Posted on 10/17/2014 3:57:05 PM PDT by blam
Shane Ferro
October 17, 2014
Multiplication — that's what people don't understand about Ebola, according to Nassim Taleb, the author of "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan."
More specifically, Taleb explained to Business Insider that many people talking about the disease don't "have a grasp of the severity of the multiplicative process."
The argument that the US should be more worried about a disease like cancer — which has more stable rates of infection than Ebola does currently — is a logic that Taleb calls "the empiricism of the idiots."
The basic idea: The growth rate of Ebola infection is nonlinear, so the number of people catching it doubles every 20 days. Because of this, you have to act quickly at the source of infections, he says. "The closer you are to the source, the more effective you are at slowing it down ... it is much more rational to prevent it now than later."
The problem Taleb sees is that if there is not more urgent action in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — to the point of restricting travel and other measures that may now seem like an overreaction — then there will be consequences here.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Butt...butt...butt. Hopalong Harry Reid says it’s still “too early” to stop those infected with Ebola from coming into this country. And Harry, like most commie libs, is an Ebola “expert”.
"Is Barack Obama completely insane? By not instituting an immediate ban on all non-essential travel between the United States and West Africa, he is putting the lives of more than 300 million Americans at risk. Anyone with a shred of common sense knows that you keep more people from getting sick by keeping the sick people away from the healthy people. Because the Ebola outbreaks in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are raging out of control, it is extremely difficult to tell who is carrying Ebola and who is not carrying Ebola. Therefore we need to keep everyone from those countries away until those outbreaks subside.
The average American doesn’t even understand compound interest, exponential growth is a concept they won’t even try to recognize.
Taleb is the man!
Or anything else for that matter, except maybe for “social justice”, whatever that means.
The idiots in charge are going to cost a lot of lives.
My bet is that Harry is counting border crossings and will not agree to a travel ban until a certain critical number of future Democrats have crossed. The two (border and flights) are linked.
the empiricism of the idiots -Taleb
He knows them well.
I’d love to hear a discussion between Taleb and Sowell. Either one of them is worthy of respect; the combination would be over the top.
WHO stated 10K cases every week in two months but did they take into consideration that Duncan’s nurses would go on world tours?
Using other common expressions, although ebola starts with one person, it then spreads out to many people quickly, just like an avalanche or a forest fire started with a single match.
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576.
Only has to double 19 times to reach a million.
With our ability to move about and the social contacts most Americans have, EV will spread like wild fire.
These idiots are going to get us killed.
The term ‘black swan’ is racist, I’m sure, so naturally he would support restricting travel. Creepy ass cracker!
He is right.
Please call congress and tell them that we must be deadly serious about containing Ebola by strict quarantine within the United States and from infected nations. This is our right and our duty and it is THEIR duty to protect US.
Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121 or Google your congressman or senator and get his contact information and call him / her office directly. You can also call or go to their local offices.
I believe decisive response is urgent because you can’t put this Ebola genie back in the bottle once it gets out. It is a fire, it consumes all the fuel it can get and the fuel is people. The only way to stop a fire is to block it from the fuel or cool it with water. A vaccine or medicine to treat Ebola would be the water and we don’t have reliable, enough or any.
Every possible measure must be taken to stop the spread before draconian measures are imposed. What is being done now is sloppy. We are walking a dangerous road. The threat is blossoming by the day if not hour. Almost every hour there is some new Ebola development and none of them are good. This is a serious and potentially deadly event. Unchecked it could destroy or weaken the United States and facilitate our destruction by others. It has that potential for every country and that is why so many are responding with such strict quarantines. These consequences, no matter how small the probabilities, demand a full effort and significant response.
Ebola is being spread here in the United States right now. First Texas, then Ohio then? Terror is an excellent weapon. It disrupts, confuses, paralyzes and destroys a society. Many others and we on FR have speculated that terrorists may spread Ebola. How do you that remember 9/11 feel right now compared to what you felt then? Do you want to gather your loved ones near you to protect them? I do. Even more than I did on September 11, 2001! Isn’t this passive response by this administration accomplishing the very same things a terrorist would want?
When something is being done that makes as little sense as what Obama is doing there has to be some other reason. I leave it to you dear reader to draw your own conclusions as to the reasons.
What is happening now is insane. It makes no sense at all. For example the head of CDC says: “Stopping travel from Africa won’t do any good because you have to get people into Africa to fight Ebola.” “You can’t get Ebola from an infected person on a bus but an infected person should never be on a bus because he can infect others.” “Blocking travel from infected countries would damage their fragile economies.” What about ours? What about our safety? What about resources we have paid for that should be protecting us?
Even the most despotic dictatorship in Africa has acted to protect his nation by strict quarantine and stopping travel from infected countries. Even CDC, the UN and WHO advocate and credit strict quarantine for nipping the spread of Ebola in the bud at the source in places like Senegal and Nigeria where both have had faster and more successful outbreak controls than we have had here. 35 countries have stopped travel of people from infected West African countries. It is so obvious even a child could understand it so why is it OK for people from infected countries to travel here?
I will post this message and keep posting it until someone stops me.
For further reference:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3216461/posts
Taleb explained to Business Insider that many people talking about the disease don’t “have a grasp of the severity of the multiplicative process.
Also known as innumeracy.
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