Ebola Outbreak

[FZR1KG]

Must be real bad, Monsanto gave $1.5 million towards a cure.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Posted without comment:

[FZR1KG]

People with cheap hair pieces like that should know that while we think it's great that you let us know that you are a total tool, you must understand what the consequences might be. Like, someone mistaking it for a rabies infected squirrel on your head and accidentally shooting you. Of course, the consequences for the American people in such an event will be overwhelming joy.

[Sigma_Orionis]

What an asshole.

[SciFiFisher]

You would be surprised how many people think we shouldn't bring them back to the USA to treat them. Essentially, people are afraid Ebola will get loose in the U.S.

[FZR1KG]

Ebola is already in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus, well, at least a version that doesn't seem to affect humans anyway.

I'm also pretty sure that there are labs here working with the stuff.

[Sigma_Orionis]

You would be surprised how many people think we shouldn't bring them back to the USA to treat them. Essentially, people are afraid Ebola will get loose in the U.S.

No I wouldn't. They just watched "Resident Evil" and thought that's the way Disease Control works. They probably also feel sorry thinking that Gilligan and his Friends are still shipwrecked on that island ("Those Poor People").

[SciFiFisher]

After the most recent revelations coming out of the CDC and the foopaws they made with viruses I can understand why some people think that Resident Evil is a documentary.

[The Supreme Canuck]

You would be surprised how many people think we shouldn't bring them back to the USA to treat them. Essentially, people are afraid Ebola will get loose in the U.S.

Like Sigma, no I wouldn't. I've seen the comments on news stories. Christ.

Honestly, my problem is that it seems terribly unfair that US aid workers get to be flown out of Africa and to Atlanta to receive first-world care, while hundreds of Africans don't. That's not me saying that these Americans shouldn't receive that care, just that the overall situation is absolutely terrible.

[SciFiFisher]

You would be surprised how many people think we shouldn't bring them back to the USA to treat them. Essentially, people are afraid Ebola will get loose in the U.S.

Like Sigma, no I wouldn't. I've seen the comments on news stories. Christ.

Honestly, my problem is that it seems terribly unfair that US aid workers get to be flown out of Africa and to Atlanta to receive first-world care, while hundreds of Africans don't. That's not me saying that these Americans shouldn't receive that care, just that the overall situation is absolutely terrible.

agreed. comes under the heading of being lucky to be american. Or a citizen of a reasonably humane and affluent country.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Yup. Of course, if Trump has his way, things get fairer... just not in the good way. He doesn't want to raise all boats, he wants to sink them all. Except his own, of course.

[SciFiFisher]

Yup. Of course, if Trump has his way, things get fairer... just not in the good way. He doesn't want to raise all boats, he wants to sink them all. Except his own, of course.

yeah. because his boat is so much more worthy.

[Loresinger]

I am at the point that I don't know what to think. Everything that comes out of a government official's mouth is basically a lie.

I want to fire the lot of them and put FWIS members into those roles ... heck CM can be the ambassador, SFC the media rep, Z (of course) would have to be the "resident" in charge ....

More seriously tho we need REAL people at our helm. Not these puppets.

[SciFi Chick]

I'm certainly fed up with Congress and most elected officials, but I still have a good amount of trust in the CDC. I don't think they'd bring an Ebola patient here if it was a serious threat.

[Cyborg Girl]

@Loresinger, I'd advise caution in assuming it's all a matter of having irresponsible people. Political power can corrupt almost anyone IMO (and the first step to becoming corrupt is thinking it can't happen to you).

Re Ebola, you guys have read The Hot Zone right? USAMRIID (roughly the military equivalent of the CDC) has labs within the US where they conduct animal studies of Ebola and other highly virulant diseases, and specialized hospitals in case a researcher picks something up. So far nothing has gotten out.

Re airlifting medical workers who've caught it back to the States, not sure what the rationale is; I'm guessing it might have to do with a kind of triage - making sure that people with expert knowledge don't get killed off. Though I'll admit that, on a certain level, I feel like these people deserve special treatment. I mean, you don't see me going off to West Africa to save the lives of complete strangers... But I doubt that is actually what's going on.

As for Donald Trump. That thing about "fog of war," and not civilians not questioning in situ decisions of soldiers? IMO that applies doubly and then some for medical personel during a plague outbreak. These people know what they're doing. Donald Trump does not. He can start sticking his nose in things when everyone has stopped bleeding.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Re airlifting medical workers who've caught it back to the States, not sure what the rationale is; I'm guessing it might have to do with a kind of triage - making sure that people with expert knowledge don't get killed off. Though I'll admit that, on a certain level, I feel like these people deserve special treatment. I mean, you don't see me going off to West Africa to save the lives of complete strangers... But I doubt that is actually what's going on.

The rationale is that they're American, and so get special treatment. I hate to say it so bluntly, but it's true. And I'm not moralizing, here - the same would be true of a Canadian aid worker who was infected. We'd fly them to a Canadian hospital.

People from the first world get first world treatment; people from the third world get third world treatment. Such is the privilege one enjoys by mere virtue of being born in the right place.

It sure as hell isn't to protect expertise, by the way. If it were, the US government would have flown Dr. Sheik Umar Khan to Atlanta. They did not.

[Cyborg Girl]

TSC: I know that's generally the case, but I'm skeptical here because... well... Ebola. You'd think that the shear awful threat of the virus would be enough to make people put aside concepts of social privilege.

You'd think.

It does sound like you're right, though.

Bloody hell.

[The Supreme Canuck]

The problem with privilege is that it's not a conscious thing. It's just how things are.

Africans get infected? Of course they stay in Africa. That's how things are.

Americans get infected? Of course they fly to the States. That's how things are.

Privilege is insidious. When you think about things, the rational thought is that all humans are human, period. No one gets special treatment. Everyone is treated the same. But humans aren't rational; our biases creep into our "objective, rational" thoughts. And so the "rational" thing ends up being that some humans are more human, and people aren't treated the same. Of course first world people get first world treatment; of course third world people get third world treatment.

That's how things are.

No one is immune from this sort of bias. No one is immune from distortions caused by their privileges. Not me. Not you. Not anyone. Not even the people who aren't privileged - they expect it, too.

Because that's how things are.

[Cyborg Girl]

Yes yes yes I know that. You don't have to re-explain it to me, I've been over it literally dozens of times.

What I am saying is, this is a crisis situation. It should override social privilege, conscious or otherwise.

If you are a doctor, and you have a choice between immediately treating
- a black man with a sucking chest wound
- a white man with a broken arm

you will treat the black man first, period. Because he is the one who needs saving right now.

[SciFi Chick]

Guys - this isn't about social privilege. This is about a country supporting its citizens. We don't have the resources to fly every person who gets sick from something to the U.S. It's not feasible. We're doing our best to help Africa. Hell, it's the one area I admire George W.

If you want to get rid of all citizenship and completely redistribute all resources, go for it. But our current system is that your country is meant to offer certain protections. It's the whole point of having a country. And we fuck it up a lot. But this time, we're doing it right.

[The Supreme Canuck]

See, I disagree that this isn't about social privilege. You're right that there aren't enough resources to go around. Fine. But if this isn't about social privilege, why are those limited resources being distributed unequally on the basis of nationality?

You're right to say that countries are meant to offer protections to their citizens. But that's exactly the social privilege I'm talking about. You, as an American, are privileged. I, as a Canadian, am privileged. All those people in the affected region, as Liberians, Sierra Leonians, Guineans... they're not privileged.

Yes, that's how the system is supposed to work. Of course it is; that's how things are.

That's the problem.

Why do we accept that an American should receive this level of help from the US government just because he's a citizen, while those other people should not just because they are not citizens? Yes, that's how things are. But is that how things should be?

[SciFiFisher]

Why do we accept that an American should receive this level of help from the US government just because he's a citizen, while those other people should not just because they are not citizens? Yes, that's how things are. But is that how things should be?

It is as long as we are talking about:
1. limited resources
2. allocating who gets those resources.

while the system may seem arbitrary it does at least allow for some logic to how, where, when, and who gets those limited resources.

When we finally have a true world wide system that is based entirely on need and all world wide citizens being equally truly equally then we can agree that it should not be that way.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Hey, I'm not saying I have a solution. I'm just saying things are fucked up.

Maybe it's the best we can manage; that doesn't make it right.

[SciFiFisher]

Hey, I'm not saying I have a solution. I'm just saying things are fucked up.

Maybe it's the best we can manage; that doesn't make it right.

true. the system is rather arbitrary. After all, currently, the popular wisdom says we don't get to choose where we are born. So, those of us who win the birthplace lottery already have an unfair advantage.

[Cyborg Girl]

When we finally have a true world wide system that is based entirely on need and all world wide citizens being equally truly equally then we can agree that it should not be that way.

Not sure but I think this is is/ought fallacy.

IMO you don't have to be able to name a better system to point out brokenness in the current one.

Geek example time: discretionary access control (where the application inherits all the rights of the user account that launches it) is conceptually broken for desktop computers, since it allows any compromised program access to your whole account. Mandatory access control (where applications have rules that they must follow without exception) is conceptually better, because it restricts applications to what the ought to be able to do.

The problem is, working and usable mandatory access control implementations are really hard. There are a bunch of ways of doing it, but none are universally applicable and effective. So nobody can point to a definitely better system, except for certain specific cases... but that doesn't change that DAC is fundamentally broken.

Hope that makes sense.