″ Liberia” was short hand: I mean the several countries in West Africa where the epidemic exists.
That assumes that you have good data real time data about the epidemic.
If you start strongly punishing countries for revealing data about local epidemics you soon don’t have that data anymore.
Obviously you can limit travel in any way you want: you can let health workers go in and out while blocking regular travelers.
As the article describes the one person who actually did spread the disease to the West was the nurse Teresa Romero Ramos.
Health workers are much more likely to come into contact with bodily fluids and get the virus than the average person wealthy enough to buy plane tickets.
If you start strongly punishing countries for revealing data about local epidemics you soon don’t have that data anymore.
The effect of “punishing” is not linear, it only matters if it reaches a threshold. So as long as any travel ban comes with more aid (which seems likely), the info will be revealed as before.
The effect of “punishing” is not linear, it only matters if it reaches a threshold.
No. Even a little amount of punishing can weaken relationships and reduces the amount of information that gets transferred. It can also produce time lags.
Fear of punishment is also not the only reason why a politician might want to prevent knowledge of a local epidemic in a remote village from spreading. There can also be inner political reasons.
If you look at the original article by the CDC person, they speak about lack of trust that might make it hard to distribute vaccines. While trust is a resource that doesn’t really grow linearly it’s not about threshold effects.
So as long as any travel ban comes with more aid (which seems likely), the info will be revealed as before.
Still each decision to reveal critical information would become a though political decision, where politicians would have to assess whether it would cause more harm than good. This could lead to delays and downplaying.
Also, no matter what politicians do, individuals also respond to incentives: People who visited a blacklisted country might lie about it in order to travel, people from a blacklisted country could travel to a neighboring non-blacklisted country and then travel using forged documents. Once they travelled illegally, they may delay getting medical assistance when they get sick, lie about where they have been, lie about people they have been in contact with, etc.
It looks like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma: if you start defecting, then other players will defect against you, yielding a worse outcome for everybody.
That assumes that you have good data real time data about the epidemic.
If you start strongly punishing countries for revealing data about local epidemics you soon don’t have that data anymore.
As the article describes the one person who actually did spread the disease to the West was the nurse Teresa Romero Ramos. Health workers are much more likely to come into contact with bodily fluids and get the virus than the average person wealthy enough to buy plane tickets.
The effect of “punishing” is not linear, it only matters if it reaches a threshold. So as long as any travel ban comes with more aid (which seems likely), the info will be revealed as before.
No. Even a little amount of punishing can weaken relationships and reduces the amount of information that gets transferred. It can also produce time lags.
Fear of punishment is also not the only reason why a politician might want to prevent knowledge of a local epidemic in a remote village from spreading. There can also be inner political reasons.
If you look at the original article by the CDC person, they speak about lack of trust that might make it hard to distribute vaccines. While trust is a resource that doesn’t really grow linearly it’s not about threshold effects.
Still each decision to reveal critical information would become a though political decision, where politicians would have to assess whether it would cause more harm than good. This could lead to delays and downplaying.
Also, no matter what politicians do, individuals also respond to incentives:
People who visited a blacklisted country might lie about it in order to travel, people from a blacklisted country could travel to a neighboring non-blacklisted country and then travel using forged documents. Once they travelled illegally, they may delay getting medical assistance when they get sick, lie about where they have been, lie about people they have been in contact with, etc.
It looks like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma: if you start defecting, then other players will defect against you, yielding a worse outcome for everybody.