How do you assess the risk?
If it is what the WHO fears, by the time you have positive proof, there is no way to contain it.
If you look at is as a disease, we have multiple reports of sick people, no identified disease organism or proof of mode of transmission, and only a handful dead. This is a crisis?
Given the potential consequences I am inclined towards the WHO's frame of mind. Theirs is the public health perspective, not the medical one. And I am minded of the fact that, publicity notwithstanding, public health has saved more lives than modern medicine. (Clean water supplies save more than antibiotics!)
Cheers,
Ben
PS D'oh. I got corrected by my wife. The CDC is a US organization, not a UN one. Both take a public health perspective. My speculation is that since the problem has not been reported in the US, the CDC has to trust that the problem will be contained, so their mandate is to avoid undue public panic and keep a good outcome having been seen as crying wolf. The WHO by contrast needs to motivate resources to achieve containment.
PPS My wife's comment about this is that what is reported so far is scary, and events in the next week are likely to be telling as to whether it dies down and will be succesfully contained or whether it will succeed in achieving a wider distribution.
