Yana and I are now in Vienna, as I will be attending a conference on the social science aspects of pandemics. If you are a new MR reader, here my paper on the policy implications of avian flu. Here is an executive summary of the piece.
And what is the latest on avian flu? The Thais had pretended to solve the problem but they were lying. The Vietnamese have made real progress. The Indonesians still refuse to release much of the sequencing information from their samples. One study suggests that the cases of human-to-human mutation show significant mutation of the virus. (Here is a more optimistic take.) For the first time, one of the reported vaccines — from GlaxoSmithKline — seems to have significant potential. It is unknown how much the virus is spreading in Africa. Except for Indonesia there is more good news than bad, but of course it is not the average which matters. The badness of the worst news will determine how the world fares. It is hard to imagine how a serious pandemic would play itself out in crowded and infrastructure-dysfunctional China or India.
For more information on all these points, see the new version of EffectMeasure blog.
Hate to sound cold, but couldn’t this be viewed as a neo-Malthusian phenomenon? In Malthus’s original model, the binding constraint was land; now, it may be healthcare, especially for the developing world. Model would look something like this: increased population density leads to higher disease transmission rates & chances for mutation, which leads to higher mortality rates with given amount of healthcare available, so population & density fall. Also, thanks for the pointer to EffectMeasure. Interesting stuff.
I was glad to see you mention the violation of civil rights and the likely hood that there would be confrontations over the govt forcefully removing people and another point ,the forceful destruction of private property,ie livestock.I have been a farmer homesteader for most of my life ,I pay my taxes and I stay out of the way,I live off my land and animals and I make way under the govt so-called poverty line,this is my way of life,I am a firm believer in the Constitution and I would “frown” on anybody trying to run me over to “save” the world,I believe like you said that the feds are bacicly inept(my words) and that response will be more effective on a local level, my main point is our system in America is a representitive republic,not a “rule of the masses,sometimes called democracy,and the rights of the few are to be protected by law(ie) The Constitution and not sacrificed to the demands of the frightened majority,thank you!
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