Another Congo Ebola special: 17th outbreak since disco, hundreds 'suspected,' headlines screaming apocalypse. Same bat country, same fear cycle.

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srameshc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> headlines screaming apocalypse. Same bat country, same fear cycle

From the article "deaths reported at 177, and around 1,400 contacts now being traced". People are dying on the planet we all belong to.

	▲	ineedasername 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is a certain mindset that looks at any series of a problem that didn't get worse as evidence that any reaction to it was unwarranted, without considering if it was the why behind the lack of catastrophe. The opposite failure modes are things like security theatre and reasoning from any remotely plausible hypothetical to any desired response, and it's continually frustrating to see people who see neither modes or have a pet peeve against one of them and so jump in the other direction rather than reflect a second on some middle path.

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ineedasername 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A scan of headlines doesn't show any "scream of apocalypse", not across multiple news aggregators, incognito mode, etc. Out of dozens I noticed maybe one or two that might have seemed a bit much.

Other than that, I think it bears considering that any specific level of fear may be a factor in the safeguard that have been put in place to mitigate outbreaks. Without some level of fear, not much would be done. I don't know if it's the direction your thoughts were going in, but an unreflected gut reaction of "just fear, it's never amounted to much" is the potential catalyst for removing guardrails that have prevented worse outbreaks. It's important not to reason solely from that sort of counterfactual premise but chesterton's fence should apply when considering "was the fear justified, has it played a part in directing responses and if so has that response been calibrated to the reality or too much by the fear?" We need to get past this tendency to leave things a hot-takes and gut checks.

	▲	axus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't usually do this but... You were right 6 years ago about a strong response needed for COVID: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315024