For one thing, the communication breakdown that did not result in Mr. Duncan explaining to a doctor that he may have come into contact with an ebola-infected person even though the CDC put out an alert is an issue. That nurses in the US don't feel properly educated is an issue. And that wankers in the US might try trolling on this issue, fearmongering and politically posturing over various draconian possibilities, is, I'm afraid to say--an issue. We don't need the kind of undue fear that leads to riots or stupidity. We need our media to convey factual POV like never before.
If Americans need a pep-talk on this: We built the bomb and put a man on the moon, for heaven's sake. We fuxxored Hitler and created more than 200 years of something very like a functioning democracy. Seriously, is containing a virus supposed to be beyond us? I say--let our smartest people do their best things. If we can beat the snot out of polio and smallpox, let's aim for Ebola. I feel like rooting for science.
But really, can someone muzzle FOX News? Because...if you want to talk "virulent"...
2 comments:
The terrified, uninformed over reaction is mind boggling. Here's a disease that's easy to contain and HARD to spread. It's spreading in a desperately poor region with literally NO modern public health services, and that's to be expected. But acting as if it poses a health threat to Americans here is stupid and/or manipulative.
If you don't get the puke, poop or pee of an actively infected person IN YOUR BLOOD (like HIV, but nobody's going to have sex with a person with hemorrhagic symptoms), you can't get the disease. Help the people in the hot zone build some public health systems and institutions or don't, but can we PLEASE stop screaming that it represents some kind of "threat" to the US? (Not that I recognize you didn't do this, but the volume of the panicked voices is growing deafening.)
One of the other problems I see with people politicizing the ebola crisis in Africa, as with politicizing every other thing (Benghazi, anyone?) is that it kinds of leads to a defeatist, "no one can do anything well ever" mentality. We can't stop climate change, reform health care or do anything about poverty. Why? Because all the solutions are Hitler riding on a sharknado with AIDS. Leaving no room for intelligent conversation. And I think that's what the shouters want on some level.
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