Outbreak of Fear

English: Ebola virus virion. Created by CDC microbiologist Cynthia Goldsmith, this colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every few years, there have been worldwide epidemics of diseases that governments and modern medical science have been slow to get a handle on before it's too late.  AIDS.  SARS.  H1N1.  You get the picture.

Now it's Ebola, a disease that was discovered a few years ago and has no cure.  To date, nearly 4500 deaths have been reported in west Africa (where it all began), Spain and the United States out of nearly 8000 cases.  By the end of 2014, according to the World Health Organization, there could be as many as 10,000 new cases per week.  Repeat--per week.

The Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control (Centers?) have been telling us that the chances of an Ebola epidemic in this country are almost nonexistent, that it is very difficult to contract.   

So how was it possible for a Liberian named Thomas Eric Duncan to die in a Dallas hospital of Ebola, infecting two nurses and possibly more?  Or having several other Americans flown from Africa to be treated here, and are currently recovering?  Simple.  It's that modern-day carrier called the airplane, carrying infected patients from one place to another without anyone knowing it.

President Obama has reacted to the crisis by sending thousands of American soldiers to west Africa to help fight the disease, and has so far designated five airports along the Eastern Seaboard to check flights from that area for infected passengers and possibly quarantining them.  Which is all well and good, unless those soldiers bring home the Ebola and charges of racial profiling becomes a problem every time a TSA screener sticks a thermometer down someone's mouth.

Besides, what's to stop somebody from ISIL/ISIS, al Qaeda or another terrorist from deliberately coming into the country and spreading the virus?  There's no defense against that.

Despite all the reassurances from the government and the CDC, are we really ready to take on Ebola or any other kind of killer disease?  Some nursing organizations don't think so.  They have complained that their members have not received adequate training and equipment from their hospitals to protect themselves.  Other medical officials are concerned by the slowness of the U.S. government's response to the epidemic.

So about all any of us can do is to hope that the authorities are right about controlling the spread of Ebola, and that we shouldn't lay too much of the blame on those who chose to emigrate here from Africa.  Because then we'd be creating a whole new epidemic of something that's all too common in America.  It's called fear.