Posted on 10/23/2014 7:51:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
If the 1931 classic film Frankenstein were filmed in the United States today, the villagers storming the gates of the castle would not be carrying torches and pitchforks, but instead wearing HAZMAT suits, spraying cans of Lysol in the air, and demanding that the mayor do "whatever is necessary" to protect them against the possibility the creature might harm one of them. Of course, these marching villagers would be the few who actually dared venture outside their cottages with barred doors and shuttered windows.
So here we are, not in 19th Century Transylvania, but 21st Century America. As of writing this, there have been no new Ebola cases in the United States for several days (and the total number of cases before this can be counted on a single human hand), and most of the 48 people in forced quarantine in Dallas are once again free to go about their daily lives. Glancing at the media coverage of America’s so-called “Ebola Crisis,” it appears we may have progressed from “spiraling out of control” [WIFR, 9/16/14] to being now “cautiously optimistic” [Yahoo News, 10/20/14]. Still, it was only a few days ago that a Maine school district placed a teacher on leave for merely having visited the city of Dallas.
Lost in all of the uproar was the fact that only two people, in the whole of the United States, actually contracted the virus domestically, and both were contaminated while treating an already sick patient.
A lack of education on how the virus actually spreads, the mainstream media’s sensationalism of the outbreak to generate ratings, and mistakes of supposedly “expert” health officials, are just a few of the many factors contributing to the public’s Ebola panic. Additionally, the vacillating nature of the federal government's response to Ebola -- whipsawing between the CDC’s delayed response to the first Dallas case, to the sudden formation of an Ebola “rapid-response team” by the Pentagon -- further confused an already chaotic situation.
However, it is the post-9/11 mentality, in which we are in a constant state of fear of “immediate harm,” which truly has transformed the American psyche from a people once not only unafraid of taking a risk, but who gladly assumed risk as a necessary component of forging a nation and an economy that became the envy of the world, to one more akin that of an abused puppy jumping at the sudden appearance of his own shadow.
It is this pervasive and perverse fear that makes our default response mechanism a call for government officials to do “whatever it takes” to protect us, even if that means surrendering basic liberties to get the job done; something government officials from the president down to the local police chief are all too happy to do (especially if they are awarded the expanded budgetary resources to do so).
The threat of Ebola in the United States prompted calls for the U.S. government to implement bans on citizen travel, and has resulted in the appointment of yet another Obama Czar -- all because of a virus that spread to just 0.000002 percent of the U.S. population, including those who contracted it in a foreign country. Considering that the response by government to a crisis -- real or concocted -- is rarely rapid but always outlasts the incident giving rise to it, there certainly is more to come in the weeks and months ahead, regardless of whether there is even one more case of the dread disease.
The door to government infringement of our liberty once opened, is rarely shut.
This is exactly why the fear instilled by whatever threat plagues society at the moment is often far more dangerous than the threat itself: fear of gun violence leads to increased gun control; fear of terrorism leads to abuses at the airports from the TSA, illegal government spying of phone calls and emails, and violations of due process rights; fear of “global warming” leads to expensive environmental regulations that inhibit economic growth. Yet, even with all of these examples as evidence of why not to rush to government in a panic, we rush for more.
We now have the president and his Secretary of Defense ordering our troops and taxpayer dollars into foreign lands to stop a disease ravaging three small countries in west Africa -- countries afflicted because of conditions in those nations that do not exist even remotely in our country. We have our military becoming heavily involved domestically in league with state and local governments in apparent violation of the posse comitatus law; with hardly a question raised about such actions, because most citizens accept as fact when told such activities are "necessary to make us safe."
These actions remind far too few of our countrymen that, as warned by John Adams in the seminal year 1776, "fear is the foundation of most governments." The corollary is that fear is the catalyst for increased government power.
How can a common citizen tell the difference between Ebola based government abuse and the tsunami of normal, everyday government abuse?
Protesting to stop 150 people coming into this country from the ebola countries is not hysterical behavior.
The real threat is a president who cares more about black people in West Africa than citizens of this country. He is supposed to be protecting us - not citizens of other countries.
has there been hysteria outside of the media and internet?
I don’t see hysteria. I see people genuinely concerned about a deadly disease entering their country 38 years after it’s discovery.
Hysteria? Like in the literal sense?
Does he have a private jet?
Those barn doors have been gone for a while now.
I knew it. Barr doesn’t want to restrict flights. That’s all you need to know about this article
You are so right.
I wish we had a ‘like’ button here on FR.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Thanks for the ping!
Two cases, we have the BSL-4 bed space to handle. Twenty cases, we still have the BSL-4 bed space to handle. Two hundred cases and 90% of the patients will be in makeshift facilities at best.
The problem thresh hold, where the appropriate services become overwhelmed, is remarkably close to zero.
"Hysteria"?
Or is it just an awareness of how fragile the level of 'control' is on this disease here?
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
There is only a 1 in 5000 chance that anyone arriving from West Africa will have been exposed to Ebola. There is no sense in further damaging those countries' economies for such a small risk, especially since economic hardship leads to things like terrorism that we do not want, and which is far more deadly.
Influenza is about to kill tens of thousands of people. Unlike Ebola, it is airborne and highly contagious--are you at all worried about that?
1 in 5000 for each of the 150 that come in per day.
Cumulative chance is 100% as we’ve seen from observations.
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