On Ebola - leaking? licking? then calm down.

[vvalkyri]

I've been posting various and sundry over on FB; last night I posted a link to The grim future if Ebola goes global (which itself links to a larger essay, Ebola - Failures of Imagination) and noted, It is ever so important to manage to control Ebola where it is already, rather than to let it go endemic in larger portions of the world. This is why

Comments

[gsh]

I think Katie is helping, she is letting the state of Maine she isn't going to meekly stand by while she's having her civil rights violated. She has a lawyer, and isn't afraid to use them!

[oneagain]

Thank you for the links :)

[achinhibitor]

It's gotten so bad that some Fox News commentator had to broadcast a rant to not fret about Ebola, but go get a damned flu shot "because flu killed 50,000 Americans last year".

I think the panic will get better as the public gains experience with the disease. I remember when there was this huge panic about HIV. But it faded after a few years.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this sort of behavior is particularly strange. Humans are evolved to live in social groups, and one feature of social behavior is that people lie to each other. So there's no good reason for Joe Sixpack to think that The Authorities are giving him the straight dope about Ebola. After the first several dozen cases in the US have flared up and died out, people will stop caring (just like nobody pays any mind to the 30,000 people killed on the highways, and we can barely get people to get flu shots).

I do like "Brace yourselves!".

Oh, yeah, and God help us all if Ebola gets loose in India, or even Nigeria.

[khall]

Or if it hits a patient whose DNA mutates it into something much more easily contagious.:)

K.