Generational theory, international history and current events
https://www.gdxforum.com/forum/
Robert Shiller on CNBC this morning said that he was concerned aboutJohn wrote:It's just speculation.
Isn't that the truth, ---- from personal experience.aedens wrote:
When you’re one step ahead of the crowd you’re a genius. When you’re two steps ahead, you’re a crackpot. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
John wrote: So over the years, these problems accumulate without anyone really
bothering to understand them. One day, several of these small
problems combine to cause a catastrophic error, as described above.
gerald wrote:nothing to see just move along --
Doctor Who Discovered Ebola In 1976 Fears "Unimaginable Tragedy"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-0 ... le-tragedy
Why did WHO react so late?
On the one hand, it was because their African regional office isn't staffed with the most capable people but with political appointees. And the headquarters in Geneva suffered large budget cuts that had been agreed to by member states.
This is interesting for many reasons. (Speaking of software being a large complex system), one that is less obvious is we have the Gates Foundation making a major public health push in Africa, yet they had years to identify this problem and were unable to do so.There is actually a well-established procedure for curtailing Ebola outbreaks: isolating those infected and closely monitoring those who had contact with them. How could a catastrophe such as the one we are now seeing even happen?
I think it is what people call a perfect storm: when every individual circumstance is a bit worse than normal and they then combine to create a disaster. And with this epidemic there were many factors that were disadvantageous from the very beginning. Some of the countries involved were just emerging from terrible civil wars, many of their doctors had fled and their healthcare systems had collapsed. In all of Liberia, for example, there were only 51 doctors in 2010, and many of them have since died of Ebola.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We- ... -in-AfricaWhat We Do
Our Work in Africa
We work with partners in Africa to make smart investments so that together we can achieve real and lasting impact for those with the greatest challenges. Our investments range from cutting edge research in health and agriculture in the world’s most high-tech laboratories, to innovative approaches to delivering basic public goods and services to families and communities. Across the continent, there are opportunities for catalytic change which can transform people’s lives. Our efforts cover nearly all of the foundation’s key program areas such as agriculture, family planning, financial services for the poor, HIV, malaria, polio, and vaccines delivery.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-y ... st-africa/Gates Foundation commits $50 million to fight Ebola in West Africa
By Elahe Izadi September 10
Joe McCannon, vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a U.S.-based nongovernmental aid organization, or NGO, with operations in Africa, said, "You have to ask: 'Net, are we having a positive effect?' It's a haunting question."
The Global Fund, GAVI and the Gates Foundation say that pockets of success in several African nations have shown that their approaches are sound and that in time overall health across the continent will improve.
"The Global Fund is very young," having started in 2002, said its director, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, a French physician who formerly led France's National Agency for AIDS Research. To see decades of neglect reversed, "wait for two or three more years," he said.
Botswana offers an example of how a special Gates initiative, narrowly applied to a specific disease, may have disrupted other healthcare.
In 2000, the Gates Foundation joined with the drug firm Merck & Co. and chose Botswana as a test case for a $100-million effort to prove that mass AIDS treatment and prevention could succeed in Africa.
Botswana is a well-governed, stable democracy with a small population and a relatively high living standard, but one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world.
By 2005, health expenditures per capita in Botswana, boosted by the Gates donations, were six times the average for Africa and 21 times the amount spent in Rwanda.
Deaths from AIDS fell sharply.
But AIDS prevention largely failed. HIV continued to spread at an alarming pace. A quarter of all adults were infected in 2003, and the rate was still that high in 2005, according to the U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS. In a 2005 survey, just one in 10 adults could say how to prevent sexual transmission of HIV, despite education programs.
Meanwhile, the rate of pregnancy-related maternal deaths nearly quadrupled and the child mortality rate rose dramatically. Despite improvements in AIDS treatment, life expectancy in Botswana rose just marginally, from 41.1 years in 2000 to 41.5 years in 2005.
Dean Jamison, a health economist who was editor of Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, a Gates Foundation-funded reference book, blamed the pressing needs of Botswana's AIDS patients. But he added that the Gates Foundation effort, with its tight focus on the epidemic, may have contributed to the broader health crisis by drawing the nation's top clinicians away from primary care and child health.