The current Ebola epidemic presents an unprecedented threat to billions of people and our modern interdependent civilization. Why is the threat unprecedented? First, because it would be extremely easy to control with minimal meaningful effort. Second, because control efforts appropriate to the scale of the epidemic are nowhere being implemented. Third, because its highly lethal, it has no effective treatment, its been spreading exponentially, and its about to overwhelm several countries and spread to many others. The only remedy is public health, case tracing, and quarantine. Were safe for the time being because we have a good public health system and a lot of economic cushion. That may disappear as the rest of the world panics and then succumbs to the epidemic. This is an extremely interconnected world, whose economies often have no redundancy (i.e., no back-up systems). We do not know how fragile our economic systems are, because those systems deal very well with stress up to a certain point. But we simply dont know if we can avoid and economically survive an epidemic that consumes all of the third world, i.e., all of those countries that already have substantial public health problems, including the Middle East and South Asia (India, Pakistan, and the Southeast). Even if we exclude all immigrants and foreign travelers, its at best uncertain that the OECD economies could function at all today if imported oil and Asian manufactured goods became suddenly unavailable, or indeed with any substantial interruption of international commerce. Why hasnt anything been done? Ive posted five or six times recently. Ive received some supportive and helpful comments, but so far, it seems no one has shared any of my posts. Nor do I have any indication that anyone of my (I hope multitudinous) friends has actually done anything about it or even tried to get the word out. Ill discuss why nothing seems to be happening, too, if anyone is interested, but I suggest that the most important thing now is to spread the world. As Ive said, a solution is now probably easily within our grasp. It soon will not be.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 04:34:22 +0000
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