I’m pretty sure Andy Borowitz would say the states trying to quarantine anyone who has interacted with Ebola patients in Africa are overreacting. In his latest report, Study: Fear of Ebola Highest Among People Who Did Not Pay Attention During Math and Science Classes, he writes.
For example, when a participant of the study was told that he had a one-in-thirteen-million chance of contracting the virus, his response was, “Whoa. Thirteen million is a really big number. That is totally scary.”
My first reaction was to agree, the quarantines are an overreaction, but now I’m more sympathetic with the governors who say, “Better safe than sorry.”
This New York Times article talks about a study just published in Science. The West African strain of Ebola is different from the one we’ve known for years about in Central Africa. This difference is important because
…the diagnostic tests now in use, as well as drugs and vaccines under consideration, are based on the Central African strain and might not work well on this outbreak. For example, a diagnostic test in use now might not give a clear positive if a victim had a low viral load early in an infection.
That doesn’t mean we should panic, it just means there are a lot of things about the current strain of Ebola that we don’t understand. It might be wise to proceed with caution.
The argument against quarantines/restricting flights is it will discourage volunteers from going to West Africa to fight Ebola before it becomes a world pandemic. In that case maybe the federal government could encourage volunteers by providing flights and health monitoring rather than placing the burden on individual states. What do you think? Do you care one way or another?
October 27, 2014
It is not such a big scare here yet and I hope that it stays that way. But I think that the USA is over reacting.
Ditto.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Andy and his sister were quarantined in his youth because they had scarlet fever, which was highly contagious and before antibiotics a major cause of death.
If anything the CDC messed up by under reacting. See Lax U.S. Guidelines on Ebola Led to Poor Hospital Training, Experts Say. Now the states don’t trust what the Feds are telling them.
I imagine not many Indian health care workers are volunteering to go fight the disease in Africa. Is that correct?
Personally I think my chances of (a) meeting someone who’s just returned from one of the Ebola-hit countries and (b) being in contact with their blood or bodily fluids, are so low that I’m not the slightest bit worried about catching the disease. It does seem like the US is over-reacting to what at present is a very low-level threat.
YES!
Sure, our chances are very slim. But the federal government is encouraging health care workers to go to West Africa to fight Ebola, and they’re only allowed to come back through five airports. I can understand why the governors of the states involved are trying to be cautious. The fact that one returning doctor was traveling around New York while he was coming down with Ebola didn’t help. It shot down the argument for self-quarantining.
i’m thinking ….
we tend to ‘always’ over re~act…
as in going to war with Iraq.
I don’t think trying to figure out reasonable precautions is over-reacting. I do think the quarantined nurse wasn’t treated well in New Jersey. The mayor of New York thinks returning health care workers should be treated as heroes, but he also thinks reasonable precautions should be taken.
As usual, the media isn’t helping. Every possible case seems to become a full-blown big story… bumbling and fumbling by health care systems and politicians doesn’t help limit the scare.
My brother-in-law is just back from a country next to the part of Africa seeing this outbreak, Mali, which has just seen it’s first confirmed case.
“Media” is too broad a brush. I appreciate the news I read about it, especially the NYT article about the study published in Science. The Science article is interesting, but way too technical.
The US invented this disease, and has a patent on it. They also want to patent the seven odd similar mutations of it. Thus they bring sick people to this country – they have to be studied, examined, and a new vaccine developed. Think of all the money to be made by the country and pharmaceutical business that has a cure. I wrote about it some weeks back. It angered me then and still does today.
Precautions involve hygiene and that’s all we know for now. The media will let us know when they have more information… or when to put our heads in the sand.
No, the U.S. didn’t invent Ebola. It probably started in animals and moved on to humans in Central Africa. They know the new strain evolved from the Central African one, but they don’t know where it was in the years between then and now. More studies need to be done.
There was one company in West Africa that managed to escape it so far, but that was because of quarantines and there are no guarantees. I can’t remember the exact article right now.
On the TODAY Show this morning, was said that a U.S. poll was taken & 95% of people coming from the West African countries with the the most ebola ( Liberia, Guinea, can’t remember the 3rd) should be quarantined.
Sierra Leone.
I’m almost always for the precautionary principle.
As for which layer of government pays, I don’t have a view.
Apparently the states and local governments have the most say about quarantines, so they get to decide.
well…
reading all the comments…
and more articles about it…
i’m sitting here STILL not knowing just where i stand on it.
if nothing else… at least i hope it makes people more mindful of what they do to spread ANY disease. flu included.
it just seems that we live in such a doomsday society anymore… as if we need to fear everything. i don’t want to live like that. yet i know precautions have to be taken.
if my mike had to go there and then come back… i’d want him to take every precaution! it’s always another thing when it’s personal. isn’t it.
a good thought provoking post monk.
I don’t think of this as doomsday, just a new situation that one needs to think about. I think it’s interesting. The nurse wasn’t treated very well in NJ, but the whole thing was new. Apparently she’s now off to Maine, her home state.
Right, people overreact and specially Media… check this funny video…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAz-F1QnyCk
Thank you! 😀