Re: Doctor rushed to Bellevue Hospital with Ebola symptoms went bowling a day earlier
Then why is a doctor who treated sick and dying patients in Africa getting Ebola more than an interesting news item? Have you seen some of the posts on this thread?
As to your first question, it
is an interesting news item, because Ebola has a 60.00 percent mortality rate and a "carrier" was walking around in New York city and he didn't go through proper quarantine channels, etc.
As to your second question, "some of the posts on this thread" does not mean
America is freaking out, as you clearly exaggerate.
I'm not mocking people, but the 'intelligent real concerns' are generally based on irrational fears.
Okay, so you're not "mocking" people like some in this thread are doing, you're just belittling them. :roll:
How many cases in the U.S., with more than 300 million people? How many did NOT involve someone treating sick and dying Ebola patients? None. So a disease that has infected not one person who wasn't in intimate contact with an Ebola patient while sick (or dead in the case of the Dallas case) requires mandatory 21 or 42 day medical isolation quarantines, travel bans, etc.? How far do we take this? Should we shut down interstates going in and out of Texas? Isolate NYC?
The great majority of people are still understandably intelligently concerned about Ebola .. about the 24 hours prior to experiencing classic symptoms .. about how much of the virus truly is in saliva during those last 24 hours prior to symptoms .. about what happens if the doctors are wrong or somehow a very poor person gets infected and doesn't go to the hospital but is cared for at home (how the epidemic spread in West Africa) .. about how long the virus can exist on surfaces in the cold and dark as winter approaches .. about how healthcare professionals can contract the disease from ER walk-in patients they care for prior to them testing positive and being placed in protective isolation (how the two nurses got Ebola from Duncan in Dallas) .. about how each new case of Ebola exposes the virus to a new host that may be the right environment for mutating to airborne .. about the effect of each new case of Ebola in America on Wall Street .. about how deadly the virus is, especially without proper treatment from the onset of symptoms, proper treatment so many of America's own poor can't afford .. about how special prevention of the spread of Ebola will thus be a taxpayer burden ...
I can see you're concerned about what you deem to be "overreaction".
So far people have expressed their intelligent real concern, and authorities have or have begun to take intelligent action without overreacting.
I don't see anything for you to be worried about here with regard to overreacting.
Am I wrong?
A number are concerned about underreacting.
I can understand both concerns.
No, political considerations have nothing to do with this.
No, they most certainly do. Mockers mock because they fear. The mockers are predominantly left-leaners. They are concerned that their political powers will take a hit by Ebola so they're attempting to silence intelligent real concern about it by attempting to mock people into silence.
It's quite obvious.
Or at least there is no more basis in that YOU disagree with my conclusions only because you don't like Obama and want democrats to lose in November.
And here you hedge with your first word, and validate that you're thinking is all political.
I'm a centrist, not partial to the right or the left.
I am a psychologist, and thus I'm sensitive to the psychology of the great majority of Americans.
We would all do well not to belittle, mock, overreact, underreact, etc.
According to a recent poll, 91% want flights restricted. 91% would include people on both sides of the aisle. This is a non-political issue concern.
Treating it as political will actually hamper taking necessary protection steps (a la "Global Warming" flap), and will thus precipitate the very panic you'd prefer not to occur.
This "it's all political" finger can't point just one direction. If we're supposedly downplaying fears to help Obama, it's obvious cranking them up must help GOPers.
Though there may be some who want to see Wall Street tank and the nation go into another depression just so they can point their finger at Obama, the overwhelming vast majority of Americans and those presenting intelligent real concern aren't among them.
But keep thinking politically defensive .. and you'll reveal what
you're real concern is: that it's better for your allied powers to appear safe from Ebola repercussions than for the physiological and psychological health of every American to be safe.
I think it is intelligent to point to the state of the medical science at this point, which indicates the risk to the general population is exceedingly low.
If you think that will be of value in addressing the intelligent real concerns of the great majority of Americans regarding Ebola, then do so.
I too have done the same.
But I recognize that the great majority are either not going to comprehend those details or be made aware of them.
They will also not trust the sources, due to all the politicking going on, and mocking and belittling them will only make them more concerned.
Education, in and of itself, only works to a small degree.
And, when there appears to be exceptions to the general rules, and the threat of mutation to airborne is real (which it is), you'll be hard-pressed to say "exceedingly low" and expect the mother of a 3-year-old not to be intelligently concerned.
HIV can also mutate. What's different?
Meaningless.
We know that viruses can mutate to whatever it takes to insure their survival, as Darwin so accurately presented. Airborne is just one of those known qualities.
That HIV is
yet known to have mutated to airborne is meaningless.
I suggest posters stop attempting to bait a person into continuing a line of conversation that was warned against earlier in the thread.