From the interview:
Mead Over: “Well, the recent history of these economies has been quite optimistic story. Liberia has been growing at 6 percent a year and Sierra Leone at more than 11 percent a year. That’s in comparison, for example, to the United States, which is growing at only about 2 percent. So these economies have been growing very fast, although from a very low base, and that’s been an optimistic story in Africa. And now growth has basically been negative for the past couple of months in these three core countries.”
...
Over: “It’s very important to realize that the economic impact is far greater than one can imagine based on the numbers of deaths. These countries do have other disease problems: children die of malaria, people are dying because they have HIV. And there are other common diseases in African countries. However, those other diseases don’t cause the panic that is being caused by Ebola and don’t have this problem with leading factories to shut down because of the fear of their workers. And because of the aversion behavior, as we call it in the World Bank report, the epidemic is not only much more serious than the number of cases would lead one to believe, but is also likely to extend longer into the future.”
[Note: Mead Over’s comments begin at 16:06]
Listen to the interview here
