[Kartographer]

Some good points. Especially on normalcy bias.

[Kartographer]

Ping!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Truthfully, until Ebola gets into the 100,000 fatalities a day league, it is small potatoes. About the only contender in mortality like that is a “killer” influenza.

Still, it is good to that if 1 million people a day died, it would be about 2 years and 9 months to kill a billion people, and there are an estimated 7 billion on Earth.

[Pollster1]

“20,000 cases predicted” is an absurd number. There is no realistic mathematical model I know of that can produce so few cases in 12-18 months. This will be much, MUCH bigger than 20k cases, and we’re unlikely to stay below that number even for this year.

Note: the largest previous outbreak was 425 cases back in 2,000-2001, and we’re already ten times that number and still growing exponentially with no detectable decrease in the rate of exponential growth.

[Uncle Miltie]

Is anyone militarily and morally prepared to enforce a lethal quarantine of all of West Africa?

If not, Ebola is coming to a Grade School near you....

[rarestia]

I’m not going to say I don’t care, but an ebola outbreak in the US ranks somewhere in the low part of my top 100 things I worry about in the course of a week.

Winter is coming, as they say in GoT, and as the article very succinctly pointed out, ebola thrives in warm, wet climes. As a Floridian, sure it concerns me, but everyone from the Farmer’s Almanac to NOAA is predicting a brutally cold winter in the northern hemisphere. That coupled with healthcare facilities that are, for now, top notch, the containment of an outbreak would likely be swift.

If this is going to happen, it’s going to start in a major city or somewhere near a coastline. If you live in the Midwest, esp. in the upper Midwest, you should be more concerned with stockpiling warm clothes and fire wood than if ebola is going to come creeping into your neighborhood in the next 6 - 12 months.

[steve86]

The average U.S. citizen suffers from what we call “Normalcy Bias”. This is the tendency to be believe that, since things have been just fine, everything will always remain so.

It's also possible to suffer from "catastrophe bias". Such that everyday life is seen as a potential ongoing disaster, since there's always a threat somewhere in the world theoretically threatening us. I'm not saying Ebola is not a threat -- it is -- but some people on FR are continuously in duck and cover mode even without any imminent threat. Such a preoccupation is not helpful when it becomes an obsession and interferes with ordinary life.

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping…

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

[exDemMom]

We are definitely suffering from an epidemic (more like pandemic) of normalcy bias. Every idiot who refuses to vaccinate his or her children because of the stupid belief that somehow, a tiny needle prick is more dangerous than a potentially deadly pathogen is absolutely steeped in normalcy bias. Because they've never seen these diseases, they believe they do not exist and that there is nothing to protect their children against. (They are not very different from people in the Ebola affected countries who do not believe Ebola is real.)

Despite this, few homes have gloves and medical masks in their medicine cabinet, even though they would be useful for any outbreak of infectious disease. [copied from article at link]

If you keep those items in your home, be aware that latex gloves have a shelf life, and might only last a few months under certain conditions of heat and humidity. Disposable gloves, of any material, should be inspected periodically to make sure they are still usable. Latex gloves that have light colored spots or patches on them are no longer protective.

[blam]

Keep up the good work Kart.

[null and void]

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

We’re gonna need

a bigger cart!

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[Shadowstrike]

Got a friend who lives in New Orleans who said the Coast Guard is fixing to transfer a Ebola patient from a Cargo Ship from the Congo....

Look out for outbreaks in Louisiana

[Caipirabob]

Ebola: Does It Matter?

50% of reported cases end in death. Does it matter?

WTF?!?

[riri]

Just heard on Dave Hodges that Bill Gates and NIH own all the rights to ebola and it's vaccines.

Link