NationStates Jolt Archive

Fellow United Nations members, epidemics have forever in the history of the mankind, been among the most deadly occurances in human life. To bring up a real life incident, the Black Plague was the deadliest occurance in modern era. My friends, epidemics have forever been poorly contained and the Epidemic Act is our first step in saving all the lives that we can when the next epidemic strikes.

This proposal is currently on page 12.

Fellow United Nations members, epidemics have forever in the history of the mankind, been among the most deadly occurances in human life. To bring up a real life incident, the Black Plague was the deadliest occurance in modern era. My friends, epidemics have forever been poorly contained and the Epidemic Act is our first step in saving all the lives that we can when the next epidemic strikes.

This proposal is currently on page 12.
Description: The United Nations,

Recognising the past international epidemics with certain diseases such as "AIDS" and "The Plague" and the rest or the world short-comings when it came to saving as many people that could be saved,

Acknowledging the past resolution "Eradicate Smallpox"

It is proposed:

In the event of an international epidemic (which will hereby be defined as a single disease which infects more then 5% of a single country), travel inside and outside the infected countries is completely banned as to contain the disease. These countries will try to locate the victims of the disease and quarantine them so to not spread the disease within their own country. As soon as all known cases of the disease are known to be safe from the rest of the people of these countries, the borders are re-opened.

It is also recommended:

All UN members to do their best in the help for the funding to eradicate or help cure these known, wide-spread, diseases (they are not necesssarily contageous):

AIDS
SARS
Cancer
Muscular Dystrophy
Malaria
The Plague
Sickle Cell Anemia
Herpes
Diabetes
Hepatitis

Approvals: 12 (Domzalski, Funkdunk, Figue, Of Cascadia, Shikyrie, The Dragon Queens, Gaiah, Zyxibule, Iznogoud, Herbach, Volumeamplify, Punrovia)

Status: Lacking Support (requires 135 more approvals)

We already have this:

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7243294&postcount=78

It's not great, but you at least need to work around it.

As to your resolution:

In the event of an international epidemic (which will hereby be defined as a single disease which infects more then 5% of a single country), travel inside and outside the infected countries is completely banned as to contain the disease. These countries will try to locate the victims of the disease and quarantine them so to not spread the disease within their own country. As soon as all known cases of the disease are known to be safe from the rest of the people of these countries, the borders are re-opened.

You fail to specify that the disease need be one that is dangerous, so we could lock down countries where the common cold is spreading rapidly. You also need to say a bit more explicitly that the disease has to be contagious. As you define it, "international epidemic" is not international at all. And the measures you're imposing are ridiculous. When you say "travel inside and outside the infected countries is completely banned", that means that any travel anywhere in the universe is banned, because everywhere is either inside or outside the country. Even if this was dealt with to only close down the borders, it seems overly drastic. In reality, that would mean locking down the borders long term of a large number of African nations for AIDS alone. You're also saying that we need to quarantine all sufferers by force, regardless of any mitigating factors - e.g. even though HIV is not easily tranferred between people, you would have all sufferers locked away permanently (since there is currently no way of eliminating the vrius from the body). And what about the many species in NS unique to their nation? Need we lock down the borders of a nation because their citizens have a disease incapable of infecting the rest of us?

AIDS
SARS
Cancer
Muscular Dystrophy
Malaria
The Plague
Sickle Cell Anemia
Herpes
Diabetes
Hepatitis

This list is also a bad idea. Even if we're assuming that problems with disease are fairly similar to reality, this list is quite dodgy - the most glaring omission I can think of is Tuberculosis, while you include several diseases that affect relatively few people, or have lesser impacts. Here is the WHO's list of biggest causes of death in 2004:

http://www.who.int/features/qa/18/en/

Additionally, several of the diseases you name are categories of disease - most importantly, cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases, which all need different approaches, and continuing the widespread fallacy of talking about a cure for cancer as a single research goal is misleading, and there are two types of diabetes mellitus, type 1 tending to be much more problematic than type 2.

Regardless, RL global disease patterns will not hold true for large numbers of NationStates (even in reality, different countries have trouble with different diseases). Therefore, it seems sensible not to specify diseases, but to simply encourage funding and let nations choose the diseases themselves.

All UN members to do their best in the help for the funding to eradicate or help cure these known, wide-spread, diseases (they are not necesssarily contageous):

AIDS
SARS
Cancer
Muscular Dystrophy
Malaria
The Plague
Sickle Cell Anemia
Herpes
Diabetes
Hepatitis

We agree that nations should work ardously towards the cure and prevention of all diseases on this list.... with the notable exception of HERPES. Please, think of all the jokes we would lose if we couldn't make herpes cracks... think of all the idiotic TV commercials for herpes surpressing drugs that would be no more.... think of the fact that no college student could ever point across the quad at a co-ed again and say "she's got the herp". Eradicate the rest, but please keep herpes!