Remember, before the election, when Ebola was going to kill us all? The nurse in Maine who wanted to ride her bicycle was endangering everyone with her brazen selfishness? The doctor in New York rode the subway and presented a deadly menace to all mankind?
It turns out that, in a country with decent medical care, and in hospitals with competent staff, Ebola isn't so deadly after all. All eight Americans infected with Ebola and treated in the United States have survived.
The nurse in Maine never had Ebola, and, disgusted with the treatment she received, is leaving the state. The doctor in New York is playing his banjo and riding his exercise bike, and will be released shortly.
Ebola is bad. But the CDC has been accurately describing the level of risk. As the president and every other expert in the field has been saying, the real risk is that the disease will continue to grow out of control in Africa, potentially evolving into something that will be more easily transmitted.
That means we need to stop the outbreak in Africa as soon as possible. And that means sending qualified doctors and nurses to Africa to help stem the tide.
If we make everyone who participates in the fight against Ebola feel like a pariah and take away their civil rights, no one will go there. That risks prolonging the outbreak long enough to allow the virus to mutate into something that is as terrible as we're afraid of.
We've been lucky. One of these times an American infected with Ebola will die. But the fight against this disease is like the fight against Islamic terrorists. We don't give up when the terrorists kill a few Americans. Why should we give up and hide because someone got sick with Ebola?
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