So many people around me are talking about Ebola.
In the local library yesterday, two strangers (obviously known to each other) were discussing the dangers of Ebola. "We need to secure the border here, keep foreigners out," the male of the pair said. Never did he discuss how exactly Ebola is transmitted.
Today, overheard at lunch, someone mentioned the virus. (Really, it's been all week if not then some.) He just made popular mention about it, as though it were a TV reality show.
Even the CDC has declared Ebola "the world's next AIDS". The guy at the library would disagree--even today's AIDS sufferer could expect to live 30 or so years on medication whereas an Ebola sufferer would be dead within "a week".
I have a family member who is afflicted with HIV. I know for certain that his condition will not strike him dead within a week to a month or so.
Yet I also know that Ebola is spread within very contained parameters, similar to HIV--direct contact with bodily fluids. (Maybe this will encourage conservatives to teach their children to engage with full barrier-method birth control. Who knows.)
All I know is that the country is in a tizzy. Ebola is an existential threat.
But, in terms of immediate effects, is it greater in scope than the upcoming election? Ebola in the US is remote, yet the virus sucks up airtime, leaving none for more immediate matters. This is not to say that Ebola is not serious. It is to say that the media is stuck between highlighting a health crisis--which is not truly local--at the expense of an event that will have direct, consequential effects on its sufferers (the body politic).
I fear Ebola much as the next person. I want to avoid any hemorrhagic fever--it's such a horrible way to die (maybe alive in a fire might be worse, but I'm hard-pressed to think of much worse). Still, in the US, the greater threat to one's person remains the people who have the right to alter one's immediate freedoms. Let's concentrate on that in the meantime, while electing the right people to allocate funds afterwards for fighting Ebola proper.
Let's peer through to the true goal.