Yes, we should panic. (But not in the way people want you to …)
by digby
I’m getting older so I guess I shouldn’t care so much about the future anymore. In the long run, yadda, yadda, yadda. But strangely, I do. I see little kids running around every day right here in my neighborhood and on TV halfway across the world and it breaks my heart to think that we are such a limited species that we will allow catastrophe despite the fact that we know very well how to stop it and could do it easily if we just cooperated with one another. The first half of the 20th Century was a terrible lesson in how irrational human beings are capable of being in the modern world. And sadly so much of what we’re seeing today shows we haven’t improved much in that area:
The conventional (smart) wisdom is that we should not panic about Ebola in the United States (or Europe). That is certainly true because, even with its huge warts, US and European health-care systems are well-equipped to handle the few cases of Ebola that might pop up.
However, we should panic. We should panic at the lack of care and concern we are showing about the epidemic where it is truly ravaging; we should panic at the lack of global foresight in not containing this epidemic, now, the only time it can be fully contained; and we should panic about what this reveals about how ineffective our global decision-making infrastructure has become. Containing Ebola is a no-brainer, and not that expensive. If we fail at this, when we know exactly what to do, how are we going to tackle the really complex problems we face?
Climate Change? Resource depletion? Other pandemics?
So, I have been panicking.
Pandemics have long been among my favorite topics to teach sociology with, not because the subject is cheery, but because they contain so many of the lessons about our modern world.
But this year, it feels like a lesson in despair, about everything that’s broken.
There are dozens of textbooks for introduction to sociology, but they all have a similar chapter order. Somehow, globalization always ends up around chapter seven, the middle of the semester, when the novelty of sociology as a topic has worn off, and the class starts to drag.
But chapter seven would always be a turning point in my class: that’s when many students would sit up and realize that this, more than anything, was their generation’s core problem.
Read the whole thing. It’s eye opening. And then ponder the fact that the government of the most powerful nation on earth is dysfunctional.
What I just summarized in fewer than 2,000 words or so isn’t even basic epidemiology. It is the basics of basics of basics of epidemiology, and this is something every policy maker on the planet should understand after talking for 10 minutes to an expert of their choice in their own country.
I just watched a couple of hours of Sabbath gasbags. Let’s just say there’s not a lot of hope on that count. Policy makers seem to be stupider than the average person on the street when it comes to this.
And media has totally missed the mark as well:
Mass media is too busy generating the wrong panic — the infinitesimal chances of Ebola in the US now, rather than how to roll it back it in West Africa.
The UN is reduced to begging and being ignored.
There is heroic NGO work. Partners in Health — which specializes in hiring and training locals — and Doctors Without Borders — experienced at moving resources quickly and operating at challenging environments — are both phenomenal organizations — and I’m donating to both what I can this year. I don’t really believe in framing “charity” as a solution at this scale, but I believe in solidarity. However, this should not come down to whether or not a few people donate — our collective institutions should collect and organize these resources, and direct this effort. While PIH and MSF can and will do a lot, this cannot be on their shoulders alone.
So I panic and despair, about what this lack of response says about us, our institutions, our humanity.
How can we make our institutions work, for us, at a global scale? That remains the core challenge of 21st century, without which we will fail at many more tests, at great suffering.
I don’t know.
.
h/t to Emptywheel