From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 15:59:59 MDT
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/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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