a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment

    the disease modelers were working with current trends, before the West had started pouring serious money into the fight

That's not how the conversation reads to me. There's a difference between Disease models project a rapidly rising toll and Disease modelers project a rapidly rising toll.

    And still the WHO director was on NPR this morning projecting that we could see up to 10,000 deaths in the next 6-9 months. It's like she's living in another universe, one in which reality is one possibility among many, a choose-your-own-adventure horror edition of sorts.

I am happy to see that the WHO director, for the moment, appears to be the more rational, scientific authority, and the horror-story author was the one who

    figured it'd probably crest around 4m next year, hundreds of millions the year after

Worst-case scenarios can be effective motivators to action, but we should remember that diverting resources toward Ebola prevents them from being used for other valuable ends, perhaps including fighting AIDS. If we simply chase after sensational and misleading headlines, we will focus on child homelessness one week and drug policy the next.