mechanism in place to deal with this type of stuff. In the Hollywood movies you see the American tanks roll in as a show of force to contain an area...but where are the American tanks in Nigeria? Sure eventually UN & US mechanisms kicked in (which is great) but I still feel it was subpar. Not in the sense of the people under-performed (they're great) but rather that the structures in place under-performed / don't exist. Personally I think there should be a global response team. i.e. one group that has the ability to declare an emergency (Ebola) and then specific governments can buy in or not (and delegate power & funding). Based on that buy-in the team either has power or it does not. In this case, with EU and US buy-in such a team would have vast of power over many nations - and many other nations will follow a US/UN/EU alliance blindly (imagine finding yourself on the wrong side of that). With THAT kind of response you can counter an epidemic. Thats a bit of a pipe dream sure, but it illustrates what I mean by saying we lack a global immediate response team. Now I'm not suggesting the above should be implemented - its more of a thought experiment...the fact remains that the current model is not capable of deal with Ebola let alone other stuff (that shall remain unnamed in the interest of keeping things on track)

noonespecial 12y ago
I have been thinking the same. It seems that America desperately needs an enemy sometimes. If there isn't one available, it kind of makes them up to keep busy. This is a golden opportunity for the USA to bring the world together and fight a real enemy worth defeating and perhaps regain some of it's lost luster. Well I'm hoping anyway.
- Havoc 12y ago
  >USA to bring the world together Not quite what I had envisioned when I talked about a global response team. I guess thats why we don't have a global response team. :( And thats not meant as an anti-american comment but rather as a realization that countries don't get along all that well.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  >USA to bring the world together oh you already did, together AGAINST USA
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Actually the US has been amazing in bringing the world together against ISIS: muslim countries fly bombing missions along with the west, France is in, for a moment it even looked like Iran and just possibly Russia would join.
    - rasz_pl 12y ago
      How about Israel? now think about that one.
jerf 12y ago
I often think that people just can not conceive of the scales of disasters that are possible and can befall anybody, including the US. You look at the frankly incredible measures that may be necessary to prevent an outbreak, and it's easy to imagine the costs, the screaming from the affecting (and, given the topic, possibly the literal screaming on the evening news of perfectly innocent people against their will being confined in their own houses unto literal death), the economic costs of shutting things down and quarantining people, etc., politically and economically all very expensive, and in the face of an imagination unable to truly, fundamentally believe these things are possible, the will to take the necessary actions can not be found, because the benefits are literally inconceivable. And there are oh-so-many things that are so much more fun to spend time on for those in authority, and the odds that their fundamental preparations will be found wanting so low during their tenure, that the appeal of shifting all resources and money away from basic prep is tempting to the point of irresistibility. Unfortunately, the disasters that can occur are not bounded by our imagination. (And I do mean fun for those in authority. Contemplating emergencies is not fun. Exerting primate dominance over others in the so very many varied ways that humans are capable of is so much more fun.)
- joezydeco 12y ago
  People need an emotional connection to a disaster or emergency before they begin to contemplate the effects and either take action or donate time/money/resources to help. Asking for money to help prevent a future disaster is a lot harder connection to make with donors. A recent NPR Planet Money podcast highlighted the difficulty in raising money to fight Ebola: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/22/349962559/why-raising-money-to-fight-ebola-is-hard http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/22/349962559/why-rais... "Donors like being part of a recovery story. In Haiti, buildings and lives were destroyed. The pitch was, let's help them rebuild. In the case of Ebola, it's been harder to make a pitch."
- cbd1984 12y ago
  And, of course, the conspiracy theories. "They're doing this to institute martial law and kill us all! NWO FEMA death camps! Obama's HitlerStalin on a rampage! JEWS!" The more extreme versions won't gain much traction, but the smaller ones which tie into pre-existing crap like anti-vaccine sentiment will gain enough to make life difficult for the people trying to improve things.
thegreatness 12y ago
"We suddenly realized that there is zero global coordination. There is just no global immediate response mechanism in place to deal with this type of stuff. In the Hollywood movies you see the American tanks roll in as a show of force to contain an area...but where are the American tanks in Nigeria?" This is why I have to apologize on behalf of Americans when I meet foreigners from any of the dozens of countries the US has recently invaded. They know not what they do.

Sebpereira 12y ago

This could become the new trend, as populations concentrate more and more in cities, creating slums, the conditions to catalyze outbreaks increase exponentially. I agree with the author that the cause of the recent epidemic has to do with the geographic location of the initial cases.

Alex3917 12y ago

I think the author is overestimating how prepared the US healthcare system is to handle a real threat if one arises: - The U.S. has been advertising that we're the ones with the cure for ebola, so where is anyone with money going to go as soon as they get exposed? And while most of the victims are among the urban poor, there will be more wealthy people who become infected as the epidemic increases in scale. - Even if we have better technology, the cost of treating each victim here is exponentially higher. The cost for each patient could easily be close to a million dollars if you count 2+ weeks in the ER, licensed biohazard disposal and decontamination, network tracing, quarantining exposed contacts, etc. - Nearly 50M Americans don't have health insurance. If going into the ER risked you getting kept there while waiting for test results, possibly losing your job, and getting getting stuck with a bill for tens of thousands of dollars even if you don't have ebola, it's hard to imagine that many of those people aren't going to just wait a few extra days. - In the US healthcare workers are generally paid well enough that they can just leave their jobs, maybe not comfortably, but with enough money to at least feed themselves and get by. It's hard to imagine that we won't have large numbers of healthcare workers just taking off if this ever gets serious. Especially since US healthcare workers aren't trained to deal with ebola, and largely aren't interested -- notice how most of the people going to west Africa to volunteer in this crisis are missionaries, not doctors. - We have all sorts of religious fundamentalists in the US who think it's god's will that the US be destroyed for condoning homosexuality or whatever who would be more than happy to help the process along, and more than enough people abroad who would gladly sacrifice their own lives to disrupt our foreign/domestic policy.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

adventured 12y ago

"The current Ebola epidemic may well become the worst human disaster in this century. And we are not doing enough about it." Ok, I think anyone here generally understands how dangerous Ebola is and could become if it continues to spread. That being said, already this century: Smoking has killed roughly 60 million people HIV / AIDS has killed 20 to 25 million Malaria has killed eight million Diarrhoea has killed perhaps 15 million We're a long ways yet from Ebola competing as a worst human disaster candidate. To put it in stark perspective, it could kill a million people before it's contained (100+ fold more than it likely currently has), and it still wouldn't get near the health disasters I listed. I don't really understand why people persist with inflating Ebola's stature (or downplaying the other health disasters, however you want to look at it). The only conclusions I've come to, are that Ebola has been sensationalized for years by Hollywood and the media (on-going), and its mortality rate and rapid nature are obvious fear points. I still don't see how the fear adds up when compared to millions of children dying from diarrhoea, except that these are things most people think they can't get / won't die from.

jeffdavis 12y ago
But the other problems have been with us for a while. Stacking Ebola on top of them is really bad news. We've already underestimated Ebola in a number of ways. The assumption was that it's not easily transmissible, but it's spreading, so perhaps that assumption is not as true as we thought. The fact that doctors are getting infected is certainly a bad sign. Perhaps this strain is more easily transmissible, or will be soon due to a larger infected population within which it can evolve. Also, none of those other problems require drastic measures like a 3-week quarantine, which is costly, disruptive, and doesn't scale well.
anigbrowl 12y ago
We've discussed this before. The key differences are that the first two things take quite a long time to kill you; the second two things are very easy to treat/prevent and we know they tend to improve as infrastructure is added. All four of these problems can be managed with current knowledge, at varying degrees of expense. Our failure to eliminate them or other obvious causes of mortality is largely due to a failure of political will, inadequate capital, or some combination of the two. HIV/AIDS is the best example because we don't have a definite cure, and we let it get much worse than it needed to because originally it was treated as a moral disease. In contrast, we lack the capability to treat Ebola reliably, and it acts fast enough and powerfully enough that patients can't get meaningfully involved in their own treatment the way many HIV patients did in the early days of that epidemic. Our best strategy against Ebola right now is to just isolate people and hope that it burns itself out. Given the size of the area where it is rampant, this is a highly unreliable strategy.

jliptzin 12y ago

I read somewhere about a black market for ebola survivor blood. At first I misread the title and thought it meant a black market for ebola-infected blood (or ebola-infected cadavers). Now that is a truly scary possibility - terrorists intentionally infecting themselves with ebola, then going into airports and other high density areas, infecting surfaces and as many people as they can before succumbing (or maybe even blowing themselves up with a suicide bomb - who knows). I think that's one possibility that's been overlooked and underscores why we really need to be funding greater vaccine/cure research (in addition to the obvious reason of potentially saving millions of lives in Africa).

anigbrowl 12y ago
Terrorists could have done that years ago with AIDS or Hepatitis C but they never have - it's not obviously an effective propaganda tool and religious terrorists are likely to have hangups about dying in an unclean fashion.
- ivanca 12y ago
  Why you are being down voted is a mystery to me. (I upvoted you but I have been vote-banned AKA my votes do nothing at all)
- noir_lord 12y ago
  > it's not obviously an effective propaganda tool It's actually a terrible propaganda tool, the "goal" so far as there is one is to strike terror into your opponents (and gain supporters) while not doing something so heinous that you call down the wrath of your target since terrorism is usually the far weaker side opposing the stronger side. I think for example IS/ISIL/ISIS are just about to cross that line if they haven't already.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

startupfounder 12y ago

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” - John Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) It's important that we realize that theses people being affected by viral spread of Ebola are people just like you, me, our families and friends.

sal_paradise 12y ago
What are the odds that I see this quote twice on one day for the first time ever? http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/2i418w/every_person_sees_the_world_in_a_unique_way_when/ckyokj9 http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/2i418w/every...
- jMyles 12y ago
  I actually want to know the answer to this question. Mostly because I think the odds are remote, yet it happens more often than is reasonable to predict. Thus, I suppose I believe in a sort of synchronicity. I'm not sure if I realized that before.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > Mostly because I think the odds are remote, yet it happens more often than is reasonable to predict. It happens as often as you should be able to predict it. This usually indicates a limited access to relevant data rather than some kind of exotic mechanism.
    - startupfounder 12y ago
      It's at the bottom of the article we were discussing... http://stanfordlawyer.law.stanford.edu/2014/10/ebola-the-tolling-bell/ http://stanfordlawyer.law.stanford.edu/2014/10/ebola-the-tol...

jostmey 12y ago

Stopping Ebola now could be one of the single most important decisions the world makes this century. Just imagine what would happen if Ebola emerged in lets say India. It doesn't sound so far fetched now that we have seen a case in America. Exponential growth tends to catch people off-guard. Just like Moore's Law lead to a rapid emergence of the home computer, a deadly disease could reshape the world overnight.

tomjen3 12y ago
The viral factor of ebola is 1.7, but it is also is the place in the world where there is the least amount of medical staff. In addition it would be a lot easier to ban plane travel out of Africa than it would be to end the ebola outbreak. Both options would prevent ebola getting into India. In addition I am not that terrified of India - the kind of people who live about the airline are the kind of people who have access to medical resources. I don't want to live in India, but it is not entirely a third-world country, certainly not for the middle-class and above. Now if it got into the slums of Calcutta we might a bigger problem.
- 616c 12y ago
  Unfortunately, with all do respect, you do not know the current plight of Indian and South Asian population. Many of them work in the Persian Gulf in labor camps. ANd I do not mean a couple thousand. In Qatar, there is 10 million plus population, the population is overwhelmingly male, and the Qataris are less one million of that population. Male South Asian laborers are the largest demographic group in the whole country. This is an increasingly common pattern in the region. There is little or no medical care, and despite first class medical care for expats, it would be way too late for the unprepared MoH units, which receive basically minimal training from the CDC to react in time. This area, specifically Qatar, has become a major transportation for hub internationa flights, hence the real underlying panic for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). If South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, etc.) were hit in any real way, the world would be fucked ... probably in the course of weeks.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Donation pages for Médecins Sans Frontières: http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/ https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/ Better to cough up cash now...

ivanca 12y ago

The fact that this article has been flagged (is no longer in the front page despite being way up there minutes a go) and the lack of upvotes (compared to other less important articles) makes me fear for the future of humanity. Because despite being made of fairly smart people not even the HN crowd still realizes the gravity of the situation.

bjornsing 12y ago

Does anybody know how the (immune) survivors are engaged in the health care system of the affected countries? The treatment itself doesn't seem so advanced, it's main challenge being not getting infected. Being immune would be a huge advantage.

bjornsing 12y ago
Seems there are quite serious plans to even tap their blood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8410437

oxioxi 12y ago

I am sad that Ebola has become an epidemic, but worried that it might be used as a weapon by a fundamentalist. Our cavalier attitude in treating that man from Liberia who developed Ebola in the US Presents a difficult problem to prevent. That was an accidental event. What precautions can we take against intentional events?