When Ebola Turns to 'Fearbola'
At first, AIDS was thought to be a disease limited to Africa or Haiti, then to the gay community and users of dirty hypodermic needles. Marginalized people found themselves to be even more stigmatized.
A similar indifference greeted more recent news of Ebola's recurrence in Africa. Would we have cared more if it had broken out closer to home? No doubt. Yet the world is getting smaller than many of us think.
2. Pull up the drawbridge: A reflexive impulse to close borders and otherwise physically isolate ourselves.
Only four years ago President Barack Obama finally lifted the useless ban on HIV-infected travelers imposed by the late Sen. Jesse Helms' 1987 amendment. Now Obama is being pressured to close the borders and impose a new travel ban on West African nations to stop Ebola.
But U.S. airlines already have suspended direct flights between the United States and afflicted nations. Yet that doesn't stop fliers like Thomas Duncan, the Ebola patient who died in Texas. He flew to Dallas through a connecting flight in Europe.
Banning travel only would make it more difficult to track the disease, which would make it more likely to spread out of control.
3. Panic peddling by media and others: In today's Twitter age, the old "We're All Gonna Die" frenzy is only magnified. When you hear stories of families buying hazmat suits in bulk, you know that you're in the middle of a full-blown media storm.
Fortunately, there's some encouraging news, too. More than 40 people in Dallas have been released from quarantine after surviving the 21-day Ebola incubation period without showing symptoms. In West Africa, Senegal and Nigeria have been declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization after more than six weeks without a new case.
Yet, for too many of us, Ebola may be easier to contain than our irrational fears about it.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
