Google “stop Ebola.” Won’t take long (hums final answer Jeopardy music to myself) …
Okay, if you did that, I bet you came up with a lot of articles like this one. Or this one. And a bunch about whether we should or should not ban airline flights from Africa into the United States. You’ll find articles about why we should not freak out, and articles about FREAK OUT because we’re all going to DIE!!!!! And of course the articles about how are freaking out about Ebola will make it harder to stop.
Read them if you like, but I’ll let you in on a the best way to stop Ebola. The Ebola outbreak is a serious problem, and doing nothing about it is not the answer. However, how to stop it is actually very simple, though it does require (gasp!) spending money and committing resources to do this:
Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Anthony Banbury warned “we either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan.”
He added: “the best way, the very best way to protect the people of non-infected countries is by helping the people of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to stop Ebola now where it is.”
Seems sort of obvious to me. Help the people where the epidemic is worst. Send in lots if trained medical personnel, and portable hospitals, and medical supplies – including whatever experimental vaccines, blood from patients who survived, or anti-viral drugs including those that have been shown to help in other cases – military troops for logistics and security if needed and whatever the fuck else it takes to help the people where Ebola is spreading the fastest.
Mr. Banbury painted a picture of substantial need. Only 50 safe-burial teams are on the ground, he said, but 500 are required. They need protective gear and about a thousand vehicles. So far, Mr. Banbury said, the mission has delivered 69 vehicles.
“We are fighting for people who are alive and healthy today, but will become infected by Ebola and die if we do not put in place the necessary emergency response,” he said, speaking by a video communication link from Accra, Ghana, where the mission was established in late September.
So, what are we waiting for? Those nurses in Dallas are getting help. The people in West Africa, not so much. Get off your ass, Europe, China, and the Americas – including the US, of course, because while we have finally started to do something on the ground ‘over there’ we need to do more and do more faster.
You don’t stop a man whose leg has been cut off by applying a bandage to his finger. We need to stop talking about keeping “them” out and instead do what is necessary to help our fellow human beings in distress. Because you don’t stop a fire by watering down your house while several of your neighbor’s houses are going up in flames.
In this 21st Century globalized world of ours we are all neighbors, and there is no place we can run to and hide. The Atlantic Ocean didn’t stop Ebola from making it to our shores, and no other geographical barrier will stop this out break. If we want to protect ourselves from Ebola then that means we need to go and help our neighbors in West Africa where the outbreak is at its worst, and where each day we fail to act means more people die and places more people across the globe at risk.
