On your last point. MSF are not just fighting Ebola on the ground, they are also putting pressure on governments. Sending them money helps them have the resources to do both jobs more effectively. Sure, we should be putting pressure on our governments to do more ourselves, but I do not think that there is an inverse relationship between funding MSF and the speed of government response, when MSF are one of the groups trying to increase the rate of government response.
I suspect donations are not going to have any impact on the effectiveness of MSF’s lobbying efforts (i.e. I don’t think MSF’s lobbying for military intervention by the west is money constrained). I am more than happy to be corrected on this if anyone has any data.
What I am hoping by my comment is breaking people out of the thinking that this can be solved by donations to NGO’s like MSF. I believe it is far too big now for any NGO to deal with no matter how well resourced. If we can only get on top of the outbreak by military action lets stop messing around and start lobbying for this directly - every day we delay is only making the problem bigger and harder.
