Thread: Ebola Isn't Really a Threat to America, but Your Paranoia Probably Is

Ebola Isn't Really a Threat to America, but Your Paranoia Probably Is

By Joel Anderson

October 9, 2014 7:09PM

The United States has been gripped in a state of Ebola panic of late. First, a man in Dallas was discovered to be carrying a virus. Then a nurse in Spain became the first person to contract the disease outside of Africa. And now everyone is freaking the heck out.

You’ve got a lot of people imagining films like Outbreak or 12 Monkeys are becoming a reality. An even jumpier and slightly less rational crowd may be thinking 28 Days Later is becoming a reality. Still others are insisting that this is all the fault of the Obama administration, which, really, at this point, you have to admire those folks for their consistency if nothing else. It must be nice to know that you’ll know who’s at fault for anything that happens before you know what’s happened.

But here’s the thing, folks, and this is really important so lean in real close to read this next part: you are not going to get Ebola.

What’s more, the fact that you’re capable of getting this worried about Ebola while completely ignoring a whole slew of other very real threats that lack the sort of sizzle an infectious disease that might make you bleed from the eyes is a big part of why we, as a society, are unable to tackle the biggest problems we face.

Ebola Does Not Represent a Threat to Americans and Probably Never Will

It’s not hard to see why people are afraid. Ebola is frequently fatal and unquestionably an extremely painful and tragic way to die.

But here’s the thing: it’s not particularly contagious. It’s not airborne.

The only way you can contract the disease is through contact with bodily fluids from someone showing symptoms. Which means, even if a number of cases popped up here in the United States, the likelihood of them spreading would be extremely limited.

“But why is it spreading so fast in West Africa?!” Because the nations in which it’s spreading are the ones that lack a strong health care infrastructure to help isolate the virus’ carriers. There’s very little risk provided you can identify carriers and isolate their bodily fluids, but there’s plenty there if you can’t.

As Vox.com points out, a comparison of the different neighboring African nations and how they’ve dealt with the crisis should make this clear. Ezra Klein points out that Nigeria; which spends about three times as much on health care per capita as Guinea, 50% more than Liberia, and close to twice what Senegal spends; isolated cases of Ebola early and prevented them from spreading. The United States, meanwhile, spends almost 100 times as much per capita as Nigeria.

Between the CDC, carefully protected water supplies, relatively superb sanitation, a reliable police force, and the world’s most developed (and most expensive) health care system, the United States is going to contain any outbreak of the virus at the earliest stages. And that’s assuming there is one, which is itself a pretty ridiculous idea given that the disease, to this point, has always been almost entirely contained to West Africa. The current outbreak represents the first time even a smattering of cases have existed outside of the African continent and haven't spread.

No, Ebola does not present a real risk to the United States. Even if it did, we’re prepared to deal with it appropriately. However, the hysteria surrounding the disease despite it being a non-issue for the country is a great example of how America (and, to be fair, a lot of other countries) doesn’t understand risk.

Perception of Risk vs. Reality and How That Ends Up Screwing Us

The way Americans tend to react to risk and why it’s deeply flawed is perfectly encapsulated, as so many parts of American life have been, in an episode of The Simpsons. The opening of the episode features a bear wandering into town out of the hills and, despite the bear not actually threatening anyone, it prompts a panicked response from the community and leads them to march down to the mayor’s office to demand that he do something.1

Unfortunately, while exaggerated for comedy’s sake, the portrayal of the basic reaction to a perceived risk that sparks the imagination isn’t far off. One bear wanders into town and everyone freaks out despite it not representing a substantial risk. They’ll continue driving their car to work every day despite the fact that it's much more likely to be what kills them. It’s a routine and it’s easy not to think about. Getting mauled by a bear is extremely rare, but it’s not hard to attach a lot of violent, disturbing imagery to, so that's what people will fixate on.

You can even extend that one further. It’s not uncommon when discussing the potential for self-driving cars in the relatively near future for people to insist that they would never use one. “What if the computer goes screwy? I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a car that just goes driving into an intersection on its own without me being able to control it! Can you imagine?”

Sure, we can imagine. That sounds terrifying. It’s also a pretty ridiculous take on things. Not so much that it’s impossible that a self-driving car could malfunction, but that you’re a good enough driver to actually reduce your risk of death or injury by taking the wheel. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not that good of a driver. Compared to other people, you might be great, but compared to a computer you’re not going to be. Humans are prone to error and/or distraction in a way a self-driving car simply wouldn't be. The odds of you malfunctioning vastly exceed that of any hypothetical computer car.

But, despite this, the idea of being in a car you don’t control and having it go Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey is terrifying. The emotional response to that imagined threat leads one to completely overlook the very real, daily threat you’re already subjected to. In fact, I’d guess that plenty of people who wouldn’t use a self-driving car would get into a car driven by another person without giving it a second thought.

We Need to Confront Real Issues, Not Just Scary Ones

On some level, this isn’t a huge deal. People getting afraid of spiders is annoying, but hardly worth getting too worked up over. However, it becomes a bigger issue when public policy is affected. Because there are any number of very real, very direct threats to our safety or prosperity that aren’t getting their due.

Take a look at gun violence. Incidents like Sandy Hook are horrifying, grabbing the national consciousness and resulting in calls for change. After Sandy Hook, a number of voices called for a ban on assault rifles or large-capacity magazines as those both played a key role in the massacre.

But a closer look at gun violence in this country paints a different picture. There are about 9,000 homicides committed with guns in an average year in this country, a number that is both staggeringly high and way below the historic peak in the early 1980s-1990s. Of those, some 350 or so are committed with rifles, a figure that represents less than 5% of the total and includes plenty of the non-assault variety of rifle. In fact, it’s typically way less than the number of murder committed with blunt objects. It’s also worth noting that in 2013, a year that saw an astonishing spike in the number of mass shootings, 182 people were killed in mass shootings. So about 2% of total homicides committed with guns.

Push comes to shove, the immediate and horrifying nature of the news of a mass shooting gets people’s attention and creates action, but that’s not because mass shootings represent the greatest threat.

Of those 9,000 or so homicides each year, about 6,000 of them are committed with hand guns. In fact, a huge portion of all homicides in America are committed by urban youths who live in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods with extremely limited economic and educational opportunities. But when was the last time we've seen a push to improve the quality of life in impoverished American city centers that matches the push for a relatively useless ban on high-capacity magazines and/or assault rifles that came in the wake of Sandy Hook?

On the whole, it’s not hard to make the argument that the specter of insane, disturbed people armed with assault rifles has led many to overlook the far, far greater quantity of death and misery happening every single year in this country. Does the fact that it's not happening in a large-enough, dramatic-enough single incident make it somehow less important? Any conversation about reducing gun deaths in this country should really be focused on handguns and/or urban poverty, but these sorts of systemic, cyclical issues simply don’t capture people’s imagination.

They also don't generate fear in people who live outside of the areas where this is an issue. No matter how much more likely it is that you'll be killed by a handgun, the thought of a lunatic with an AR-15 shooting up your mall is made more real in people's minds no matter how rare it really is.

Nuclear Power Could be Everyone’s Friend

Another example of how short-term irrational fears can prevent necessary attention from reaching important issues can be found with nuclear power.

Nuclear power is the source of a great deal of concern from a large portion of the population. Images of radiation burns and Hiroshima are reminders of just how powerful it is. It’s precisely the sort of threat that’s difficult to quantify, unseen and unheard but deadly nonetheless. As a result, there was a collective pants-crapping on much of social media over the potential for radiation Fukushima’s nuclear disaster to reach America’s west coast. This was, of course, an utterly absurd idea for anyone with any familiarity with the science of radiation or, you know, the size of the Pacific Ocean.

The actual threat to the average American from nuclear power plants is essentially nothing. It could be if there was ever a reduction in the iron-clad regulations applied by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, but, for the time being, that particular organization does a fantastic job.

Know how many American civilians have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation on account of a leak at a nuclear plant? That would be zero. That’s right. People's fears about radiation creates a perception that any incident is dangerous, but the reality is that the nuclear industry is tightly regulated and has done a bang-up job of keeping us safe.

Worried about a Fukushima here in America? Sure, why not? In the event of an American nuclear plant getting hit by a 9.0 magnitude quake immediately followed by a 40-foot tall tsunami, an event virtually unprecedented in human history prior to 2011, it does seem possible that a dangerous but geographically limited radiation release could happen. Granted, it will probably amount to less than the radiation exposure that comes from living in Denver year-round, but let's not let that keep us from freaking out.

The reason it’s worth mentioning all this is because nuclear power represents a huge, massive upgrade in terms of environmental damage over the coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired power plants that currently supply the vast majority of our electricity. The damage being done is incremental, but it’s a lot more when taken cumulatively. The issue is that it doesn’t present that potential for the singular, catastrophic failure that exists (at least in people’s minds) with nuclear power.

Meanwhile, the pending humanitarian disaster created by global warming goes largely unchecked year after year. We’re essentially ignoring an extremely viable alternative to the fossil fuel-based system that stands to cripple the economy over the next century because the technology that could be a big part of a solution gives some people the willies. The abstract fear of a radiation release is proving more powerful than the completely rational fear that we’re altering our climate in irreparable ways that could have huge consequences.

There are certainly plenty of issues with nuclear power, including the failure of the nation to create a comprehensive system for dealing with nuclear waste. However, that issue in and of itself is another sign of how irrational fears can often lead one to overlook real threats. It’s virtually impossible to find a community willing to let trains transport nuclear waste through them let alone ones willing to allow a long-term storage facility be constructed nearby. Again, people’s irrational fears of radiation are the root cause. Meanwhile, the system for storing nuclear waste lacks a coordinated, organized, long-term solution, creating a lot more risk than the waste alone would with an appropriate reaction.

Other Diseases Are Way Worse Than Ebola

Circling back to Ebola, the focus on Ebola in West Africa is warranted. It’s a humanitarian disaster that requires action to stop the spread of the disease.

But is it the deadliest disease in the region? No, not by a long shot.

There are a number of much more common diseases that, while offering lower fatality rates, infect so many more people that they ultimately claim many more victims. The current Ebola outbreak, the worst ever by any measure, has resulted in 8,000 people infected by the disease and over 3,500 deaths to date. However, there are over 200 million cases of malaria each year that results in over 500,000 fatalities, 90% of which happen in sub-Saharan Africa and are predominately young children.

And this is all the more insane when one considers the fact that malaria is treatable and preventable. Estimates place the portion of children in sub-Saharan Africa that sleep under a mosquito net each night at under 5%, making this an imminently solvable problem with the appropriate resources.

So why hasn’t Malaria, a disease that kills over 100 times more people each year than the worst Ebola outbreak ever has thus far, gotten anywhere close to the level of attention that this current Ebola outbreak has? Because it’s an easier story to tell. Ebola is terrifying and relatively unknown while malaria is a common foe that humans have battled for centuries. At the end of the day, it’s hard not to believe that this obsession with the novel is causing us to completely overlook a massive, preventable humanitarian disaster that affects millions of people on a daily basis, year in year out.

It’s not just malaria, either. Pneumonia, a disease all but wiped out by vaccinations in the United States, is still the world’s leading killer of children and claims 1.1 million lives each year.

Tuberculosis kills another 1.3 million. In each case, while not capable of creating the sort of Hollywood-style drama of brain hemorraghes and bleeding out the eyes, these diseases have drastic consequences and, quite frankly, warrant the sort of attention every year that Ebola is getting now.

Also, not to beat a fat horse, but how many of the very same people who are expressing real fear about Ebola in the United States are also deep in a lifestyle that dramatically increases their risk factors for heart disease? You know, the leading cause of death in the United States claiming about 600,000 lives a year? Because if your fear of Ebola is resulting in you lashing out at all things West African but not killing your appetite enough to keep you from eating that cheeseburger, you may have a really unproductive attitude when it comes to what you should really be afraid of.

Letting Your Imagination Run Wild is One Thing, but Bring It Back to Earth Afterwards

So I’m not saying that an emotional reaction to these things isn’t warranted. We should get emotional. It’s natural, it’s human. We should be terrified by Ebola. We should desperately want to do whatever it takes to make events like Sandy Hook never happen again. We should approach nuclear energy with an appropriate level of caution.

However, it’s possible that, if the immediate emotional response is the only one we have, we’re in serious danger of becoming like the residents of Springfield strong-arming their mayor into reacting to the isolated bear incident. In and of itself, that’s not a huge issue. But if marching down to City Hall to insist on an expensive bear patrol means that you’re not repairing the aging and decrepit dam above the town or repairing that rickety bridge, it’s a pretty serious issue.
Taking a step back to shoot for objective and rational thought in the aftermath of that emotional reaction is really important. It's not always possible to produce said rationality and objectivity as, again, we’re all human, but making an effort can go a long way.

So, the next time you’re struck by a deep fear of an external threat you don’t completely understand, maybe take a breath and consider how the risk factors stack up when compared to all of the ones you tacitly accept over the course of your day. Because you might get shot by a handgun, there’s a distinct chance that you’ll die in a car accident, your diet may be the biggest threat to your life of any risk factor, and we’re definitely all in the process of creating a massive ecological and humanitarian disaster for our grandchildren through global warming; but you are definitely NOT going to get Ebola.

1 It’s episode 23 from season 7, entitled “Much Apu About Nothing.” The new, massive bear patrol results in a tax increase and prompts another angry mob descending on the Mayor’s office and Mayor Quimby, exhausted by his dim-witted constituents, states that “Ducking this issue is going to require real leadership” and blames all of their problems on illegal immigrants. Quimby schedules a vote on a ballot proposition to deport all of the town’s illegal immigrants prompting Apu, the local grocery store clerk, then has to get his citizenship to avoid deportation over the course of the episode. Really great episode, total classic.

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Related

http://www.alipac.us/f19/obama-you-c...ic-tra-312630/

On the Center for Disease Control's site page re avoiding non-essential travel,
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/warning/ebola-liberia , the CDC says that people can be exposed to Eboa by having contact with the body fluids - including sweat - of someone who's infected, and that one of the ways that that can happen is by spending a long amount of time within three feet of someone who's infected.

Unless and until people in the source countries are tested on two separate occasions before boarding a plane, Americans have a well founded fear of exposure. (It can take up to 21 days for symptons to appear.) We have world class medical facilities, and 'Bama is not exactly beating the drum for protecting American jobs or the quality of American life. So what incentive do people in the source countries have for not trying to get to the United States?

If people are only tested once, it's possible that someone - a business traveler for example - could be infected and not know it. If this were simply a bad cold or a flu, I'd agree that we should be careful of over reacting. But Ebola can be deadly. It would be foolish to not err on the side of caution.

BTW I didn't read the entire original post, but I do recall an automated passenger shuttle crashing at SFO. So perhaps the author could do a little research before continuing to presume that he knows better than everybody else.
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Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

I think Joel Anderson is going to need the witness protection program if Ebola goes pandemic in the United States.

It is a very arrogant boast for Anderson to claim he knows the future and Ebola is no threat. I wonder if there were people like him telling everyone their fears were groundless in Sierra Leon and Liberia at first?

W

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

I think Joel Anderson is going to need the witness protection program if Ebola goes pandemic in the United States.

It is a very arrogant boast for Anderson to claim he knows the future and Ebola is no threat. I wonder if there were people like him telling everyone their fears were groundless in Sierra Leon and Liberia at first?

W

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Is Joel also an 'OPEN BORDERS' advocate? Is he pro-amnesty? Would he be mouthing Obama's propaganda if he suddenly came down with ebola?

. . . Ebola Death Toll Rises to 4,033: World Health Organization . . .

. . . there are over 200 million cases of malaria each year that results in over 500,000 fatalities, 90% of which happen in sub-Saharan Africa and are predominately young children...

. . . Pneumonia, a disease all but wiped out by vaccinations in the United States, is still the world’s leading killer of children and claims 1.1 million lives each year...

. . . Tuberculosis kills another 1.3 million . . .

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

there are over 200 million cases of malaria each year that results in over 500,000 fatalities, 90% of which happen in sub-Saharan Africa and are predominately young children...

Yes, and there is also a high prevelance of sexually transmitted dieseases. But I don't think that any of this is a reason for our not protecting Americans. And let's not forget that the symptoms of Ebola may not be evident for up to 21 days. So we need double testing of people from the source countries who want to travel to the United States.

There is also a high incidence of crime and poverty in much of Latin America. But that should not prevent us from reserving American jobs for Americans.

We should of course help others, when we can. The mechanism for that is called foreign aid.

Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

. . . Ebola Death Toll Rises to 4,033: World Health Organization . . .

. . . there are over 200 million cases of malaria each year that results in over 500,000 fatalities, 90% of which happen in sub-Saharan Africa and are predominately young children...

. . . Pneumonia, a disease all but wiped out by vaccinations in the United States, is still the world’s leading killer of children and claims 1.1 million lives each year...

. . . Tuberculosis kills another 1.3 million . . .

The problem with the new strain of virulent Ebola is not the total numbers of deaths and infections... yet!

It is the exponential rate at which the pandemic is spreading. It is clearly an emerging disease on a current growth trajectory of 1.5 to 2 people infected per person already infected. At this rate, the numbers of infected is doubling every 3-4 weeks.

While exponential systems like this are not that grand in the beginning, they become a problem rapidly and once they really take off the spread is off the charts!

Hopefully, this Ebola strain will be like SARS which started off on a rapid growth exponential outbreak pattern but then slowed way down.

W

10/11/2014 @ 9:40AM 7,070 views

The Problem With Ebola In The Media

The Ebola situation in West Africa is clearly not good.

The death toll is rising, and people continue to become infected. Global efforts to contain the outbreak and care for patients are ramping up somewhat, as help from other nations, finally, steps in. In the last couple of days, however, Ebola-related fears, at least in the U.S. and Europe, seem also to have risen significantly. Planes have been delayed; healthcare workers in Spain have walked out; airplane cleaners at New York’s La Guardia Airport have gone on strike; and the among many fear-inducing headlines, some have advertised CDC director Thomas Frieden’s likening Ebola to the next AIDS. What’s more, many Americans apparently believe that grounding flights from West Africa is prudent.

But the reality is that for people in America and other places outside of West Africa, the risk is still quite low. Caution is important, obviously, and airports and hospitals are taking measures to screen people and protect the public. The real issue is a different one: Our fear of Ebola has become many times worse than the problem.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)


“The ultimate the risk to America is very, very, very small,” says Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, K. T. Li Professor of International Health and Health Policy Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “I understand the fear. It’s a deadly disease. That Mr. Duncan died in a Dallas hospital made it that much more dramatic. Even though it doesn’t spread easily, not remotely as easily as the flu, it’s scary. But to me the real issue is that the growth of the disease continues in West Africa—it’s worse today than it was last week. To the extent that it doesn’t get stamped out, it will continue to pose risk to rest of world. But aside from horrendous tragedy in West Africa, we’ll continue to see Ebola patients just once in a while here in the U.S.”

He adds that our energies are largely misdirected: “In ideal world, you’d see—instead of fear—a resolve to stamp it out of West Africa.”
But we’re mainly just in the fear stage. The reality is that U.S. won’t see any big outbreaks. “We’ll see ongoing cases like one in Dallas from time to time. ERs are on high alert. Worst-case scenario, we’ll get a dozen or two Ebola cases—not thousands. We have the infrastructure to deal with it.”

The obvious question is whether hospitals in the U.S. are prepared.

“They’re all on high alert,” says Jha. “If you walk in tonight, and say, ‘I was in Liberia last week and have symptoms,’ they would immediately isolate and assess. If you’re positive, you go into the isolation ward. You would probably get an experimental treatment. I don’t quite understand what happened in Dallas. My sense is if you got sick tonight, that within 24-48 hours, you’d be given experimental drugs, or get transfusions from someone who’s had the virus.”

As far as reducing the likelihood of more cases coming into the U.S., restricting flights from West Africa will likely only worsen the situation. Frieden himself released a statement yesterday laying out exactly why banning flights would be misguided and, in the end, counterproductive. “Importantly,” he writes, “isolating countries won’t keep Ebola contained and away from American shores.

Paradoxically, it will increase the risk that Ebola will spread in those countries and to other countries, and that we will have more patients who develop Ebola in the U.S.”

Jha agrees. “Banning flights is a really good idea if you don’t actually think about it! It would mean you’d also have to ban all flights coming through Europe. It’s completely ridiculous, and there’s zero advantage. The bottom line is you can’t isolate a country, a continent.

Anything that makes it harder to fight infection in West Africa makes Americans worse off. For sake of the U.S. public, there’s absolutely no value.”

To this end, Brussels Airlines has said it will not limit service to Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia. As the airline’s vice president Geert Sciot told TIME: “It is our humanitarian duty to operate there.

Without our fights it would become almost impossible for medical staff to reach the country.” New York’s JFK Airport has just begun a separate screening process for people coming in to the U.S. from the countries with highest Ebola incidence, and other airports will follow suit.

The outbreak in West Africa is obviously critical and will take time to manage. But here in the U.S., panicking at every headline is not the answer. Since that’s easier said than done, though, perhaps the media should use a little discretion when covering Ebola.

“The problem is that every time someone has fever and has been in Africa, the media are reporting it,” says Jha. “People are getting excellent assessment care here; that’s actually good. I’d rather have a thousand false positives than to miss one real case. The problem is the media: Every fever patient becomes a message of, “Oh my God, suspected Ebola case!’ The narrative in the media then becomes, ‘This Is Everywhere!’” And that’s, unfortunately, what the majority of the headlines reflect.

Jha points out that even when possible Ebola cases are mentioned in the press, putting them in context is critical—that is, underlining that real risk is still quite low, and that much of the hoopla about each suspected case is for the sake of erring on the side of caution.

Another reason to keep our wits about us: “We’re coming into flu season,” says Jha. “Is every flu patient going to be a possible Ebola case? If so, it’s going to be a nightmare. At some point we’ll reach saturation. But right now, we just need to take a deep breath.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwa...-in-the-media/

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

He adds that our energies are largely misdirected: “In ideal world, you’d see—instead of fear—a resolve to stamp it out of West Africa.”

Anything that makes it harder to fight infection in West Africa makes Americans worse off. For sake of the U.S. public, there’s absolutely no value.”

The outbreak in West Africa is obviously critical and will take time to manage. But here in the U.S., panicking at every headline is not the answer. Since that’s easier said than done, though, perhaps the media should use a little discretion when covering Ebola.

Another instance of putting up a straw man and then knocking it down.

The United States is committed to sending 3,000 troops to the source countries, to train health workers, build treatment centers, and create an air bridge which will get supplies in there more quickly. I think that the air bridge entails using military aircraft. This sounds like the United States is committed to helping the source countries control the virus.

In a context which includes a government which is dumping children from Central America onto small towns and a president who is promising an executive amnesty which will tell millions of Latin Americans that the door to the United States is wide open, we have to expect that people will become sensitive to cases such as that of the Liberian who died in a Dallas hospital.
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Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade