EBOLA IN ATLANTA! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Just for the record, the LAST thing I'm worried about is a pandemic of ebola hemorrhagic fever in the United States. The hysteria I've seen on the internet about "bringing ebola to America" and fears of a pandemic sweeping the country are simply ... mindless.  People completely ignore the elements of the issue.

In Africa, about 700 deaths in a continental population of 1 billion doesn't seem like a lot to me.

It is, of course, tragic -- and the disease is truly horrific... but that's true of other diseases, as well. Rabies, for example.

 Rabies has to be one of the most horrifying diseases known to man. Logically, I know the bullet-shaped rabies virus is just RNA, just a string of proteins coiled around inside a "skin" with no will, no intent. It's a thing. But my feelings tell me it is evil. Diabolical. What it does to humans and animals sounds like it came straight from the mind of the devil.

It attacks the central nervous system -- spine and brain -- invading the cells so it can replicate.  Here's a page  from the Centers for Disease Control with diagrams and rather stuffy scientific-sounding narrative providing information about the rabies virus, rhabdoviridae, that doesn't begin to describe the horror of its effects.  There are websites that do, though, along with videos on YouTube that will give you nightmares.

Human cases are rare in the USA but rabies kills about 50,000 people a year in developing countries, most of them children. Once the symptoms manifest, death is inevitable. It is 100% fatal and unless palliative care is available, the process of dying is brutal and terrifying.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever carries the same horror, and anybody with an ounce of humanity can't help but feel sadness and distress for its victims.

But that need not deprive one of one's common sense. Three months, six months, a year from now, if the pandemic has swept across America, killing people like flies, and I escape it, I will admit I was wrong and apologize.  I don't think it will come to that.

The two patients to receive treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta (one, Dr. Kent Brantly of Texas arrived yesterday) would almost certainly die if they remained in west Africa. They have a much better chance of survival with treatment in the second highest rated hospital in the United States.

There are other reasons not to panic. Ebola is a stable virus -- hasn't mutated since it was discovered in the 1970s. It's "home environment" is the sub-Saharan tropics. The United States has a temperate climate. Cultural factors (washing the bodies of the dead for burial in the affected African countries, for example) enhance the spread of the disease. There are many other factors that bear on the situation.

In the United States, it is the HEALTH INSURANCE SYSTEM that is in shambles (thanks to Obamacare) -- NOT the delivery of health care services.  Our medical facilities are more than sufficient to handle an ebola outbreak -- particularly one that doesn't happen.

Speaking of Obama, the notion that HE "is bringing ebola to America" is ludicrous. I don't like him, he's a leftist, a socialist, an incompetent, a puppet, and his plan for the destruction of the United States is ECONOMIC. (Ownership of a society's economy, and thus the ability to manipulate it, is the core of socialism; everything else, conformity, anti-family, anti-religion, are secondary to that, and subservient to it.)  He's bad for the country, yes, but a LOT of people were likely in on the decision to bring the two American medical workers to the USA for treatment.

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This is a counterpoint to my post, "So is this how it happened?" As I've said, I don't believe Obama was the one who "decided" to bring Dr. Brantly to the USA for treatment. However, my previous post does illustrate my believe that those who want to tear down the USA and replace it with a socialist dystopia will use anything, even suffering and disease, to bring it about.