http://investmentwatchblog.com/how-a-minimal-ebola-outbreak-will-devastate-the-u-s-economy/
An interesting scenario about the impact even a minor disease outbreak can have on the economy..
To illustrate just how devastating the effects can be on the economy when people lose trust in the belief that it is safe to go out in public, let’s take a look at the immediate reaction from the citizens of Dallas when only one Ebola case, Thomas Duncan, surfaced in the city.
When it was announced that Thomas Duncan had contact with some Dallas school children, we saw the immediate impact as Dallas moms began to keep their children home from school. Officials in Louisiana refused to receive Thomas Duncan’s property. Subsequently, and according to the AP and Veolia North America, Duncan’s effects were disposed of in drums taken from a Dallas apartment where Duncan became ill and were burned at the company’s incinerator in Port Arthur., TX.
It does not matter what I write or what someone broadcasts on their talk show about Ebola, once people perceive there is a threat, even a low-level threat posed by someone like Thomas Duncan, the people will panic. Rationality will not be part of the decision making process. Fear will take over. How long would police, fire, EMT personnel, hospital personnel, people that service our water supplies and the doctors that service our infirm, stay on the job following an Ebola outbreak? An examination of this question, by using Hurricane Katrina, as a comparison, tells us that by the third day, virtually all essential services would be seriously compromised because of personnel defections. In this scenario, how would chronically ill people receive their medications? How would people get emergency appendectomies or other emergency medical procedures? There will be no “911, what’s your emergency”? The factors that bind society together will quickly unravel as Ebola spreads even on a relatively low level of impact.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/10/14/ebola-aids-sars-fear-virus-cdc-facts-editorials-debates/17280073/
When contagion breaks out — whether it's AIDS in the 1980s, SARS a decade agoor Ebola today — fear invariably spreads faster than the virus.
Vivid imaginations, intense news media coverage, ignorance and natural human fear of the unknown all conspire to defeat reasoned analysis of the facts, which for now at least are these: Only two cases of Ebola have been diagnosed in the USA, one linked to the other and confined to a tiny part of Dallas. Hardly anyone outside the proximity of those two people has any reason for concern, much less panic, until and unless there are more.
Yet the Ebola script is playing out as if it had been written by the authors of Hollywood hits World War Z and Outbreak, or the recent TV drama The Strain.
It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't by coincidence that "the Ebola script is playing out as if it had been written by the authors of Hollywood hits World War Z and Outbreak, or the recent TV drama The Strain."
EVERYTHING nowadays seems scripted...from teleprompters to final scores. And this turns the informed person to quite a skeptic. It's hard to trust a world that calculates everything and even harder to believe that it is all being done for your benefit or at least your well-being.
An interesting scenario about the impact even a minor disease outbreak can have on the economy..
To illustrate just how devastating the effects can be on the economy when people lose trust in the belief that it is safe to go out in public, let’s take a look at the immediate reaction from the citizens of Dallas when only one Ebola case, Thomas Duncan, surfaced in the city.
When it was announced that Thomas Duncan had contact with some Dallas school children, we saw the immediate impact as Dallas moms began to keep their children home from school. Officials in Louisiana refused to receive Thomas Duncan’s property. Subsequently, and according to the AP and Veolia North America, Duncan’s effects were disposed of in drums taken from a Dallas apartment where Duncan became ill and were burned at the company’s incinerator in Port Arthur., TX.
It does not matter what I write or what someone broadcasts on their talk show about Ebola, once people perceive there is a threat, even a low-level threat posed by someone like Thomas Duncan, the people will panic. Rationality will not be part of the decision making process. Fear will take over. How long would police, fire, EMT personnel, hospital personnel, people that service our water supplies and the doctors that service our infirm, stay on the job following an Ebola outbreak? An examination of this question, by using Hurricane Katrina, as a comparison, tells us that by the third day, virtually all essential services would be seriously compromised because of personnel defections. In this scenario, how would chronically ill people receive their medications? How would people get emergency appendectomies or other emergency medical procedures? There will be no “911, what’s your emergency”? The factors that bind society together will quickly unravel as Ebola spreads even on a relatively low level of impact.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/10/14/ebola-aids-sars-fear-virus-cdc-facts-editorials-debates/17280073/
When contagion breaks out — whether it's AIDS in the 1980s, SARS a decade agoor Ebola today — fear invariably spreads faster than the virus.
Vivid imaginations, intense news media coverage, ignorance and natural human fear of the unknown all conspire to defeat reasoned analysis of the facts, which for now at least are these: Only two cases of Ebola have been diagnosed in the USA, one linked to the other and confined to a tiny part of Dallas. Hardly anyone outside the proximity of those two people has any reason for concern, much less panic, until and unless there are more.
Yet the Ebola script is playing out as if it had been written by the authors of Hollywood hits World War Z and Outbreak, or the recent TV drama The Strain.
It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't by coincidence that "the Ebola script is playing out as if it had been written by the authors of Hollywood hits World War Z and Outbreak, or the recent TV drama The Strain."
EVERYTHING nowadays seems scripted...from teleprompters to final scores. And this turns the informed person to quite a skeptic. It's hard to trust a world that calculates everything and even harder to believe that it is all being done for your benefit or at least your well-being.
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