Greg Laden, writing at ScienceBlogs, addresses the argument that diseases like malaria still pose a greater threat in Africa than the Ebola virus, and whether Ebola is taking attention away from other diseases (at least one person went so far as to call Ebola the “Kardashian of diseases”). Africa is a big place, and while it’s easy to say that malaria is a bigger danger than Ebola in places that have few or no Ebola cases, the same cannot be said in the countries that are directly being affected right now. Laden looked at the annual death rate due to malaria in Liberia, Guniea, and Sierra Leone, divided those numbers by twelve to get an estimated monthly rate, then compared those numbers to the average number of deaths per month in the 3-6 months of the Ebola outbreak:

• Liberia: 142 malaria, 92 Ebola
• Guinea: 49 malaria, 67 Ebola
• Sierra Leone: 145 malaria, 144 Ebola

It’s not the most scientific survey, but it does indicate that while of course malaria is a huge problem, Ebola is a crisis in those countries right this second.

Laden also addresses the question of resource allocation:

[C]onsider the thought experiment where you have $10,000,000 that you want to give to either developing an Ebola vaccine, or a Malaria vaccine. Since billions have been spent on developing a Malaria vaccine and there still isn’t one, your donation would be a drop in the bucket. Retrospectively, it would be equivalent to something like the combined costs of couriers and mail by researchers working on a Malaria vaccine over the last few decades. Or the cost of coffee and donuts in the break room. Or conference travel fees. Or something like that. The point is, a bunch of millions of dollars might actually produce an Ebola vaccine given the starting point we have now, or at least, move us a good deal in that direction.

At Quartz, Gregg Gonsalves writes about people’s tendency, when faced with something unfamiliar and scary, to focus on the personal: Continue reading →