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Response to Dr. Rahe: We Need Cool Heads on Ebola
I have just finished reading Paul Rahe’s post “The Centers for Disease Control Loses Its Grip.” His post — and others like it on Ricochet — and the World War III style headlines I have been seeing elsewhere, prompted me to reply.
For the last several years, we’ve been in the midst of an epidemic of zombie-related literature, films, and television. Much of it is terrible. Some of it is good. Some of it is excellent. Zombie outbreaks take the form of a disease epidemic. It’s slow burning at first, but then hits everyone like a tsunami and wipes out all of civilization.
This epidemic of zombie media taps into a fear that lingers in the back of our minds: that this level of material prosperity — never before seen in human history — must be a passing phenomenon. That the other shoe must drop at some point. It could be a war with the Russians. It might be global warming. It might be the Second Coming. It might be the zombie apocalypse. But at some point, this decadent, comfortable world of ours with its hot showers, selfies, and decadent boutique pet foods must come crashing down when everything hits the fan.
That may well happen at some point, but Ebola won’t be the cause. Ebola isn’t the super plague that is going to wipe us out. It will rage in west Africa, in the Third World, but it will not wipe out America. Ebola isn’t the Black Death. It’s not Polio. It’s not Spanish Flu.
It’s also something we understand pretty well. Contrary Dr. Rahe’s piece, Ebola isn’t some giant question mark. We know a lot about it. We know how it spreads. Insinuations to the contrary are deeply counterproductive and unnecessarily induce fear.
Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever. In its final stages, your body melts down and you begin bleeding because your organs begin hemorrhaging. It’s so horrific because you begin bleeding from your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Everywhere. It’s highly contagious at that point — and if you’re attending to someone in that stage — there’s a good chance you’re going to get covered in blood. That’s why you wear protective gear.
Ah, but this health care worker was wearing that gear and still caught it! They sure did. It’s easy to do.
If you’re covered in infected blood, and then take off your gear, and get a little bit on you, and unthinkingly wipe your eye, that’s contact. That’s all it takes. That’s what they call protocol breach. That’s how it happens. It’s horrible and scary, but it’s not mysterious.
A travel ban is also a terrible idea. First of all, most US air carriers stopped going to places with Ebola months ago. Second of all, in order to accomplish the goal of a quarantine effectively, you’d also have to stop flights from any place that flies to an infected country — and to be safe — from any place that flies to any place that flies to an infected country. At that point, you might as well just shut down all air travel. That is a hysterical overreaction to what we are told is a gigantic epidemic that has caused exactly two cases in the US in the ten months it’s been raging.
A ban like that has the potential to make things worse. It would make it harder for aid workers, health care workers, and anyone else who wants to help to travel to and from infected areas, ensuring that the crisis continues to burn on. It’s an irrational, unnecessary, and heavy-handed response it’s not hard to find out why.
Let’s just say this: Barack Obama is a bad president. He’s terrible at his job. Most government agencies are terrible at their jobs. But some government agencies — given and abundance of cash and talented people — can accomplish great things. God help me, but even I’ll admit that government agencies can sometimes do good work.
So, remember: unless you touch the blood or vomit of someone with Ebola, you’re not going to get it. You don’t need to be afraid. Panic is unwarranted.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Published in General
The fact is that you can’t be sure that others haven’t been infected. They didn’t even bother to monitor who Duncan came in contact with. Just 36 hours ago the head of the CDC was sure that the nurse made a mistake. Now he says the procedure standards may need to be “enhanced”. Why would the CDC take shutting off transportation to the host countries off the the table. Why not leave it as an option. Why automatically blame the nurse when you don’t know what happened. Because it is the Obama administration, as usual, that is playing politics with people’s lives.
Enjoy your round of golf.
Regards,
Jim
You were doing so well up until this paragraph.
Really all you’d need to do would be exclude people flying to the US from those countries. We already target people coming from countries with a high terrorist threat index.
As with any TSA enterprise, one has to wonder how well this would work, but it’s certainly a better idea than what we’re doing now.
Compare Ebola to rabies, where we have a strict travel ban:
Two people per year die of rabies in the U.S., in part because of aggressive world-wide enforcement of travel bans.
Rabies is far more difficult to transmit than Ebola.
“If each patient infects on average exactly one other patient than the illness smolders on forever, if fewer then the outbreak fizzles out.”
And if more? I guess my question is this: If we can’t screen out infected individuals at the point of entry by taking their temperature, then why not restrict all travel from disease central until the outbreak is contained? Or, to put it another way, how many unfortunate victims is it worth to comply with open borders ideology?
[Redacted for CoC]
The daily “don’t overreact” posts will continue until everyone is calm.
[Redacted for CoC] Healthcare workers are always at higher risk for infection. Protocols don’t always work. Sometimes despite you’re best intentions you stick yourself with a needle of you get some bodily fluids on you. This kind of thing happens.
Tough guy conservatives are so pathetic. SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER! Anonymously!
Oh. Come on.
“The nurse is already dead…”
She’s not already dead. She’s already infected. In Africa the case fatality rate is about 50%. Here it should be better. She’s in a life-threatening situation. That’s bad. But she’s not already dead.
There’s no reason for hyperbole. It’s hard to explain to you why not to be hysterical when you’re busy being hysterical.
You’re claiming that increased anxiety/vigilance/something would have saved her, but that’s very unclear. Short of putting Dallas under an impenetrable glass dome I don’t know how you would keep people with serious illnesses from traveling and infecting other people.
Re a travel ban: Why just Ebola? Why not multidrug-resistant tuberculosis?
Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis during a Long Airplane Flight
I distrust the current administration as much as everyone here, but what we know about Ebola spans many administrations and has nothing to do with politics. The epidemiologists at CDC weren’t appointed by this administration and aren’t part of a conspiracy to infect conservatives.
“Re a travel ban: Why just Ebola? Why not multidrug-resistant tuberculosis?”
If we can identify a geographical locus for the disease outbreak, then why not, indeed.
Bean,
Virus epidemiology is incredibly difficult as each one is very different. Also, viruses mutate. I am surprised at your arrogance. One mistake here and any number of health care professionals are dead not to mention the public.
It’s a killer. Just like ISIS.
Regards,
Jim
“The epidemiologists at CDC weren’t appointed by this administration and aren’t part of a conspiracy to infect conservatives.”
I’m sure that they and their bosses are as apolitical as the gang at the IRS.
You know better than this. There are three rules of government:
1. It doesn’t matter.
2. If it does matter, see rule #1
3. If the smell of tar, the sight of nooses on the lampposts and the noise of frightened politicians screaming at us to actually do something competently, it matters.
This is a simple problem that requires competence. 1 case 1 transmission displays a failure of a system. Someone wasn’t afraid enough to make sure their people did it right.
SARS was contained effectively except in Toronto. The authorities did everything wrong and created a problem that didn’t exist. The potential of that happening here is real. All I’ve heard so far is that there is nothing to worry about. I want those people worrying, I want them to smell the tar and dream of hanging from a lamppost.
This principle could be applied to anything dreadful. If someone says that the campus rape statistics are overblown and that female students do not have a 20% chance of being raped, I guess every future rape of a college student can be hung around their neck. If I say that people are exaggerating the epidemic of autism cases, then I deserve the blame for each new kid who is found to be genuinely autistic. If someone expresses skepticism about the number of starving children in the U.S., they are personally responsible when a kid starves to death because stoned parents forgot to feed him.
This has all been a good reminder that the Left does not hold a monopoly on hysteria.
Otherwise sensible people are having fears stoked by irresponsible media.
Additionally, President Obama and the CDC’s handling of the situation has been less than stellar in terms of communicating expectations (e.g. how many people are likely to be infected, and how many people are likely to die, and how does it stack up against things we don’t worry about like the Flu). They’ve been too busy with the untrustworthy “there has a been a mass shooting and Fort Hood and we don’t know all the facts but the one thing we do know is it definitely wasn’t terrorism” spin mode downplaying the risks beyond what’s reasonable to expect. Then when the known risks (a few infections) happen, they lose trust because they were not transparent.
I think that has added to people’s inclination to freak out.
Megan McArdle nicely sums up pretty much everything I think about this ebola business:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-13/ebola-and-politics-don-t-mix
“I think that has added to people’s inclination to freak out.”
Restricting travel from the identified locus of the outbreak of a highly contagious, lethal disease, is not “freaking out”.
Yeah the reaction to Ebola in the US is a bit overblown, but so was the reaction to the Anthrax letters. Does anyone remember the Left’s outrage over that? But it is a public health concern, and when you have an administration that has made a project of expanding government control over the healthcare system, they better darn well be johnny-on-the-spot at the mere whiff of a potential public health crisis. Otherwise people lose confidence, and exploiting a lack of credibility is part of the political game.
Agreed. I am on the treadmill and will watch CNN and last week the experts were saying no biggie, this week, same guy is saying here are the things we are asking incoming visitors to the USA – as if people will say. People from Africa like to travel on several passports for one journey. The Brits have given everyone born in a Brit colony a British passport. I used to travel on a British passport going into the UK, my Canadian passport going into Canada and my African passport, pretty well never. BUT I could choose any of those 3 travel documents moving around the world. If I had Ebola symptoms, I would get on the plane to the good medical country and use a different passport to disguise the fact I was down in Africa. Not rocket science. At least with the USA, you make the immigrants give up their other passports so this will be harder to do, but not that much harder.
I grew up where AIDS and Ebola originated. Ebola is exploding blood btw – very messy. But the custom was to take out the dead person’s organs. So you can understand why blood infected diseases stick around for decades. if not centuries, from cultural practices.
What do you expect from Fred, a Rubber Biscuit?
Great post, Fred. I love the way you linked it to a cultural phenomenon in this paragraph:
No hysteria required. Just apply normal common sense practices like quarantine, and move on.
Even most libertarians agree there is a legitimate use of coercion for the public good when it comes to infectious diseases that could potentially pose a threat.
Even anarcho-capitalists can agree.
So prudence is now “freaking out”
Got it
A typical, delightfully entertaining Fred Herring.
Are you sure there’s no way we can spin this to make it the fault of the Demicrats? There’s got to be a way…
Hysterical overreaction to anything is seldom helpful.
That said, we have yet to see how this is going to play out in the US. What would happen if someone keels over in a mall or airport and is discovered to have Ebola? The reaction will be anything restrained and judicious.
This may have already been discussed, but Ebola can apparently be aerosolized and spread by coughing and sneezing.
For a personal reflection on the current insanity:
Goodbye Ft. Campbell, Hello Monrovia
I think, in a perverse sort of way, you’ve just made a point that those who disagree with you will applaud.
At least I will.
Perhaps Ebola ain’t it.
But watching the authorities ‘manage’ the Ebola situation, and recapitulating the patronizing tone (more uncertain than it was a few days ago), the changing stories, the dissembling, and the general incompetence that’s been on parade for the last couple of weeks, does anyone think that these clowns are actually up to the job if it ever does reach these shores?
So far this year, about 700 people in the US, the vast majority of them children, have been infected with Enterovirus D68. Six of them have died.
Between 2009 and 2013 there were 79 cases, total, of this illness in the US.
Enterovirus D68 may not be it, either, but it’s worrisome if you’re a parent. And so far, there doesn’t seem to be much happening in the way of understanding it, controlling it or preventing its spread.
It’s tempting to write off those with concerns as hysterical, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who just want the government out of their lives.
But I think it’s quite reasonable to be concerned. And to want those in positions of authority to be competent and to do a better job.
Isn’t it true that neither the UK nor France has actually ‘banned’ travel from the “Ebola” countries, but that British Air and Air France have stopped servicing them? That’s what all the news reports keep saying.
If that’s the case, what is stopping the American airline companies from doing the same thing?
Fred, I fault you for your certainty. I have lived long enough to have seen a lot of certainties fall. I am not sure you’re wrong, but I hope the people managing this approach it with a little more humility about their own fallibility.
Not to worry. It won’t wipe out America either.