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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)
Joan Shields wrote:
>> Up to half a billion (500,000,000) people in Africa suffer at least one
>> serious malarial episode each year. In 1993 it was estimated by the World
>> Bank that within two years, due to loss of productive adult workers,
>> malaria cost African economies 1.8 billion dollars.
Enrique Diaz-Alvarez <enrique@ee.cornell.edu> wrote:
>So, on average, being sick with malaria only costs $1.8 a year in loss
>of productivity? That's one hell of a cheap illness! One morning with
>the runs, and I'm already out far more than that!
>You are right. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A lot of it is
>even more dangerous, when it is not combined with a minimum of common
>sense and the ability to check one's facts with simple back-of-the
>envelope estimates.
Hmmm... perhaps you are making the assumption that the only people who are
suffering from malaria are adult workers? 500,000,000 also includes
children and the elderly. I guess I should have made that clearer,
apparently I wrongly assumed that it would be obvious. You might also
want to keep in mind that $1.8 billion is the cost of lost productivity of
workers and given the average pay for most of these workers, relatively
speaking it's a great deal of money. If a similar situation occured in
the US the amount would be much higher. For a snapshot look you might
want to examine the economic impact of the 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak in
Miwaukee. True, there were only about 403,000 people infected but it
might give you some idea of what the comparative cost in the US would be
if you extrapolated to a relative amount of US workers and the cost of
their productivity.
And yes, you are correct, knowledge should be combined with a minimum of
common sense.
joan
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