The Big Ebola Bust

     The crescendo of panic and the fortissimo of hysteria over the Ebola "crisis" began this past Summer around the end of July when two doctors infected with the virus were brought to the United States for treatment. From there it was a rapid descent into irrationality and delirium, especially after infected Liberian, Thomas Eric Duncan came to the United States and ultimately died from his contraction of the Ebola virus. There were some saying that it was just a matter of mathematics, and by January there would be 1.4 million Americans infected with the Ebola virus.
     Throughout this manufactured crisis it has struck me as odd that we were being told that this virus was highly contagious. Those who were pushing Ebola-as-epidemic escalated its contagious nature from one having to come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, to the spread of the virus by anyone who virtually just thought about an infected patient. If Ebola was human I am sure it would be suing for defamation of character. But since it is just a virus it is at the mercy of the fear mongers who aim to use Ebola to advance a political goal.
     At this time, with the announcement of the New York doctor being given a clear bill of health, the United States is Ebola-free. This virus that was suppose to be so contagious as to be caught by practically just looking at an infected person, was not even competent enough in its contagiousness to infect any of Mr. Duncan's relatives living in a small Dallas apartment with him while he was in the final stages of infection. Nor was Ebola strong enough to infect any of the 163 persons who came into contact with nurse Amber Vinson, they were taken off their 21 day observation last week.
     News of the United States being Ebola-free has strangely passed without as much fanfare as some were touting it as a plague that was going to destroy up to as much as 90% of the world's population. I, by no means, believe that the United States will never see another Ebola case, however, it is no where near the threat that it was being marketed as by political pettifoggers. I watched my fellow Americans buy into that marketing campaign with every last dollar of sanity they possessed. The dichotomy of a nation being thrown into a panic over one death by way of an African virus while 20,000 Americans die every year from the common flu, over 40,000 by their own hand in the act of suicide, and 300,000 a year from smoking related disease, was more than a little unsettling for me.
     The Big Ebola Bust that was the end result of the Big Ebola Panic, leaves me unsettled mainly because of my fellow Americans' vulnerability to believe the cheap parlor antics of charlatans who wish to control them through political hypnotism. For if we believe in a devastating epidemic with no visible proof, then  might we not believe, as some were calling for, in a more muscular government to "fight" it? And if we fall prey to accepting, and yes, even demanding a growing government to protect us from non-existent threats, then how much more will we allow that government to grow to protect us from real ones?