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Gates: Large Epidemics Need a More Agile Response
jones_supa writes: Writing in the NY Times about the recent Ebola crisis, Bill Gates says this disease has made the world realize we are not properly prepared to deal with a global epidemic. Even if we signed up lots of experts right away, few organizations are capable of moving thousands of people, some of them infected, to different locations on the globe, with a week's notice. Data is another crucial problem. During the Ebola epidemic, the database that tracks cases has not always been accurate. This is partly because the situation is chaotic, but also because much of the case reporting has been done first on paper.
There's also our failure to invest in effective medical tools like tests, drugs and vaccines. On average, it has taken an estimated one to three days for test results to come back — an eternity when you need to quarantine people. Drugs that might help stop Ebola were not tested in patients until after the epidemic had peaked, partly because the world has no clear process for expediting drug approvals. Compare all of this to the preparation that nations put into defense, which has high-quality mobile units ready to be deployed quickly.
There's also our failure to invest in effective medical tools like tests, drugs and vaccines. On average, it has taken an estimated one to three days for test results to come back — an eternity when you need to quarantine people. Drugs that might help stop Ebola were not tested in patients until after the epidemic had peaked, partly because the world has no clear process for expediting drug approvals. Compare all of this to the preparation that nations put into defense, which has high-quality mobile units ready to be deployed quickly.
Perhaps because gates primary focus has been charity and philanthropy for almost as long as he was in the microcomputer game.
I'm tired of hearing about Ebola. And the Obama administration's response to it, which has been to send improperly trained people who volunteered to fight in the military to pretend to be medical staff and treat a disease. And, of course, to bring people (who deliberately exposed themselves to the disease and demonstrated that they were bad at taking the precautions that would prevent the spread of the disease) back to this country, where others would be at risk. More people die in this country of the flu virus each year than die of Ebola globally. And the flu is air-born. We are being told that Ebola is much harder to spread and that you pretty much have to go to infected areas of the world and expose yourself to get it. Yet I have not seen Obama call out the Marines or the National Guard to help fight the flu outbreak in this country. If we had all of our own domestic problems solved them maybe there would be some logic in us going over to Africa and trying to fight diseases in people who refuse to take proper precautions, including our own "missionary doctors". But we don't. More people are dying here of the flu than worldwide of Ebola, and those people are Americans who are unwillingly being exposed to an air-born disease. It is indefensible to let them suffer and die and instead joy-ride around the globe to fight diseases that affect a smaller group.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Washing hands? These primitive savages still haven't figured out that you should keep human waste in a central location far away from your water supply and that you shouldn't bathe in water that you're later planning to drink.