USAID Chief Economist Stephen O’Connell writes about the Ebola epidemic’s impacts on Liberia.

IMPACTblog: Standing with Liberia to Reverse Ebola’s ‘Spillover’ Effects
“…Ebola threatens not only lives, but livelihoods. The main driver of economic impacts is not the loss of labor to sickness and death, or even the major diversion of resources into health care, but rather the much broader spillover effects from peoples’ fear of contagion…” (10/3).

IMPACTblog: Washington Post Overly Alarmist on Liberia’s “Descent into Hell”
“The Washington Post’s September 30 story of Liberia’s ‘descent into economic hell’ was overly alarmist and disconnected from that country’s recent history. … [T]he Ebola crisis has hit a society that is on the rise economically and in the midst of constructing legitimate and effective government institutions. This is ascent, not descent…” (10/3).