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Comment by forkandwait | Hacker News Reader

It never ceases to amaze me how much humanity clings to the feeling that they understand something, even when history tells us that surprises are far more common than predictability. It seems to me that planning for Ebola (or a battle, or climate change, or the economy, or anything vaguely important) wouldn't be something along the lines of "Ok, we know what's going on, no need to freak out or to spend any extra effort" but "Wow, these things go sideways all the time, let's assume our models are limited, in ways we don't even know yet, and throw everything we have at it; even then we will probably be lucky if we dodge a disaster."

I really don't have any more confidence because the CDC has been saying "it will be fine" than I did when the Japanese officials said Fukushima would be fine.

Enough optimism for the morning...

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Before the nurse contamination in Spain, I was pretty optimistic. Now that someone got contaminated in a highly controlled environment with training and procedures, where people knew they were dealing with a Ebola patient, there is no way that "everything will be fine" in the coming months. And they only had 1 patient to deal with at once ! Now imagine with 10 or 100 patients in a given hospital.

Spain isn't exactly the first world country people assume it is, there are many commentators on other sites bemoaning the state of medicine there including links to articles describing the lack of proper protection for health care workers.

I think the problem many people are having is you have governments telling everyone to quit fear mongering while at the same time they are demonstrating they haven't got a real hand on this.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2ignxj/nurse_infe...

I think you're first sentence is a bit of rationalization. Because it is kind of slippery slope : "You know Alabama is not really well known for its hospitals", then "You can't really find a good clinic south of 8 Mile", etc. At this rate, it is going to end at your doorstep.

I remember plenty of recommendation and planning for H1N1, but currently I don't see anything really being implemented for Ebola in Western countries. Not sure it would have been really efficient in case of a full blown flu epidemic, but at least some things were organized.

Ebola is scarey, but really washing hands and quarantine are the most effective public health efforts. In the US with plenty of clean water and soap, the chances of an epidemic become small.

Rates of hospital acquired infection show that you are perhaps a bit complacent.

These are people who know the risks; are trained to wash their hands; who have access to clean hot water and soap; who have gloves; and who face consequences when patients die.

And yet, even in these excellent hospital settings, on any one day about 1 in 25 people will have a hospital acquired infection.

Only 1 in 25? Considering how many people are immune suppressed or elderly or very sick from the start, that number seems low. That means 24 out of 25 people don't get a hospital acquired infection, or 96%. I was a little worried about Ebola before your comment, now I'm not worried at all.

There are a very small number of places in the world that safely handle these types of pathogens. Most of them are military or off limits to the public.

Who's handling pathogens? You go to church, and wash your hands when you get home. No Ebola. That simple, most of the time.

The point was, an epidemic requires a vector that easily passes the disease, plus a delay between infection and symptoms. Ebola has only one of those.

If you take the latter approach, it tends to manifest in the form of budget cuts. Because you just told the people handing out money that you don't know enough to be useful and there's no point in trying.

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