Posted on 08/02/2014 7:18:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, is in a social-media panic because Dr. Kent Brantly, the 33-year-old Indiana physician who contracted Ebola while battling it in Liberia, is coming home as he struggles to hang onto life. This fear-laden response to a true American hero is out of touch with the fundamental principles of this country.
The Internet is afire with protest, and the misleading headlines stating that Ebola is being brought to the U.S. spread more fear but no understanding or empathy.
Brantly himself makes me proud to be both an American and a physician, and reminds me of the fearless battle against HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, when we took personal risks to care for the sick and the dying. A family friend describes him as caring more for others than for himself. This kind of altruism and courage is becoming rare these days, among physicians and society in general, but it is just as important now as it was in the 1980s, if not more so.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I’m proud of Brantly too. But I wouldn’t put other Americans at risk because of him.
I'd call them fools.
Consider AIDS. It's explosion through the homosexual community relied on an intentional act, whether it was unprotected anal sex introducing the virus directly into the via a violent, destructive act or via drug use, where the host intentionally injected destructive drugs using a potentially infected syringe.
Ebola does not rely on direct intervention to be passed from host to host. A far simpler method of transmission is involved to new hosts, always unintentional.
The risk and threat of a widespread Ebola outbreak is far greater than a mostly restricted initial outbreak of AIDS, which was then spread throughout the greater population due to lack of containment of the homosexual population afflicted.
Now, finally, I ask, "Who actually trusts the competence of our current government to keep this contained and not fall prey to political correctness if containment fails?"
Sleep well tonight...
The world at large resents that:
America does not have Ebola
America does not have Mad Cow disease
America has air conditioning.
America does not have a large proud Socialist PartyAmerica has not experienced a large scale terrorist attack.
Amid those expressing concern on the week of 9-11, there were certainly those around the globe (even in Europe) who said "now you know how it feels".
And now the push is on to permit homosexuals with multiple random partners to donate blood AND for those with HIV/AIDS to withhold that information from their sex partners and family.
Empathy? Who says we don’t have empathy? I’ve been praying for all infected people and asking God to remove this threat from the world. Twice daily. And there are plenty of people praying a lot harder than I am. What about empathy for the uninfected throughout the world??
The government is withholding plenty of information. Sometimes necessarily. They know the names of passengers and the connecting flights that people took all over the world.
Maybe they brought it here because they already know that this a weaponized version. If I were going to release such a horror I would release it in Africa. Reasoning: to give it more time to get a foothold. Nobody raises much of an alarm when Ebola crops up in Africa.
Equating Ebola with AIDS is a shame. This doctor is not going to come over and start having unprotected anal sex with members of the hospital staff.
Then again the way things have been going, I could be wrong.
Yes, and that's why we came and stay here...to get away from all that crap.
I have no doubts as to the ill Doctors courage. When this bug gets loose in a major American city then, Doctor, you will see real panic. Will it be overblown then? Remember, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Quarantine works to stops this disease. We better try it before it is too late.
Please remove me from your Bring Out Your Dead ping list. I’ve been monitoring continuously. Thank you.
Their precautions omitted respirators. It was assumed that contact with infected fluids was the vector. A cough or sneeze might pass it.
You have chosen your profession and your risk. For you, there is an upside: either a line in the history books as the doctor who made the breakthrough, professional respect, and a paycheck.
Others have chosen their level of risk, too. They work on oil rigs, fight fires, mine coal, enforce the law, haul equipment and supplies from coast to coast, even grow or fish for the food you likely eat.
Those are our levels of risk.
If you want to take your chances fighting this disease, that is up to you, but the people who already undergo risks to provide for you now have another unnecessary risk--that of a deadly disease not native to these shores--part of the risk YOU embrace.
The last time that happened, many of the people here were wiped out--estimates as high as 80%. Their land was taken by invaders from another hemisphere.
Especially considering that historical precedent, who are YOU---any of you-- to demand those who already risk their lives to bring you all the comforts of home add the risk of a virus alien to this continent?
Fine, if you want to give those who chose their risk level the best care, that care, give it to them there. No firefighter is going to bring the fire into your office to fight it, no fisherman will bring you the risk of drowning, no farmer will bring in the machinery that can mutilate him so you can have a go at it, no driller will risk your family by immolation in a blowout or poison gas.
Yet you would risk all these and their families for your fame and glory, when you have the option of going where the disease is instead of bringing it to their homeland.
The doctors who go there KNOW the risk. They were not insisting on bringing it here to have a drive-in latte on the way to work, and all the comforts of home. They went where the risk is.
We bring our severely wounded home from the war, they earn that treatment--the best we have to offer--but they don't bring the war home with them.
If you think that is cowardly of me, all I can say is that I have farmed, held a commercial fishing license, have been a firefighter, and am writing this from an oil rig. All of these jobs have a relatively high level of risk, risk that can be managed by those of us doing them, but risk also that is limited to the person doing it. If I screw up, if I don't make it home, my family continues, as does yours. Your kids won't burn in their beds if this rig has a blowout.
If the doctors giving this care to people who are brought in with this virus alien to our shores make a mistake, it is one which could conceivably harm us all. And before you even mention safeguards, it might be best to determine how those who had the safeguards and knew the disease contracted it.
Don’t sweat it. It bears repetition.
>> I have read the palm sweating, panic on this thread <<
So what else is new? Welcome to FR!
Get over yourself.
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>> yet it hasn’t weakened in all these decades <<
Are you referring to Ebola? Indeed, it does appear to have weakened. The death rate used to be around 90%. The death rate in the current outbreak is reported to be about 65%.
That’s because the CDC is convinced it’s ‘not airborne!’.
And ‘only transmitted by bodily fluids, like HIV’.
The sequence of the current strain exhibits some drift from the 1976 version. Lower mortality but easier transmission may be the result.
Something that’s got 90+% mortality but isn’t easy to transmit is a very different bug from something that’s got 30+% mortality but is much more easily transmissible.
The former burns itself out. The latter is a pandemic.
I found that out after I posted.
Because the CDC was told to bring it in
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