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What’s going on here? Why is the entire nation going into a tailspin about Ebola?
First, of course, the hospital in Texas handled the patient from Africa very poorly, first sending him home and then, according to some nurses, not putting him in isolation quickly enough and not providing adequate protection for nurses and others who had to come into contact with him. Then, there’s the CDC that apparently cleared one of the nurses, already running a temperature, to fly back and forth to Cleveland.
When something this dangerous hits and people are told one thing while the actual facts turn out to be different, when missteps and lack of coordination seem to be the normal course of things, then, naturally, people will doubt what is said next. According to the reports coming out of Texas, however, it looks like doubt has turned into a full scale panic. That same reaction, perhaps at a lower level, seems to be taking place across the entire nation (one would assume that Alaska and Hawaii residents are not so concerned).
Ebola is an evil, scary disease, but the reaction so far is way out of proportion to the threat. 30,000 people die of the flu each year in America and almost no one gives it a second thought. More than 30,000 people die on the roads and highways, but almost everyone gets in a car, truck or other vehicle ever day. Now, we are going nuts about two patients with Ebola and those patients are both nurses who were in very close, intimate contact with the African man who died? Does this make any sense? No.
One reason we go into panic so quickly is that most of us in the ordinary course of our days face few dangers. We are spoiled by the conditions under which we live. We all assume that the odds are very good that we will live to a ripe old age and only face grave dangers in our late 70s or early 80s, if even then. We look out over the horizon and don’t see any serious threats, so we relax and get soft, forgetting that this is a dangerous world.
We are a long way from a major, serious outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Even if passengers on the plane from Cleveland to Dallas were exposed, the number would likely be small. Yeah, it is scary anyway and all the rest of us can be glad we weren’t on that flight, but it is highly unlikely that someone who was, even if exposed, would therefore pass it along to others, since it does not spread before the person has symptoms and all of the passengers who can be reached are being contacted.
This, right now, is not a grave situation for the nation or even in Dallas. The TerryReport will publish some information soon about how to measure the time when Ebola might become a matter of deep concern for the general population. We are not at that point now. Our concerns should be that the CDC, the medical community and the national leadership get their act together and contain the disease, now.
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