Ebola: Don't let hype get to you

In case you missed it (and you would have had to be sealed up in a cave and unconnected to the outside world to do so), there has been a lot about Ebola in the news lately.

Broadcast networks shout incessantly across the airwaves about “The Ebola Crisis” and it’s seemingly wall-to-wall coverage about an obscure tropical disease that suddenly is deemed health threat No. 1.

All this is over a virus that has infected only a handful of people in this country and, in fact, has only claimed one fatality in the United States.

The hype is not just national and international in scope: Locally some irresponsible and completely inaccurate bloggers have been spreading rumors about an alleged case of Ebola in Kalispell.

There isn’t one, and just because hospitals prepare for the remote possibility of an Ebola patient here (they also prepare for earthquakes, chemical spills or any number of incidents with an infinitesimal probability of occurring), that doesn’t mean the pernicious virus is an immediate threat.

The unreasonable Ebola fears have led to everything from paranoia about contracting it on an airline flight to online profiteers selling $34 personal protective kits on Amazon that, in the words of The Atlantic magazine, “will probably do nothing to protect you against Ebola.”

Amid all the attention (satirist Stephen Colbert has sardonically dubbed it “Ebolapalooza”), maybe it’s time for some rational perspective.

If you want to worry about infectious diseases, consider that influenza spreads far easier, sickens more Americans and kills vastly more people every year than Ebola.

Ebola has gotten attention largely because of its mystery (springing from the rain forests of Africa), its lethality (50 percent or higher mortality rate), the ghastly way it attacks patients and the speed at which it can spread.

In Africa, Ebola does qualify as a crisis because of the possibility that as many as 1 million people or more could become infected.

Here in the United States, there may be misplaced panic but it’s not a health crisis by any standard.

The almost zero chance of any of us getting Ebola should be reason to look beyond the mass paranoia, step back and ignore much of the hype about the disease.  

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.