Ebola – The Concordian

Why no one has the right to judge the Texas Ebola victim

The United States is facing its first case of Ebola diagnosed on home-turf, and unsurprisingly, people aren’t taking it so well – least of all, the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

In an exclusive interview with the CBC, Sirleaf expressed her disappointment in her countryman for fleeing to the U.S. and spreading the virus to North America.

“With the U.S. doing so much to help us fight Ebola, and again one of our compatriots didn’t take due care, and so, he’s gone there and … put some Americans in a state of fear, and put them at some risk, and so I feel very saddened by that and very angry with him, to tell you the truth,” said Sirleaf, who added that she would likely press charges when the infected man — since identified as Thomas E. Duncan — was healthy enough to return to Liberia. (Which is, of course, optimistic thinking.)

Not that she doesn’t have a perfectly good reason: Duncan knew very well that he was susceptible to the virus, having helped carry a dying, Ebola-infected woman to a treatment centre (and back when she was refused). On top of this, on the airport forms, he denied having any contact with the disease at all. Knowing that, he boarded a plane — an act Sirleaf claims is inexcusable.

Firstly, let me say, what Duncan did was incredibly selfish and cowardly. Not only did he lie at the airport, but in doing so, he risked infecting everyone he came into contact with — including young children. What follows is no excuse for his actions, and it is completely and utterly within the jurisdiction of the Liberian authorities to penalize him to the full extent of the law.

But really — can we blame him?

I cannot imagine what Duncan must have been thinking or feeling after getting that woman to the centre, but I think we can at least commend the (perhaps stupid and misplaced) bravery it took to bring her there. He helped a 7-month pregnant woman in what I can only assume was an attempt to save her and her child’s life by bringing her to the proper authorities, where she could be quarantined and treated.

Unfortunately, they were at capacity and she had to be turned away. Even then, he did not abandon her: he helped her family get her back home, where she later died. Can you blame him – after seeing all that, knowing that he was possibly infected — for wanting to run to somewhere he could be treated? He had just seen first-hand that if he was infected, he would be turned away.

If you were in his shoes, would you have done any differently?

I know it doesn’t make it right, or acceptable, or even excusable.

But it does make him human.

And anyone saying they would do differently should do some serious introspection from their safe and secure high horse before they start throwing stones.

Note: Since the time of writing, the subject of the article, Thomas E. Duncan, passed away. He succumbed to Ebola at 7:51 a.m. on Oct. 8 at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Why Ebolamania in North America is only the latest in a apocalyptic trend

In August of this year, a man was quarantined at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital and it was all anyone was talking about for the next week. The individual in question was not a celebrity or public figure. He was simply an individual suspected of having the disease that is creating unreasonable panic in North America: the dreaded Ebola virus.

For those who have been living under a particularly soundproof rock, the Ebola outbreak began in late July of this year as the disease began to spread rapidly through West Africa. Since then, cases of the illness have been confirmed in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, according to The Canadian Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CTC). Not a single case has been reported in Canada.

Why, then, is there such intense fear surrounding one man who may have had Ebola? It is due to what the possibility of a case represents.

For the past fourteen years the media has periodically portrayed disease outbreaks as a plague. This was evident during the Severe Acute Repertory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2002 and in the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak in 2009.

These cases show that panic is not warranted because Ebola is more difficult to transmit than either of the previous diseases. According to the CTC both SARS and H1N1 were airborne illnesses. SARS could be transmitted to someone three feet away from the infected individual through water droplets in the person’s breath, in addition to the traditional coughing or sneezing. H1N1was a flu and was transmitted in a similar way.

Ebola, in contrast, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an individual who is infected–such as blood, urine, feces, saliva, vomit, or sexual fluids. Unlike the previous examples, this requires much greater contact between individuals. Sitting on a bus next to someone with Ebola will most probably not allow you to contract the disease.

Aside from the unlikeliness of contraction, the chances of a random member of the population of Canada dying from such a case is unlikely at best. According to Statistics Canada, 251 individuals died of SARS and 428 of H1N1. Compare these figures with the 7,194 deaths caused by diabetes in 2009, a condition we are publicly calmer about.

These two diseases combined caused less than 10 per cent of the deaths that diabetes did in just one year. Yet where is the round the clock coverage of the sugary menace among us?

Due to increased public awareness of areas of infection and the efficiency of our healthcare system in such matters, the instances of infection within Canada will be very low. It should be noted that all of these diseases are horrible, dangerous, and can be fatal. Anyone who has travelled to regions affected by the Ebola outbreak and is showing symptoms of the disease should seek medical attention immediately.

If not, relax and take a deep breath the next time you hear about the disease that will wipe out the human race; chances are it’s not as dangerous to you as they claim.