“Ebola in the U.S.!” shout headlines, as international panic over the virus reaches its highest levels yet.
Two cases are now known to have been contracted in the U.S. (both from nurses in close contact with a Nigerian man with the virus who was treated in Texas until he passed earlier this week) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) says it is the possibility that the virus has spread to other staffers is “a serious concern."
Responses to the epidemic have been equal parts swift and drastic. Patients’ families have been forced into quarantine, despite showing no symptoms of the disease.
Thom Tillis, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from North Carolina said in a press release that “the White House should immediately ban travel from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to contain the spread of Ebola."
President Obama himself has ordered the CDC to create “Ebola SWAT Teams.” Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the CDC “should have whatever they want” to fight this disease. Two-thirds of people that responded to a poll by ABC News said that they thought the government needs to do more to prevent the outbreak.
Where there are citizens writing blank checks, you can bet there will be politicians waiting to cash them in.
In addition to the above quotes, Republicans and Democrats alike are capitalizing on the opportunity to use the virus as ammunition against their opponents. Democrats claim that Republican cuts to the National Institute for Health (NIH) have crippled its ability to respond to the outbreak, while the GOP is blaming the Obama administration for sitting on its hands in response and allowing Ebola patients to enter the U.S. in the first place.
To set the record straight, sequester cuts (the blame for which should fall equally on both Democrats and Republicans, since they occurred automatically when the two sides couldn’t agree on a budget) haven’t exactly been brutal for the NIH, which has seen a 2 percent reduction since their budget’s peak in 2010.
Republican claims about Presidential inaction are just as unfounded, considering his many public addresses on the topic dating back to well before the disease spread to the U.S. (not to mention his decision to cancel a series of Democratic Party fundraising events he was supposed to attend in order to focus on the outbreak).
In the face of the near mass hysteria of Ebola — or any other event that causes public outcry for immediate action — it’s important that we as a voting public take the time to clear our heads and make a rational decision.
These choices should not be based on the animalistic fight-or-flight reactions, fueled by emotion, but by looking at the objective facts.
In this case, the facts suggest that we have no reason to believe that today’s Ebola crisis is any less overblown than Swine Flu, MERSA, SARS, Avian Flu, Mad Cow Disease, or any other “pandemic” in the entire lifetime of most college students.
By this time next year, we’ll all be so busy worrying about whatever 2015’s trendy epidemic is that we’ll wonder why we were ever willing to sacrifice so much to fight something with so little effect.
Did I tell you my Ebola joke? I didn’t? Well never mind, you won’t get it anyways.