The latest news suggests that the two health care workers who have been infected with ebola oughtn’t be a great surprise:
Presbyterian workers wore no hazmat suits for two days while treating Ebola patient
Dianna Hunt / Dallas Morning NewsHealth care workers treating Thomas Eric Duncan in a hospital isolation unit didn’t wear protective hazardous-material suits for two days until tests confirmed the Liberian man had Ebola …
Well, I guess protocols WEREN’T followed, all the Faux Nooz snarking and fearmongering and attacks on the head of the CDC notwithstanding. Facts banish nameless fears, unless, of course, you’re watching Faux Nooz.
photo credit: CDC (public domain photo)
You see, the thing that I’ve failed to articulate in a clear and endless voice is that the greatest threat in any epidemic is the fear itself. The fear that keeps medical workers from doing their jobs. The fear that keeps potential patients from revealing that they might HAVE the disease.
The fear of those who know nothing that becomes so dangerous to those who have the disease, might have the disease and those who are treating the disease.
Sunlight, in this case, is the greatest disinfectant.
But listen to Shepard Smith ON Faux Nooz, and let us applaud the fact that Shep seems occasionally to have the compulsion to actually speak truth to power and power doesn’t have the guts to fire him for it. This is pretty amazing stuff.
In this case, mostly the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself.
But that is not a frivolous conclusion.
Courage.
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Mr. Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.