Ebola is not a great threat

“Hey Jack,” a young woman yelled across a parking lot the other day, “you’ve been over there. Do we have to worry about getting that Ebola?”
The answer: No. In no uncertain terms.
By “over there” the young woman meant overseas, and that travel has included Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe in recent years.
And by “no,” we meant no.
If you move beyond the hype and do your homework, you’ll find that while Ebola is one nasty virus, it’s something to be solved, not something to panic about.
Particularly when you live in rural Indiana or Ohio.
Why did it spread so quickly in West Africa?
Because family traditions and standards of hygiene are dramatically different between West Africa and the U.S.
In the U.S., someone infected with a virus half as virulent as Ebola would be put in a hospital under isolation conditions. In West Africa, someone stricken by the disease is cared for by his or her family. Where we would quarantine the infected person, those in West Africa would step up to provide personal care.
One approach — ours — is driven by rational science. The other — theirs — is driven by love and commitment to family. In spite of the consequences, it’s hard to fault that approach.
Then there’s the matter of funeral traditions, important because that’s a big part of how the disease spread in West Africa. Traditions there call for washing the body of the deceased, with much greater chance of infection from the virus.
Here, where standards of hygiene are higher, where isolation of those who might be affected is the norm, where opportunities for passing along the virus are much smaller, and where funeral traditions are very different, the fact is that Ebola should be pretty low on the list of things you worry about.
You have a much greater chance of contracting the flu or being hit in traffic on your way to the post office.
So keep it in perspective.
It is nasty. It is scary. But it’s not a threat at your front door.
There are plenty of those — drug abuse, obesity, depression, suicide, drunk driving, tobacco and on and on — and all of them pose a greater threat to you today than Ebola ever will. —J.R.