Joshua Marinacci wrote: > The point I'm trying to make is that there is a *reason* that we > haven't had a 50m person pandemic since 1918. Medical care and > sanitation have greatly improved. I don't think we will ever have a > pandemic like that again, at least not from any form of flu. The > biggest killers today more boring diseases like malaria, which kill > far more people, or sanitation related illnesses like dysentery. It's > to Bill Gate's credit that he chose to tackle the less glamorous > Malaria (the worlds #1 infectious disease) over other diseases that > get more press. This is way off topic now, but I think that we're still quite vulnerable to a pandemic from a truly virulent flu. These sorts of flus don't necessarily happen every century.
From an actuarial perspective, a flu pandemic is more like a cataclismic asteroid impact whereas malaria is more like auto accidents. Both a flu pandemic and a cataclismic asteroid impact are extremely unlikely, but if/when they happens they'll be quite devastating. On the other hand, auto accidents and malaria both kill loads of people each and every year without fail -- with few surprises (i.e. we don't have extraordinary pandemic outbreaks of either in a given year). Unfortunately, the developed world feels less threatened by malaria than by the flu. This is reasonable given that malaria is largely a non-problem in the developed world whereas flu could be at any time. Unfortunately this leads to the developed world largely forgetting about the huge numbers of people dying from malaria every year. -- Jess Holle --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
