Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
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I feel the Ebola article makes a false comparison. We have highly competent disease control measures that keeps Influenza's death toll bounded around the 50k order of magnitude per year. With Ebola, the curve still looks exponential rather than logistic - if the trend continues we'll have a 6-figure bodycount by January.
A fairer comparison would be Ebola to 1918 Spanish Flu.
(Oh and that isn't even taking into account that the officials have been feeding the media absolute horseshit about the "single patient" with Ebola)
Downvoted for mindless panic.
There are no measures to speak of to control the flu. It goes through the world every year and we just live with it because it's rarely fatal.
The Ebola curve is not exponential in the countries where appropriate measures were taken, Nigeria and Senegal: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/30/ebola-over-in-nigeria/16473339/ Clearly the US can do at least as well.
While Ebola might mutate to become airborne and spread like flu, and there is a real risk of that, there is little indication of it having happened. Until ... (read more)