Yes, We Should Panic (But not in the way people want you to ...)

[kpete]

by digby

I'm getting older so I guess I shouldn't care so much about the future anymore. In the long run, yadda, yadda, yadda. But strangely, I do. I see little kids running around every day right here in my neighborhood and on TV halfway across the world and it breaks my heart to think that we are such a limited species that we will allow catastrophe despite the fact that we know very well how to stop it and could do it easily if we just cooperated with one another. The first half of the 20th Century was a terrible lesson in how irrational human beings are capable of being in the modern world. And sadly so much of what we're seeing today shows we haven't improved much in that area:

The conventional (smart) wisdom is that we should not panic about Ebola in the United States (or Europe). That is certainly true because, even with its huge warts, US and European health-care systems are well-equipped to handle the few cases of Ebola that might pop up.

However, we should panic. We should panic at the lack of care and concern we are showing about the epidemic where it is truly ravaging; we should panic at the lack of global foresight in not containing this epidemic, now, the only time it can be fully contained; and we should panic about what this reveals about how ineffective our global decision-making infrastructure has become. Containing Ebola is a no-brainer, and not that expensive. If we fail at this, when we know exactly what to do, how are we going to tackle the really complex problems we face?

Climate Change? Resource depletion? Other pandemics?

MORE:
https://medium.com/message/ebola-the-real-reason-everyone-should-panic-889f32740e3e
VIA:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/yes-we-should-panic-but-not-in-way.html

[shenmue]

1. Save the Earth

I likes it.

[Enthusiast]

7. Me too.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Not to worry, white folk are getting infected, now there will be a robust response.

[Duval]

6. Fred, you are

probably right. I do worry about my twin granddaughters who will graduate from East Carolina U in May of '15. They make straight A's and are active in campus life and also work. I worry about their future, not just about getting a job, but about the climate changes coming and also about the great divisiveness in the US. However, I am comforted by the fact that I am not alone.

[chervilant]

3. There is no global decision-making infrastructure,

at least in the sense that our species has what it takes to cooperate and coordinate on that level.

Furthermore, our ecosystem is doing exactly what is to be expected when one species is out of balance. We will likely go the way of the dinosaurs, and the earth will be just fine.

[chervilant]

4. PS. I worry for our littlies, too.

And, I remain thankful that I chose not to bring another child onto this already overpopulated planet.

[BrotherIvan]

5. This is the first don't panic/panic article I recommend

The condescending, dismissive ones are totally missing the point: people ARE dying; this IS an epidemic. It might not be in the US, but it is affecting people in other parts of the world and they deserve our help and compassion. The knee-jerk reaction to fox news is understandable in some sense, but also devoid of sympathy and points to an "elitist" liberal attitude. We, the world, need to deal with Ebola as if it affects us all, because it does.