” And politicians will continue to serve the interests of big money right up to the day that the fourth horseman of the apocalypse rides into town carrying the plague.”
This is one reason things are so bad in West Africa right now. Governments delayed quarantine and travel restrictions because they didn’t want the western corporations to leave.
You’d think the corporations would have enough sense to realize that containing Ebola is in their own interest as well.
But I think it’s a dynamic similar to the housing bubble. A few voices in the wilderness had long been warning that a serious problem was developing in the housing market. But firms making a fortune off of the bubble didn’t want to hear it and ignored or even laid off their own risk officers. And politicians weren’t about to interfere with a status quo that was making their donors a lot of money. So the bubble was allowed to go on until it blew up.
I expect nothing will be done to impose quarantines or travel restrictions unless and until Ebola shows up in the first world in a big way.