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Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

arstechnica.com

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Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#61

Post by slg »

adventured wrote: post #53
gchamonlive wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it isn't fair to people that rely on such assistance to drop it without a plan to substitute the assistance provider. It was all done overnight. One day you had outposts serving people in need, the other they had their doors closed. So don't act like the world should be thankful for all the US has done when it pulls the plug in such a way that is maybe more devastating than having done nothing, because at least n…

The world has never been thankful for the positive things the US has done. The only thing it ever garnered were the briefest of superficial nods. China gets drastically more respect with their approach than the US ever has, while doing a tiny fraction of the good. The US saved tens of millions of Russians from starvation a century ago. Culturally they have absolutely no clue about that, they're entirely oblivious in…

You do good things because they are good, not to be thanked. It's so bizarre to frame saving lives as something that requires reciprocation.

I want my country to pay for these programs because they save lives and my country is rich enough to afford it. The way people talk about this stuff so amorally is incredibly off-putting.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#62

Post by dfxm12 »

BJones12 wrote: post #16
hedora wrote: post #12

Like Trump 1.0’s handling of COVID, this outbreak is going to spread further and faster than it would have if the US continued to pay for international health initiatives. Those initiatives inevitably cost far less than the economic impact of outbreaks (the US is currently diverting international travelers), but the best deal maker in the history of the universe says they’re a “bad deal”, so the rest of the planet ge…

> if the US continued to pay for international health initiatives There are ~197 countries in the world, you should also criticize the other 196 for also not wanting to pay for the exact same thing.

The US touts itself as being in the position of the richest and most powerful country in the world. The president lays claim to the title "leader of the free world". They deserve the blame to match their means and influence.

I'm also not going to criticize, for example, the UK, for recently providing 20 million pounds in new aid to help contain the outbreak...

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#63

Post by mft_ »

idiotsecant wrote: post #10
scotty79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think an outbreak, in for example Belgium, would be 24/7 news in Demorcatic Republic of Congo?

This is such a weirdly tilted and aggressive response, complete with Facebook style demand to prove some strawman nobody ever claimed. Yes, outbreaks of extremely contagious and deadly disease often are major news stories in other countries, and yes western nations often ignore outbreaks in global south nations.

You might not like the tone, but I don’t think it is a strawman argument.

The discussion is about whether the western media is paying insufficient attention to the Ebola outbreak simply because it’s in DRC, and DRC/Africa doesn’t matter.

The post you responded to is suggesting a different hypothesis: that the media is paying limited attention because it’s in a country quite a long way away, on a different continent. In line with this hypothesis, it’s not unreasonable to question how much attention the press in countries a long way away would focus on a viral outbreak in a European country.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#65

Post by rafram »

jmpman wrote: post #19

Grok is very defensive of Elon's role in the current Ebola outbreak. However if you push on Elon impacting Ebola monitoring, it will eventually admit that Elon's DOGE cancelled "some" Ebola prevention efforts very briefly, but in reality many Ebola related contracts and programs were not fully restored. "Surveillance capacity in eastern DRC weakened, contributing to the current Bundibugyo Ebola strain circulating und…

Why are you writing about / thinking about the things an AI model said to you? It’s an LLM trained heavily on Elon tweets and pro-Elon internet content. Of course it’s going to say nice things about Elon. It’s an LLM, not some kind of oracle. It seems like the existence of a massive Ebola outbreak is more worthy of discussion than some random LLM output related to it!

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#66

Post by somenameforme »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

This unfortunately won’t be news again until, and I think this is now an until versus if, we find evidence the disease is spreading uncontrollably outside the DRC.

Ebola isn't like most people think. It isn't airborne, isn't respiratory and requires direct contact with blood/semen/feces/etc to spread. It's also only known to be contagious once symptoms are present. The risk of a global outbreak is very low.

Africa has a large array of unique circumstances that make it much more 'viral' there, including various cultural funerary rituals that involve contact with corpses that can have extremely high viral loads, bushmeat consumption/processing (ebola can spread from animals to humans), as well as all the more stereotypical (and accurate nonetheless) reasons as well that make it particularly dangerous for healthcare workers there.

It's not entirely clear how it could spread uncontrollably outside of Africa.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#67

Post by mft_ »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #45
BJones12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the US continued to pay for international health initiatives There are ~197 countries in the world, you should also criticize the other 196 for also not wanting to pay for the exact same thing.

I'm American. I will criticize America. If you live in another country, you work there to improve how you help the least fortunate people on the planet. I'm not going to write letters to the government of Turkmenistan. It should also be noted America is the richest country in the history of the world so expecting to do more is quite reasonable.

The bigger picture is we should have a global agency to deal with such issues, funded proportionally by all countries (within reason). That humanity hasn’t been able to achieve such collaboration (unless and many other topics) is a miserable indictment of our progress as a species.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#68

Post by slg »

rafram wrote: post #65
jmpman wrote: post #19

Grok is very defensive of Elon's role in the current Ebola outbreak. However if you push on Elon impacting Ebola monitoring, it will eventually admit that Elon's DOGE cancelled "some" Ebola prevention efforts very briefly, but in reality many Ebola related contracts and programs were not fully restored. "Surveillance capacity in eastern DRC weakened, contributing to the current Bundibugyo Ebola strain circulating und…

Why are you writing about / thinking about the things an AI model said to you? It’s an LLM trained heavily on Elon tweets and pro-Elon internet content. Of course it’s going to say nice things about Elon. It’s an LLM, not some kind of oracle. It seems like the existence of a massive Ebola outbreak is more worthy of discussion than some random LLM output related to it!

> It’s an LLM trained heavily on Elon tweets and pro-Elon internet content.

I get what you're saying and generally agree with the overall point, but this specific aspect makes it worth remarking that even the model trained to be pro-Elon concedes Elon is at fault.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#69

Post by dnqthao »

adventured wrote: post #53
gchamonlive wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it isn't fair to people that rely on such assistance to drop it without a plan to substitute the assistance provider. It was all done overnight. One day you had outposts serving people in need, the other they had their doors closed. So don't act like the world should be thankful for all the US has done when it pulls the plug in such a way that is maybe more devastating than having done nothing, because at least n…

The world has never been thankful for the positive things the US has done. The only thing it ever garnered were the briefest of superficial nods. China gets drastically more respect with their approach than the US ever has, while doing a tiny fraction of the good. The US saved tens of millions of Russians from starvation a century ago. Culturally they have absolutely no clue about that, they're entirely oblivious in…

You have underestimated the soft power that US has by being the leader of the world. Now with more isolationism, things will change and that soft power will deteriorize over time. Who knows what will come next but definitely the US cannot project its soft power like before.

Re: Ebola Outbreak Now Third Largest Recorded and "Spreading Rapidly"

#70

Post by dyauspitr »

arjie wrote: post #11

> the US has “abdicated its longstanding role as a leader in global health and humanitarian response.” It’s interesting to note that in the end, there was no one else coming: we were it. A large amount of disease containment and control was just fronted by the United States. As the US declines, it’s not that a new leader will come in. It’s not that the Chinese century will have their massive industrial engine put to…

The US was a force for good in the world. There may be a million counterpoints but contemporary American was and still barely is a massive win for the world.
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