More disasters in Asia

An earthquake in China may have killed 3,000 to 5,000. Meanwhile, in Burma the estimates on the high end are that one million may die from post-disaster epidemics.

There's an unreality to the horrific numbers that emerge from developing country disasters--Americans could be told that 500,000 had died in a Bangladeshi apartment building fire, and we'd just sort of nod and say how awful it all is. But Jesus, we are lucky. Economic development does a lot of things, but one of the best things it does is give us the means to cope with adversity. It's tempting to think that subsistence farming is less fragile than complex economies--after all, you can rebuild everything yourself. But development gives us surplus food. Roads for evacuees to get out and relief workers to get in. Doctors and drugs. Mosquito nets. Earthquake proof houses. Advanced storm warnings, and communications systems to distribute them. Construction equipment. Trucks, boats and cars. Emergency generators. Spare people to flood the disaster area with help. And lots of spare room for people whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.

It also--arguably--gives us democratic governments that have to worry about public opinion. There was a lot of noise after Katrina about how America didn't care about the poor people who were affected. I won't argue that we couldn't have done better before and after the storm; we could have, and should have. But the picture of America as oblivious to its people's pain looks pretty fatuous in comparison to a Burmese government that seems ready to let hundreds of thousands die rather than allow relief workers to infect its people with news of the outside world.

Meanwhile, since a lot of Americans care about people even outside the American bordes, seems like a good idea to up those disaster relief donations. I tossed my contribution to the Salvation Army, because when I worked at Ground Zero they were regarded as the most effective of the relief agencies.