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The CDC Is Carefully Controlling How Scared You Are About Ebola
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman reports in The Atlantic that the Obama administration is trying to navigate a tricky course: Can officials increase public vigilance about the deadly Ebola virus without inciting a panic? "Ebola is scary. It's a deadly disease. But we know how to stop it," says Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director. speaking "calmly and clearly, sticking to an even pitch and avoiding the familiar political image of the whip-smart fast-talker." International groups wanted the U.S. to step in sooner to help fight the outbreak in west Africa, while more recently some Republicans have called on the administration to ban travel from the most affected countries.
Frieden and other officials say such a move would be counterproductive, citing lessons learned from the SARS outbreak a decade ago. "The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided." The government announced Wednesday that it was stepping up protective measures at five airports, where authorities will screen travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea with targeted questions and fever checks, an action, officials acknowledge, that was taken not only to stop the spread of the disease but simply to make people feel safer. According to Berman, the message is this: Be afraid of Ebola. Just not too afraid.
Frieden and other officials say such a move would be counterproductive, citing lessons learned from the SARS outbreak a decade ago. "The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided." The government announced Wednesday that it was stepping up protective measures at five airports, where authorities will screen travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea with targeted questions and fever checks, an action, officials acknowledge, that was taken not only to stop the spread of the disease but simply to make people feel safer. According to Berman, the message is this: Be afraid of Ebola. Just not too afraid.
The reason Ebola is spreading in Africa is because of poverty and customs. In some places the doctors have run out of gloves. With a disease like Ebola, that is not something you want. Secondly, in some places they have customs like washing the body of the deceased, then having the wife drink the water to prove she didn't try to kill him. Once again, that is not the kind of tradition you want to have if you're going to stop the spread of Ebola.
Airborne Ebola would be a serious problem. What we have with the current epidemic is an education/sanitation problem, not a disease problem.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Ebola is scary. It's a deadly disease. But we know how to stop it."
Full stop, that's it. Quit worrying. For better or for worse, the United States is not eastern Africa. We cannot and will not have a massive epidemic here. A coworker of mine died from H1N1 "swine flu" a few years back. RIP Dusty. Swine flu was a valid health concern, it was something to be alarmed about and take extraordinary precautions against. Ebola is not.
Media's doing what media does, hyping and scaring to rake in eyeballs and sell their advertisements.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Heard an expert on infectious diseases interviewed the other day and they said the temperature taking of passengers was a joke as Ebola victims don't show a temperature until many, many days after they've been infected (i.e. it would not have caught the guy who recently died in Dallas from Ebola because he didn't have a fever when he came in). It just gives the appearance the govt is in control somehow, when they really aren't.
Definitely can't trust the government is saying regarding the disease if/once it gets established in the U.S., as preventing panic is the highest priority. The disease expert did say the industry and Feds were working night and day to get a blood test created and available and said they were probably a month or so away from that (if things continued moving along).
Ebola has already gone from outbreaks in communities to outbreaks that threaten whole countries.
It's on the verge of repeating the process, but now at a global, not country or community level. So the question is, will it develop enough of a reservoir internationally to repeat its' performance, this time around? We simply don't know - and we won't know until we either beat it or lose to it.
To compound the problem, the right solution to this outbreak may not be the right solution to the next one, but we'll "go with what worked the last time" because that's both easy and politically correct.
No matter how you look at it, we're all in trouble.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe I'm just jaded, but it feels like the Ebola scare is being hyped because it would be convenient if everyone forgot about ISIS, Ukraine, and how James Clapper should be charged for perjury.
Don't get me wrong. It's a terrible thing, and a risk to the USA. But it's not that big of a risk. And there are more important things that should be vieing for prime-time on the news reels.
A plane from Liberia arrives at JFK. When entering the country, agents are asking questions about whether the traveller has been in areas where Ebola has been present, have they been exposed, do they know anyone that was exposed, how are they feeling, etc. Finally they non-invasively check the traveller for fever. Ok.....so let's say a plane holds 200 people. The first 121 people off the plane all answer the questions properly, and test negative for fever. Out they go into the US. Traveller 122 has a fever, and has answered that he's been in an area where ebola is present. We throw this guy into isolation! What about the prior 121 people that were on the plane with him while he expressed symptoms, and are already shaking hands, kissing relatives and generally spreading into taxis and our general population. What about the next 78 people in line?
Are we (our wonderful ATA people) smarter than this? Doubtful.
An Intelligent computer would realize humans are a virus and exterminate us.
Nice rhetorical scoring, but, yes, it *is* totally different. Comparing the poverty, lack of trust in government workers and dysfunctional healthcare system in the US South to those factors in Africa is like comparing the neighborhood pool to Lake Erie.
There's a simple way of dealing with that. Don't be a racist nut job. Have actual valid reasons for your positions and keep the outrage to a reasonable level.
Coming from a person of color, far too often accusations of racism are used to silence legitimate dissent and debate.
Having valid reason and articulable concerns will not be enough to protect anyone from charges of racism.
We shouldn't be allowing anyone to enter this country if they have been to a country with an outbreak of any hemorrhagic disease in the past 90 days. For now, that means certain west African nations. The people in Zambia are every bit as black as the ones in Liberia and THEY aren't letting Liberians in.
Obama himself isn't a lefty, he's a moderate right politician. It's just the racism that blinds so many right wing nutjobs to what Obama is actually doing.
Depends on your politics. If you're an anti-war lefty, there's not much difference between Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush or Reagan.
If you're a small government righty, again, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Reagan aren't much different.
Me, I'm a fiscal moderate and a social conservative. There are lightyears between Obama and Bush, from my perspective.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well, yes. Then if you see one call the public health authorities.
Common sense? Sure, but you'd be surprised at the degree to which what you'd think was common sense flies out the window when people encounter the unexpected.
In my experience what people do when confornted with the unexpected is take their cue from what other people around them are doing, and if that's nothing, they'll try to ignore whatever it is. I've even seen that happen with FIRE ALARMS. Instead of getting up and leaving, they look to see what other people are doing. And since those other people are doing the same thing, nobody is leaving. They're looking at each other, wondering whether that really IS a fire alarm. I once had to stick my head in the room on my way out and tell the people there that yes, it really is a fire alarm and they have to leave right away.
If people have been recently primed then perhaps they're more likely to do something reasonable. Of course that sometimes means lots more false positives, but that's a tradeoff.
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