Crowd-Sourcing Education on Ebola

I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent presentation on Ebola in YouTube video form:

ably summarized in text form at the blog Raconteur Report. There’s no panic, no partisan posturing, no temporizing, no embroidering. Just a basic presentation from Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. It also challenges the “nothing to see here, move along” posture we’re getting so much of these days.

This presentation was brought to my presentation by the commenter Piercello. In my view this exemplifies one of the very best aspects of the World Wide Web, generally, and social media in particular. A link to the video was left by an anonymous commenter at Raconteur Report who promoted it into a post. I am now, in turn, promoting a comment left here to a post (giving credit to all sources) in the hope that it might be helpful to someone else.

20 comments… add one
  • Modulo Myself Link

    Love how the Raconteur Report calls Duncan ‘unemployed’. Because that’s the important part!

    Dear America,

    I am a lonely insecure survivalist who is obsessed with The Ebola. Surely I can be of some service to you, in place of your panicking dumb elites! If you need me, I’m in a bunker, with my Tuesday Hazmat on.

    Yours,
    The Internet

  • TastyBits Link

    I did not watch the video, but the summation seemed sensible. The panic is on the left. Ebola is the latest problem.

  • The panic is on the left.

    With good reason. As Duncan Black notes, the institutional problems, e.g. in the healthcare system, the CDC, the White House, that the minor outbreak of Ebola in the U. S. has revealed are serious pressing matters:

    Ultimately the point is that as of now, Ebola is a small problem in the United States overall, if a very serious problem for the people infected by it, and we have failed to deal with this small problem. The lack of clearly established systematic responses to potential deadly disease outbreaks is extremely worrying.

    And they’re unlikely to be corrected by appealing to those institutions.

  • PD Shaw Link

    Interesting video, the two points that most interested me:

    1. No samples of the virus taken since May? I don’t know what an adequate sampling regimen would be, but from my college roommate studying genetics (and whose life-cycle was tied closely to that of a fruit fly), it’s never enough. This doesn’t even seem like trying.

    2. The “airborne” concern seems murky to me. The virus historically has transmitted by body fluids, but body fluids like saliva can preserve the virus for several hours on a hard surface and transmitted by subsequent contact from to the eyes, nose or mouth. Sounds like the classic transmission for the common cold, which is pretty contagious, though the difference might be infrequent sneezing, wheezing, etc.

  • PD Shaw Link

    On a more meta level, I find it fascinating that when they pull the camera back and show the speaker’s table, there is nobody seated.

    CSPAN is a valuable resource, but it’s hard to know what is on when. I don’t think my cable provider knows since I don’t think the descriptions are always accurate.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I thought this article at the New Republic was interesting as well; it’s from an infectious disease specialist: “There is a real possibility that the numbers will proliferate more rapidly than expected. Here are four problems that could contribute to this.” We Should Quarantine Everyone Coming From Countries With Ebola Outbreaks (Mainly, the difference between how hospitals are supposed to work and how they actually function, plus lack of absolute certainty as to the nature of the virus.)

  • #2 on the list is what I’ve been harping about for some time. It’s unrealistic to expect six sigmas from hospitals.

  • steve Link

    Osterholm’s talk was given at a Hopkins symposium. You can see the rest of the speakers at the link. I watched them Saturday when work was slow, but unless you are a real masochist, or have professional interest, I wouldn’t necessarily advise watching them. I have been reading Osterholm for a while now. I guess we will all hear what we will want to hear from him. I think i hear, and have been hearing the following.

    1) It was certain that we were going to see Ebola at some time in the US. While we should, and mostly did, follow what we were think best practices, what is really important is the ability to change as we find out more. Not only about the disease, but our abilities to handle it. So, we followed WHO guidelines for PPE. It appears to have failed. We really don’t know since it may actually be a failure to follow the guidelines correctly. Meh. Anyway, we have decided to try a different guideline.

    We thought our hospitals could successfully handle Ebola cases. It looks like that was probably wrong. I say probably because now that it is real, people will start doing what they should have been doing all along. I strongly suspect, for instance, that Hopkins, even though they are not one of the 4 special hospitals, could handle it. I think this is probably true of a number of academic places. Regardless, what is important is that we have adapted.

    2) Our best data has indicated that fever is a reliable indicator. It now looks as though that might be questionable. I think that suggests we should be overly cautious for now, which we have mostly been. We sort of blew it with the nurse who got on the plane. For one, she didn’t have a fever. Secondly, I strongly suspect that whoever took the call probably trusted her to self report not feeling well since she was a medical person. What is totally unclear to me is what we should be doing with people who have exposure when there was no fever, and what we should do with health workers who are caring for patients.

    3) In short, act on the best data that we have now, while adapting.

    As far as messaging goes, I think he is correct, though the lasting response to the Carter “malaise” speech suggests maybe he is a better doctor than a politician. I also think people hear what they want to hear. I always hear caveats, when other people hear certainty. Perhaps I am wrong.

    Last of all, after following this guy for a while he does have a bit of an agenda. He wants us to do something. So he doesn’t mention that people live with infected patients and doth get the disease. That they have treated misdiagnosed patients with none of the staff catching it.

    Steve

  • steve Link
  • Ben Wolf Link

    The only valuable information from this video is that Osterholm is a war criminal for advocating centralized, communistic planning. Only free markets and property rights can contain and neutralize ebola. We should be listening to a presentation by a JPMorgan wealth manager on viral outbreak rather than this collectivist “doctor”.

  • Good god, Ben, I didn’t realize that was a parody at first.

  • In the United States we have traditionally distinguished between public health, the component of healthcare that is a public good, e.g. sewer systems, control of infectious diseases, etc., and private care, acute care and longterm care—everything from hip replacements to nose jobs. The public health component is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Consequently, it is a public good. The private care component is rivalrous and excludable which means that it is definitionally a private good. The distinction makes sense both from an economic and public policy standpoint.

    Only the most rigid of anarcho-capitalists or anarchists disapprove of public health systems. Nonetheless, there is a strain of thought out there that believes, without a great deal of evidence, that anybody who’s is not uncritically four square behind the PPACA must necessarily disapprove of public health and it’s hypocritical of them not to do so.

    This is to confuse hypocrisy with discernment.

  • Guarneri Link

    The Straw Man lives. Et tu, Ben?

  • TastyBits Link

    I have seen a libertarian try to argue a free-market solution to Ebola.

    Some of the confusion is because libertarians and conservatives do not fully understand the implications of their arguments.

    While I am mostly a libertarian, I recognize that power is the basis for human action, but most libertarians believe that humans will live in harmony with the occasional miscreant.

    In a libertarian world, the late 1800’s would have been very different. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil would have not fought lawyers and politicians in courtrooms and legislatures. He would have fought armies on a military battlefield.

    A free-market can only exist within the framework of a government that protects personal freedom, but then, that free-market is no longer free. There is now a price for that freedom. Few libertarians understand that they want a handout from the government for the free-market.

    One example is civil law. Businesses require the civil judicial system to function, but they do not pay for this system. In a libertarian system, the civil judicial system should be a voluntary system among businesses, and the enforcement mechanism would be the free-market. Nobody would do business with those who refused to participate.

    This is how they justify everything else. There is no need for the FAA because nobody would fly on an airline that killed people. Same thing for restaurant health inspections. Everything self-regulates, and the market provides justice.

    Hence, the civil judicial system would be need-based, and it would be fee supported. The fee would include all the costs not just the judicial portion. The enforcement of property rights assumes an enforcement mechanism, and this incurs ongoing costs that must be paid.

    I will leave conservatives and the capital supply for another day, but here is a taste – the Fed printing money.

  • Drew, I’ve seen people arguing Ben’s parody seriously. There might not be many of them, but they’re there.

  • Just like the jackholes that tell me, “Sure the Republican candidates suck and 90% of what they do is counter to your, and my, beliefs, but you’re still a commie for not voting straight Republican instead of staying home.” They really are out there, and there’s more of them every day.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Icepick

    I saw one libertarian argue that if there were no government intrusion into the market, there would be no need for a travel ban because the airlines would self-regulate. There are similar arguments about hospitals.

    You are a commie for not voting straight Republican, and you are a racist for not worshiping the elegant black man. I know it does not seem like it, but both sides are losing. They are desperate, and they know it. Winners do not call you names and beat you over the head.

  • It does seem like we’re headed for some sort of reckoning, doesn’t it?

  • gray shambler Link

    Reckoning? No, more of the same ol’ same ol’ s**t. Keep your eyes open for the appearance of the next charming, snake oil selling Presidential candidate.

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