Agreed, sending 3000 US personnel to the area is a risky but ultimately a wise move. Some other countries have also sent people (China and the UK IIRC) but in far smaller numbers. I'm very disappointed by the limp EU response - although they've pledged E180m they're only now meeting to coordinate logistics and containment strategies, which seems really irresponsible, notwithstanding the existence of other problems like military conflict in Ukraine and the ME.

Cuba announced sending 165 health professionals two weeks ago.

http://www.granma.cu/idiomas/ingles/cuba-i/15sept-Cuba%20app... http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/cuban-eb...

EU should be concerned the most, they will be hit hardest when Ebola gets out of Africa.

exactly. Given that ships regularly cross the mediterranean loaded to the gunwhales with passengers (or overloaded - two ships sank a few days back and about 700 people drowned, sadly), there is a lot of potential for an outbreak to impact Europe. It would probably be containable, but at great expense and would have a terrible impact upon existing immigrant communities regardless of actual infection risk.

Hell, if you listened to some people in the US you'd think the US-Mexican border was one giant hot zone. I shudder to think what would happen if Ebola turned up in France or someplace.

So what exactly are you proposing here.

That data is old. Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_A... which has become daily reading for me of late.

20 Sep 2014: 6,185 infections, 2,909 deaths.

"WHO has stated the reported numbers "vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak", saying there may be 2.5 times as many cases as officially reported. Cases in remote areas may also be missed"

> So, do you downvote because you despise the idea of maintaining quarantine with lethal force, because you find the idea of using drones to kill horrendous, or what?

You were probably downvoted because a little of column A and a little of column B.

The situation hasn't deteriorated to the point that remote lethal force is the solution. Education and proper containment protocols would solve the problem without the need for indiscriminate murder.

Oh, of that I had no doubt, but I notice that nobody has disagreed with my point: given that lethal force (or the threat thereof) is useful in maintaining quarantine (as suggested by my parent post), use of drones makes sense, because it avoids the contamination issues seen using humans.

There's a lot to be said for proper containment protocols and education, but let's not kid ourselves--the populations in question are already willfully acting against such things, supposing (in many cases) a Western bugaboo.

Regardless, the meta issue here is that a bunch of HNers downvoted something merely because they disagreed with it (which is annoying but hardly the first time it's happened to this account) but also failed to contribute meaningfully to the discussion (which is sad). A lot of fools decry "oh no HN is close-minded" while spouting rubbish, but sometimes the accusation is well-founded.

In our present example, there is an interesting discussion to be had: could the use of drones for quarantine purposes present as the next step down that slippery slope? What sort of precedent might that set? Were it to be wrong, what exactly would make it so?

But, no; instead the users blindly downvote away and click onwards, safely avoiding that heavy burden of exploratory thinking.

I confess, I don't see "exploratory thinking" in your post. It actually looks more like a categorical judgment.

Fair enough. From my viewpoint, every such judgement should be taken as an opportunity to argue, to pick apart reasoning and debate. This may be an unfair bar to hold people to, despite all the blustery talk of innovation and disruption. :|

Frankly, and succinctly, I think you got down-voted because you did not use the word quarantine in your original post. It read as if you were proposing to send drones to indiscriminately murder people in the affected areas.

Which takes us to the point of how, exactly, do you think you can enforce a quarantine using drones? Sure, you can blow up everything that moves in a perimeter... but how are you going to pick your targets if civil authorities do not close all roads/ports/air-traffic? And how do you minimize the spread within the city once they have done that? You need boots on the ground to do that effectively!

Drones are the atomic bombs of 21th century. A specific technology with extremely specific military applications that gets transformed by popular imagination into a symbol of limitless power. e.g. Drones have become the ultimate thought stoppers.