I viewed an interview today by a cute rt.com reporter babe from Georgia [the one near Armenia, not Florida] with the President of the MSF which is known as Doctors Without Borders in the U.S. The subject was the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Despite the little leftist babe’s fishing expedition for political conspiracies Doctor Liu kept the subject on squarly medical grounds and stated that international military help is very effective in combating outbreaks because the military forces come with an effective chain of command, and that organization and 'discipline' are the chief hurdles in combating such an epidemic.
Joanne Liu made 4 statements, that struck me as important for anyone seriously considering a comic book apocalypse with or without Brad Pitt in the lead. I will paraphrase the first 3:
1. MSF is a private organization, and it is strange that the governments of the nations around the world have shown little interest in learning how to combat such an epidemic, by getting involved in the Ebola fight. She stated that battling Ebola is largely a matter of learning the logistics of quarantine, and that the resulting methodology will be applicable to stopping other epidemics of other highly contagious diseases which she stated will occur.
2. Her organization only has 20% of the necessary resources.
3. Ebola is spreading exponentially every 3 weeks. The word 'exponentially', when attached to anything unsavory, really scares me.
4. “We are in uncharted waters. We are in the unknown.”
If the zombie virus does break out, it appears we will still need Brad Pitt.
In my experience, based on attendance at countless boring meetings, people tend to misuse the term "exponentially", as in "x is increasing exponentially", because it sounds really cool and dramatic. Even very smart people, like DR. Liu undoubtedly is, do this quite often. What people usually mean when they say something is increasing exponentially is that it is doubling, tripling or quadrupling and so forth, which really is much, much, much less than a true exponential increase. When you say that something is increasing exponentially you are really saying that it is increasing by a power, as in the square or cube or a greater power of the original number. So if the current number of Ebola infected people of around 5000, as reported by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), were to actually increase exponentially in three weeks that means the number of infected people would increase by at least the square of 5000 (5000 x 5000) to 25 million people at the end of three weeks. Then three weeks later the number of Ebola infected people would increase by 25 million squared or 625 trillion people. So then if Dr. Liu is using the term "exponentially" accurately, then we better start dropping nukes on Liberia and Sierra Leon to halt the spread of this disease, like TODAY! And none of these MOABs, daisy cutters, fuel-air explosives or any other of the wanna-be nukes either. We'll need the real thing if we are going to save Humanity from this plague. I just read that the USAF still has a total of 200 of the old B-61 100 to 500 kiloton variable yield free-fall bombs stored at its various European air bases. We ought to expend some of them then, if Dr. Liu is completely accurate in her assessment. The B-61 is considered a tactical nuke (the last ones in the U.S. inventory) so the optics will be better (Hey they're just tactical nukes you know!) even though it is more than 33 times more powerful than either the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at about 15 to 20 kilotons each. Not to mention the fact that the Leftist controlled news media will understand that anything our current Presidential administration does will be done for good, noble and righteous reasons, unlike with the previous administration, and can be counted on to promote and promulgate that meme'.
I now recall the large brain that factors in its abacus downstairs explaining this before, but apparently the portion of my brain that stores mathematical information has been annexed by that portion devoted to absorbing the concussive shock of combat. Thank you Jeremy, and please, remind me as needed, for by tomorrow this brain will only be able to recall that the word exponentially attached to bad things really creeps it out...
Hey no sweat James. Yes the word exponentially does creep us all out when attached to bad things happening, which is why people continue to use the word, or misuse it, for dramatic effect. I had a journalism professor whose pet peeve was the misuse of the word "ironic". He would recite examples in which ironic was used incorrectly saying "that’s not ironic!'" Usually people would say that something was ironic when they should have said it was a coincidence. Likewise one notices that catchphrase words such as exponentially, leverage and kinetic get used correctly more in the breech than in the observance.