Don’t Panic?

So here we are in Dallas with more Ebola cases showing up, and the radius of potential exposures widening from ground zero. We are counting on AUTHORITIES, advised by EXPERTS, to keep us safe and informed. They say “DON’T PANIC – TRUST US.”

 And yet an uneasiness has descended on us. People are nervous of strangers on planes. School attendance is down because parents are keeping their children home even though there’s NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. We worry about sitting in a restaurant, or shopping in a store. Or riding on a bus. Why is that?

Part of it may be a perception that the AUTHORITIES are more interested in economics than in stopping the spread of a 70% fatal disease. We won’t put a travel ban on people from West Africa because that would damage the economies of those countries, so instead a man came to Dallas from Liberia – ONE MAN – and now we have at least two more people with Ebola and HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE being told to self monitor. We don’t want to declare an emergency in Dallas, because then the conventions we have planned won’t come, and that will hurt the economy here. It reminds me of the Mayor in Jaws, who ignored his experts because he didn’t want to close the beaches at the start of TOURIST SEASON; the shark got another meal, so see how well that went.

We don’t trust our AUTHORITIES because their motivations are conflicted (and that distrust isn’t improved by the dodginess of the current administration.) But what about the EXPERTS? With each new day it becomes more apparent that they really aren’t EXPERT where it counts:

·         When the first nurse was diagnosed, we were told it was a failure in following protocols and training, but nurses are complaining (across the country) that there is either no or inadequate training and protective gear.

·         Did you know that the magic 21 days spent waiting to see if an exposed person has Ebola is a fallacy? 5% of people can still take as long as 42 days to show symptoms. That means that out of the initial 45 people who just finished being watched, 2-3 of them might still have it. Do all those 45 people (plus the 70 or so hospital workers) know this, or they going to assume it’s JUST THE FLU if it manifests later?

·         A symptomatic nurse flew from Dallas to Ohio and back with a low-grade fever – she was told by the CDC (the REAL EXPERTS?) that it was okay if she was below 100.4 F. Turned out they were wrong.

·         We watched one of the sick nurses being loaded onto a plane to go to Atlanta for treatment. Some of the people assisting her wore hazmat gear, while others had NO PROTECTION AT ALL.

·         A local judge (Clay Jenkins) insisted on visiting exposed people and parading around the fact that he had no protection. Why isn’t he in quarantine?

·         An EXPERT is asked if you can catch Ebola from someone who has it if they sneeze; the EXPERT claims that people with Ebola don’t sneeze (I guess that means that Ebola prevents allergies?)

Now we have a POLITICAL OPERATIVE WITH NO MEDICAL BACKGROUND running the Federal response to Ebola. Based on his background, what is the likelihood that he would advise travel bans? Or REAL quarantines?

We need some common sense here. Allow no more travel from blighted countries (if you can’t tell if someone’s infected for 42 days, what difference does taking their temperature at the airport make?). No more voluntary quarantines (we’ve seen how well that worked.)

Don’t panic? That would be a lot easier if the whole operation didn’t look like a house of cards continuing to fall. If we could TRUST these people to REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING.

Just saying…

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