#3

Initially, I was a bit skeptical about Gladwell’s concept of the tipping point, but using epidemics to show it in action really helped. We always hear about the epidemics- aids, HIV, Ebola- but that’s all they are: epidemics. We distance ourselves from what they really are, as Gladwell did a great job communicating, and instead think of them as large phenomenon that just occur as if out of thin air. While there may not be a patient zero directly responsible for each epidemic, there certainly are those who tip the balance and break the long held equilibrium. It seems so surreal to acknowledge it for what it is, but that’s largely due to how hard it must to be grasp the fact that a select few were responsible for national or global scaled outbreaks. For HIV, there was Gaetan Dugas who had sexual relations with 2,500 men. That right there is very hard to believe. But that very hard to believe imbalance is the tipping point, causing all the men Dugas infected to infect other men, spreading HIV to the point where it grew exponentially and became an epidemic. It’s sort of like a domino effect in that a chain reaction is set off, spreading the contagion, whatever it may be. Without the rapid spread, there would be no domino effect, and thus no epidemic. That isn’t to say there wouldn’t be an HIV problem somewhere, because there would be, but only in one location where it’s at equilibrium and won’t spread rapidly. It’s also interesting how small the things that set off the domino effect can be. It’s typically some insignificant thing causing the contagion to spread, forcing it out of its state of equilibrium in one location. Even though Gladwell was just accused of plagiarism, you’ve got to give it to the guy; he’s got some interesting ideas.