Ebola Epidemic Overreaction
Please, calm down. You aren't going to catch Ebola and die. How can I possibly know for certain? Am I a doctor?
No, I am not a doctor. But I can read. The literature is clear: Unless you are a health care worker in regular contact with infected patients, the odds of contracting Ebola are very long.
But if that doesn't ease your fears, try answering these questions: Have you been to Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone in the past month or so? Have you swapped saliva, sweat or other bodily fluids with somebody infected with the virus? Have you come into contact recently with a couple of unfortunate nurses in Dallas?
You haven't? Splendid! Then you have little to worry about.
That isn't to say a bit of preparation wouldn't be prudent. Both the Riverside and San Bernardino County public health departments are taking steps to ensure local hospitals are ready in the unlikely event Ebola reaches Inland Southern California. They're surveying local hospitals to probe for possible weaknesses in training and facilities.
Local officials are also trying to educate and reassure the public. Riverside County this week launched a sensible and levelheaded “frequently asked questions” page on its website, www.rivcoph.org). The message is unequivocal: “Ebola does not pose a significant risk to the U.S. public.”
So, Ebola does not trouble me. I'm more concerned about the flu – which kills between 35,000 and 40,000 Americans every year – and the enterovirus, a nasty respiratory illness that's hitting Southern California kids pretty hard right now.
But I'm especially worried about an epidemic far more contagious than any of those infectious diseases: hysteria.
Hysteria is easy to transmit. Unlike Ebola, hysteria is airborne – on the radio, on television – and easily passed through paper and ink. Excessive contact with Twitter and Facebook is also a surefire way to develop chronic hysteria. Hysteria does not discriminate. It thrives on the left and the right.
It's been disappointing to see so many of my conservative friends lose their minds over the Ebola scare. Case in point: Jonathan V. Last, an otherwise excellent writer and reporter, attempted to make a case in the Weekly Standard for “controlled, informed panic.” One of those things is not like the others.
Unfortunately, Last let his imagination run wild. “It isn't crazy to see how a health crisis could beget all sorts of other crises, from humanitarian, to economic, to political, to existential,” he writes. “If you think about Ebola and mutation and aerosolization ... for too long, you start to get visions of Mad Max cruising the postapocalyptic landscape with Katniss Everdeen at his side.”
Informed panic? The facts don't seem to matter. Just this week, the World Health Organization – itself a global transmitter of pandemic hysteria – announced that Nigeria and Senegal are Ebola free.
WHO last month published an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine predicting 20,000 Ebola cases by the first week of November. Yet as science writer Michael Fumento points out, there have only been around 2,800 new cases reported in the past three weeks or so. Ebola's reality is not living up to Ebola's hype.
With midterm elections less than two weeks away, responding to Ebola seems more about domestic politics than sound policy. The Obama administration last week appointed Ron Klain, a political operative with no background in public health, as “Ebola czar.” To do what exactly? Klain wouldn't know the difference between Ebola and an ear mite, but he can navigate Beltway politics with surgical precision.
Meanwhile, Dr. Thomas Frieden, Obama's head of the Centers for Disease Control, has demonstrated a gross deficiency in his bedside manner. “If you're a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no,” Frieden said last week. “Second, if you are sick, and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you.”
With assurances like that, no wonder the fear mongers are doing bang-up business. Don't worry about Ebola. Worry about government officials who can't get the simplest of stories straight and the hysterics who would rather terrify than enlighten.
This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise
This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise