When Officials Try to Reassure Us We're Probably Screwed

Professor Harold Hill of Music Man fame warned us against allowing certain words to creep into our vocabulary.

The first words that come to mind for Sam and I are words like: trust me; this won’t hurt a bit; the check’s in the mail; this is totally free, no cost to you; I’ll love you ‘till my dying day; I ain’t lying; it’s not my fault, and so on. If you believe any of those words you are a fool, brain dead or don’t have a clue.

Despite denials Ebola has entered the U.S.

How about Ebola? Some people think we’re so stupid that we should believe we have nothing to fear from Ebola. H-m-m. Seems like I heard that about AIDS in the not too distant past. A headline in my Tuesday morning newspaper said, “Top doctors don’t believe that Ebola will spread to US.” Then the article that followed admitted, “Ebola has arrived in the United States and people are frightened.” Duh. Ya’ think?

One of the nation’s top infectious disease experts, a guy named Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health was quoted as saying, “It’s perfectly normal to feel anxious about a virus that kills so fast and is ravaging parts of West Africa. We don’t take your fear lightly.”

Really?

Why then, in spite of the fact that our docs say they don’t take our fears lightly and in spite of their assurances that Ebola would never make its way to this country, is it here and why am I scared (aren’t you?). At least five people have already entered this country with Ebola – three health care workers, a journalist and a guy from Liberia (where it’s rampant), who lied to airport authorities and said he hadn’t been exposed. Now he has exposed at least 10 others to the disease and they may have exposed as many as 99, if I read correctly.

We Americans are so darned cocky! We are being assured that “We won’t have an outbreak,” because the Center for Disease Control is “overseeing multiple layers of response.” African nations are supposed to check people at airports for signs of infection before allowing them to board a plane (yeah, that worked), if sick people do get on a plane the airlines themselves are supposed to alert authorities before landing, and hospitals are being warned to rapidly isolate and test sick patients with risk of exposure to Ebola. But here’s the real kicker, “Additional safeguards are being considered.”

We think our country is so great our medical resources are better than anywhere else (although more newborn babies die here than in many countries) and we can lick any disease that comes our way, which may be true. But look how many people died of smallpox, polio and other diseases before we managed to get a handle on them.

Ebola will happen here people. Count on it. Whenever an official tries to reassure us and keep the lid on our panic you can bet the farm the cow manure is going to hit the fan. Many of our country’s hospitals already are gearing up for the epidemic - hospitals like Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, which handles trauma cases from all over the Pacific Northwest.

Sorry to say, Sam and I are betting a box of his chewbones that we’ve only seen the tip of the
Ebola iceberg so far.