The Economist (February 1)
“Two things explain why a new infectious disease is so alarming. One is that, at first, it spreads exponentially…. conjuring speculation about a health-care collapse, social and economic upheaval and a deadly pandemic. The other is profound uncertainty. Sparse data and conflicting reports mean that scientists cannot rule out the worst case—and that lets bad information thrive.”
Tags: Alarming, Collapse, Deadly, Disease, Economic, Exponentially, Health care, Infectious, Pandemic, Social, Speculation, Uncertainty, Upheaval
Gizmodo (March 23)
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch “has more lost and discarded plastic inside it than previous surveys suggested—like, a lot more. And it’s still growing.” A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggest it “is filled with 79,000 metric tonnes (87,000 tons) of plastic, which is between 10 to 16 times higher than previous estimates…. Disturbingly, plastic pollution inside the GPGP ‘is increasing exponentially and at a faster rate than in surrounding waters.’”
Tags: Disturbing, Estimates, Exponentially, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Growing, Plastic, Pollution
The Economist (September 20)
“The cost of halting Ebola’s spread is also rising exponentially. In August the World Health Organisation estimated that it would take nine months and cost $490m to contain Ebola. Now it reckons the cost has risen to over $1 billion. The longer the world prevaricates, the harder and costlier it will be to contain this outbreak.”
Tags: August, Containment, Cost, Ebola, Exponentially, Outbreak, Spread, WHO
