[HOSTED.AP.ORG] The World Health Organization called the Ebola outbreak "the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times" on Monday but also said that economic disruptions can be curbed if people are adequately informed to prevent irrational moves to dodge infection.It's worse than typhoid, typhus, cholera, and smoking combined.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, citing World Bank figures, said 90 percent of economic costs of any outbreak "come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection."
"Disorganized" is maybe so, but I don't see what's irrational about trying to avoid being infected with a disease that's usually fatal.
Staffers
To whit, bureaucrats...
of the global health organization "are very well aware that fear of infection has spread around the world much faster than the virus," Chan said in a statement read out to a regional health conference in the Philippine capital, Manila.
So we should give the mortality rate time to catch up? That's rational?