Not The Bees said:
You actually bring up some good points, indeed the outbreak in Africa IS so bad because of location. Lack of sanitation, lack of education, fear of the UN, lack of amenities due to countries being run by tinpot dictators. If this outbreak was in a first world country people would be all over it and it wouldn't be an issue. You are right, tough decisions will need to be made. More on this below.
Casual Shinji said:
freaking its shit over the swine flu.
Sea Sponge said:
Bird flu didn't kill me, swine flu didn't kill me and mad cow disease didn't kill me.
I'll worry if I catch it, there is nothing I can do about it and going into a panic about something that's more than likely never going to happen is pointless.
You see, the assumption here is that the WHO were wrong and failed. The fact is that due to the WHO warning action was swift and decisive. Symptomatic people were curtailed and quarantined. If you show any signs you you were not allowed to fly and into quarantine you went. Hell if you landed at an airport here with a sniffle you went into quarantine. Neither swine or bird flu ever became a thing because action was taken. It wasn't a failure by WHO, it was a success.
The same with mad cow disease. Now its a bit different in that you cant catch it from anything airborne, you have eat infected meat. The UK and Europe where the outbreak was immediately responded by shutting down any farm even suspected of it and all cattle were put down. The UK beef industry alone took years to recover. Here in Australia it was two years before we could buy meat products from the UK and Europe and at the time all imported products were removed from store shelves and destroyed. In this case government action was so swift and decisive that it could almost count as a scorched earth policy. Once again its not that Mad Cow disease was no threat, its just a threat that was met head on and neutralized.
Notice a trend though? All this stuff happened in or near first world countries and action was swift and decisive. I have no doubt that if the Ebola outbreak was closer to home, shit would get done.
My worry with Africa is that once it reaches a certain tipping point, that's when shit gets real. If it gets to bad it WILL spread outside Africa. While I do have faith it can be contained in more developed countries, if it reaches that point a hell of a lot of people are going to die.
Ideally I'd like to see the kind of reaction we saw for swine/bird fly and mad cow disease. It can be done, we've seen it. I guess that was my point with the thread in the first place.
