Re: SARS: Strategies

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 15:59:59 MDT

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    On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 06:54:26PM -0400, Wei Dai wrote:
    > On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 07:43:19PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
    > > Are the current actions rational? I would guess a significant amount of
    > > economic loss is simply caused by pre-rational fears
    ...
    >
    > Why do you think that people are erring on the side of too much caution
    > rather than too much complacency?

    I didn't have the time to answer this in depth, but it seems that some
    other people (Fiercebiotech) have done it for me:

    Two of America?s leading infectious disease researchers are concerned
    that media +reports are overemphasizing the likely threat from SARS,
    creating hysteria that may complicate public health measures designed to
    contain the +disease.Nobel Prize laureate David Baltimore and David Ho,
    heads of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, lauded the World Health
    Organization?s +travel restriction and efforts by local health officials
    to enforce quarantines, but argued wearing surgical masks in public and
    avoiding +Chinese-owned businesses won?t help contain the outbreak.
    Baltimore was particularly critical of the Chinese government. He claims
    the outbreak could +have been contained if the country had disclosed
    early cases of SARS to international health agencies.

    See
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=2645130

    The important point here is that a lot of the actions are irrelevant,
    like boycotting chinese businesses as if the ownership was a conduit of
    contagion. It is an irrational thing, and not helping prevent the
    spread while hurting society.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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