Recently
The Daily Show discussed the Ebola
disease and the panic over it despite that Americans are more likely to die
from things not related to Ebola.
Thomas
Eric Duncan contracted Ebola after his visit to one of the West African nations
afflicted by this disease died in at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in
Dallas.
The
hospital originally turned away after he visited the emergency room when he
said that he had a fever of 103F. The second time he arrived at the hospital he
arrived via ambulance. His soiled clothes, towels, blankets, and mattress remained
in the apartment where him and his family lived. So far they are not exhibiting
signs of Ebola and are currently quarantined at a undisclosed location.
There
are criticisms
about the hospital's decision
to turn Mr. Duncan away after his first visit to the hospital. As noted with
the other Ebola patients, they
immediately received treatment. Mr. Duncan did not receive initial
treatment and according to health
officials as reported by the Dallas Morning News it is estimated that he
came in contact with 114 people over the three days between his first hospital
visit and the second one. On Sunday, a
health care worker who helped treat Mr. Duncan is reported to have
contracted the Ebola virus.
In
the summer of 2013 I took a class on LGBT Politics and we discussed the
HIV/AIDS epidemic. The general consensus was that education was the best weapon
in combating the disease along with adequate funding and research in finding
the appropriate treatment.
When
HIV/AIDS first came into focus in the early 1980s, it was viewed as a
disease that only the gays get. Part of that misinformation and ignorance
was born out of the
politics that happened during the time period that Ronald Reagan was president.
Reagan
did not acknowledge that AIDS was an epidemic until 1987.
It was after closeted actor Rock
Hudson whom Reagan considered a friend die due to complications of the
disease in October 1985.
Despite
belonging to a Republican administration and the position of Surgeon General
can be a political appointment, C.
Everett Koop felt that he had a higher duty as a doctor to inform and
educate the public about AIDS.
Every
presidential administration in my lifetime has dedicated to HIV/AIDS awareness,
but a lot of times those are subjected to the whims of Congress. The Congresses
of the 1980s and 1990s generally had representatives from more conservative
areas of the country. Yes, even the Democratic Party had conservatives in their
party and had to go along with the whims of the Reagan and Bush administrations
or face electoral defeat back in their home districts. Though the most vocal
opponents to combating HIV/AIDS were Republicans and their connection to the
religious right that was ushered in when Reagan was elected president.
Then
there was the coordinated boogeyman campaign. The only way you get HIV/AIDS is
if you have sex with men. You can get HIV/AIDS from a toilet seat or casual
contact with other people. If the Democrats get into power, they're going to
teach kindergartners how to put on condoms.
Society
still has some inherent discriminations, but diseases and viruses do not. They
do not care who they infect and afflict. They have one purpose: to make their
host (a human being) sick.
And
I heard the HIV/AIDS toilet seat rumor when I was in HIGH SCHOOL AT THE TURN OF
THE MILLENIUM!
Dr.
Tom Frieden, director of the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), said,
"In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like
this has been AIDS" and "that we have to work now so that this is not
the world's next AIDS."
President
Obama has dedicated resources to combat Ebola. The president has deployed 4,000
troops to the region to help with fighting the disease, called for increased
screening of persons arriving into the US from those regions, and is being
briefed on the situation both domestically and internationally. A lot of
these places do not have the infrastructure to combat this and if the situation
deteriorates further it could cause these nations to collapse and the
humanitarian effort becomes more dire than it already is.
But
one of my main points, education.
The
only way that someone can contract Ebola is if they come in contact with the
blood, sweat, feces, urine, seamen, or any other bodily fluids of an Ebola
patient. Unless you have traveled to the nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea
recently, then you have nothing to worry about.
In
fact Ezra
Kline's Vox has this handy dandy flow chart to determine if you have Ebola.
Take
a deep breath.
Breathe.
And
crawl out of your doomsday shelter.
As
I pointed out before the Jon Stewart piece as he goes through the list of
things that we must do to save American lives… but we don't.
The
CDC was subjected
to Republican-led House budget cuts. Given that there is a virus, I think
having a well-funded CDC would be important at this time.
Can
you name the current Surgeon General?
If
you said it is currently vacant, you are correct. We do not have a Surgeon
General because of comments
he said about firearms being a public health concern. Because you cannot say
anything bad about our precious firearms in the United States.
The
Republican-led
House cut funding for food stamps and despite the myths, children
are the ones who benefit the most from food stamps. Also, take a wild guess
about where the people who rely on food stamps the most live? No, not the big
cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, but rather the South. It is
estimated that 20%
of the population in the South use food stamps. The state with the highest
percentage of the population using food stamps? Mississippi.
Also
if you believe that most of the people who rely on food stamps are blacks,
wrong again Newt
Gingrich. According to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
which oversees the food stamp program, 43
percent of those people are white.
We
focus more on the external problems than we do our own internal problems. When
there is an external threat, we are willing to spend whatever it takes and risk
American lives to do so. This line of reasoning can also be applied to our
13-year long military involvement in Afghanistan and our current military operations
combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (commonly referred as ISIS/ISIL).
But
when it comes to actual solving problems that actually impacts the real
citizens of this country within this country, we are paralyzed to do so and fail
to fund the necessary resources to solve those problems.
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