The Washington Post misses the most important lesson of Ebola and AIDS and gonorrhea and the like — stupid people do stupid things and the more stupid people you let into your country, the more stupid the results.
A year after it began, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to be unpredictable, forcing governments and aid groups to improvise strategies as they chase a virus that is unencumbered by borders or bureaucracy.
The people fighting Ebola are coming up with lists of lessons learned — not only for the current battle, which has killed more than 7,500 people and is far from over, but also for future outbreaks of deadly contagions.
Many of the lessons are surprising and specific — the color of body bags turns out to be important, as does the design of Ebola clinics. The most common-sense lesson is that all Ebola is local; solutions can’t be dictated from Geneva or New York.
The broader and more ominous lesson is that global health organizations aren’t ready for a pandemic. There are countless conferences, reports and carefully wrought strategies for stopping epidemics, but this terrible year has demonstrated how hard it is to get resources — even something as simple as bars of soap and buckets of bleach — to vulnerable people on the front line of an explosive disease outbreak.
* LESSON: Rely on the local leadership
* LESSON: Be sensitive to peoples’ cultures
* LESSON: Simple changes can yield significant results
* LESSON: Speed and agility matter more than size
* LESSON: We’re all connected — and unprepared for the consequences
* LESSON: An ounce of prevention
* LESSON: Keep fear in check
Dr. Linda Gottfredson wrote about the correlation of IQ with early death.
