Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Prevent This!

When people argue about ethnic conflict and civil war, one of the questions that comes up is: can we prevent stuff?  The answer is no.  Why?  Not because there is no warning, not because there are not measures to take, but because people do not act to prevent stuff because it is harder to get folks to invest when the threat is low and not imminent.

Why am I talking about this today?  Because of this map, which shows that we are not preventing preventable diseases.  People are not getting vaccinated as much as they should, even in the advanced democracies.  Jeez!

Some places seem to be doing a good job--Scandinavia to no surprise.  Brazil to some surprise.  My guess about Libya and Iran would be about data availability.  New Zealand looks pretty scary--all that wind must blow diseases everywhere?!

Anyhow, check it out and ponder why we don't prevent the stuff we can prevent as well as could.

1 comment:

JWells said...

Apparently there was some massive worldwide measles outbreak last year, accounting for a lot of it. And I also like how "China" is written in red...