The diary I posted several days ago, The Biggest Health Threat is not Ebola - It's The Stupid, continues to draw attention. It keeps getting Likes on Facebook and Tweets (Thanks!) and new comments. I've added an update to it at the bottom, but I'm publishing it here separately for those who want to start a fresh conversation. There have been some excellent comments.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
Here's the update to the previous diary:
UPDATE 3 This diary is proving to have 'legs' - new comments are still showing up, along with Facebook likes and Tweets several days after it was first published. I'm glad to have written something that people are finding of some worth.
While the news from Texas is (knock on wood) still watching and waiting for any new cases, elsewhere things are getting worse. Republicans have decided to make Ebola the October Surprise campaign issue they'll try to ride to victory on in the midterms. In a sane world, no one would buy this for a second, but it seems Americans have been so conditioned by fear, they just might pull it off. They've already gotten one thing they demanded: a Czar. They are also demanding a travel ban (easy to talk about, hard to do and probably counterproductive.) and their favorite: "SEAL THE BORDERS!!!!
What they never talk about is how to do it or how to pay for it. They have no idea how to do the first, unless you believing "sending in the troops" is magic, and for the second, they have no intention of ponying up any money or doing anything else that might actually be effective. Quite simply, the whole charade is to capitalize on honest fears and build up the hysteria until they get what they want - victory at the polls.
Sean Hannity is beside himself, of course, and had the GOP healthcare fraud Betsy McCaughey, of Death Panel infamy, on his show to crank up the fear-mongering to 11. Hannity is attacking the new Ebola Czar for being a political operative instead of a doctor (already a GOP talking point). The fact that the Czar, Ron Klain, has experience working at the top levels of government, has extensive management skills, and a reputation as an effective leader in a crisis carries no water with Hannity.
The ability to muster resources, move quickly, and act decisively have proven very effective in at least one small corner of the outbreak in Liberia. NPR has a fascinating story of how Firestone Corporation recognized what was happening and stopped the spread in the area it controls.
Harbel is a company town not far from the capital city of Monrovia. It was named in 1926 after the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Harvey and his wife, Idabelle. Today, Firestone workers and their families make up a community of 80,000 people across the plantation.
Firestone detected its first Ebola case on March 30, when an employee's wife arrived from northern Liberia. She'd been caring for a disease-stricken woman and was herself diagnosed with the disease. Since then Firestone has done a remarkable job of keeping the virus at bay. It built its own treatment center and set up a comprehensive response that's managed to quickly stop transmission. Dr. Brendan Flannery, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team in Liberia, has hailed Firestone's efforts as resourceful, innovative and effective.
Currently the only Ebola cases on the sprawling, 185-square-mile plantation are in patients who come from neighboring towns.
No politicizing, no whining over costs, no dithering - intelligent, directed action based on good information. That's something desperately needed in the U.S. to stem the tidal wave of Stupid gathering over the nation.
Sometime within the next 2-3 weeks, it should be known if the original case of Ebola in Texas has spread to anyone besides the two nurses. (Here's a BBC article on the odds anyone on a plane might have been infected - short version, extremely unlikely though not zero.) If no further cases develop, if no further mistakes and foulups occur, the hysteria might begin to subside. Might. If more cases develop, expect the partisan faux outrage to mount, and real fears to increase to dangerous levels among the general public - especially if the media continues to feed off it. The Republicans will ride this as far as it will take them.
Obscured in the growing political storm over Ebola is this rather salient point: IF the Republicans take the Senate and keep the House, two thirds of our national government will be in the hands of Conservatives who have forgotten how to govern and do not believe in governing - all they know how to do is disrupt to service their greed and ambition. They are not the people who should be running things. Ebola is not the biggest thing we have to fear.
This needs to be seen again.
