While it's true that "hindsight bias" is a thing, and should be guarded against, this kind of throw-away comment dismissing issues like this bothers me. We can similarly dismiss everything said by everyone prominent by referring to "Argument from Authority," as if that's a bad thing. But in truth, people with a great deal of experience sometimes rise to a position of authority purely because they tend to be right, and so Bayesian Analysis suggests that we really should give more weight to what they say.

Similarly here. Don't simply say "Oh, hindsight bias, this is completely irrelevant." If you don't provide some sort of evidence that this particular instance is "simply hindsight bias" then I will tend to dismiss what you say.

You may be right, but you have provided no evidence. Just a baseless accusation.

I was reluctant to say what follows, as I didn't want to be accused of an ad hominem attack, but I have decided to say it as I feel that it is information to be shared. In looking through your previous comments I see that you have a track record for providing a relentlessly negative response to things. There is value in that, as such critical and sceptical responses balance the relentless, boundless positive viewpoints of others, but it means that now I have a more informed context in which to interpret your contributions.

Hindsight bias is a nice broad stroke to dismiss an area in which you have no or limited expertise in.

It's like your management team saying "So what, we've been getting alerts for CPU above 50% utilization every day, but the site is still processing orders fine". To which your response would be "When did they start? How frequently are they occurring? Has CPU utilization stayed at 50% or is it steadily increasing? Why didn't anyone call me?"

Getting the right information to the right people is important for determining what should be acted upon.

Any region that has evidence of endemic Ebola will benefit from having an organized public health approach to combating it.

The warnings in the headline are papers published in the 1980s that contained evidence of endemic Ebola in Liberia.

The article is making the point that had knowledge of these papers been more widespread, especially among medical personnel in Liberia, that Liberia likely would have responded differently to the problem.

It isn't really about what readers of the American press should have done to prepare for Ebola in Liberia (which is the meaning I infer from your first sentence, maybe that's wrong).

Ebola is a very "clever" virus with its interferon-blocking properties. But still, out of the infections we still cannot vaccinate against, influenza has been the single most deadly one in the past, and sexually transmitted diseases are the real issue in the developed world. Why don't we encourage people to have flu shots and use condoms? Well, we do. But this is boring.

So I guess Ebola is big news because it is something new on the panic scene, sweating with blood sounds crazy dangerous, the fears have been accelerated by having the outbreak in a place that "has been forgotten by the god", devastated by wars being fought by children. As to why there is nothing to be afraid of, take a look at the CDC's data.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/prev...