This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ebola is not at, or anywhere near, epidemic proportions in the United States. It is almost impossible to build a plausible scenario that would make it so.
But fear of Ebola does threaten to infect us all with foolishness, panic and mistrust.
It is, in that way, much like other threats, from international terror to illegal immigration to other diseases that are spread mainly through poverty and ignorance. The power they have is no more than what we choose to give them.
Attempts to use this latest fear factor to score political points, to build resentment toward minorities and foreigners or to justify unreasonable efforts to stop travel, close borders and sacrifice basic civil liberties should be shunned at least as aggressively as any virus.
People in Mississippi are staying away from someone who had recently been to Zambia, an African nation 2,000 miles away from the countries where the disease has stricken, and killed more than 4,000 people.
And the administrators at New York's Syracuse University's school of journalism — who should know better — cancelled an appearance by a Pulitzer-winning photographer who had covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Even though he was well past the incubation period and even though it should be the responsibility of academics, journalists and academic journalists to act in ways that do not promote unreasoned panic.
People as far away as Ohio and Maine are afraid of neighbors who have recently visited Dallas, where the only Ebola death on U.S. soil recently occurred.
The only other people known to have been infected were nurses who were at his side when he was near death, the point at which all Ebola victims are the most contagious. No one else there has tested positive for the disease, including the victim's fiancee and her family, all of whom had been living together in a small apartment when symptoms appeared.
Notably, that fear did not extend to one Cleveland-area attorney, put on notice that he had been in the same store as one of the nurses from Dallas, who reasonably told the Plain Dealer newspaper, "I'm much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola."
Reasonable response to the introduction of the disease to U.S. soil would include proper funding of the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, the filling of the long-vacant post of surgeon general and the understanding that everyone is placed in some danger when other people lack access to basic health care.
Failure to accomplish those goals is, to date, properly blamed on politicians of both parties and various levels of government.
Fear can focus the mind. Or it can cloud it. If we pay attention to what we are rightly afraid of, and don't bend that fear to other, selfish, purposes, we can beat this.