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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (60481)	8/15/2004 8:44:02 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793905

Do you have a degree in Public Health? (I don't FWIW). No, I don't. But I do have some experience in emergency response policy and management. Enough to know the difference between public health and the best interests of the individual and that the general public doesn't appreciate that difference. I make no claim to an understanding of disease vectors. I believe we would see much chaos, panic and hopelessness if there were to be a major smallpox expidemic unleased in this country by terrorist action. Oblivion? I don't think that is something that would happen. I agree with you. People in this country panic over much, much smaller problems. In case it's not obvious <g>, I don't think that our approach to public safety in the face of terrorism is very rational nor do I think that the public reaction is very rational. I would like for it it be but I don't expect that to happen. Government is geared to respond to squeaky wheels and to ignore cost effectiveness. With my point about manageability I was trying to draw a bright line in the range of terrorist possibilities. I think that the key bright line is between what would destroy this country and that from which we can recover. Against those threats that would destroy the country we should spare no effort or expense. For lesser threats, no matter how horrible, we should defend on the basis of cost effectiveness recognizing that we cannot plug all vulnerabilities. The former set of threats could be called "fatal" and the latter set or "nonfatal" or "fatal" meaning fatal to the country, not to some number of individuals. To my mind, that's a rational approach. Reasonable people may differ over which threats would bring down the country, iow produce oblivion. I would put a nuclear holocaust the loss of our constitution. Also the loss of our constitution. I would not put a smallpox outbreak in that category. But, that's arguable and, like I said, reasonable people may differ. As to how manageability plays into this, anything non-manageable would have to be considered potentially fatal due to the force of the downward spiral. Anything manageable would be presumed to be non-fatal no matter how horrendous. Of course, the public isn't rational and the government seems disinclined to stress rationality. If we really are in an existential war, though, they ought to. And if we're not in an existential war, then we should be disabused of the notion that we are. As an aside, I've observed with some interest the reactions of people to the potential risks we face in terms of whether they're incined to conform with public health advisories or not. I've been thinking about that in the context of self-perceptions of patriotism. One would think the two might correlate...