re: #60 Targetpractice

It really is fun to watch wingnuts flex their authoritarian muscles. “Yeah, we’re totally good with the government stripping people of their rights and involuntarily confining them against their will…except when they’re conservatives.”

Well, here’s something different, from one of City Journal’s writers:

BEN BOYCHUK: Ebola epidemic overreaction

That isn’t to say a bit of preparation wouldn’t be prudent. Both the Riverside and San Bernardino County public health departments are taking steps to ensure local hospitals are ready in the unlikely event Ebola reaches Inland Southern California. They’re surveying local hospitals to probe for possible weaknesses in training and facilities.

Local officials are also trying to educate and reassure the public. Riverside County this week launched a sensible and levelheaded “frequently asked questions” page on its website, www.rivcoph.org). The message is unequivocal: “Ebola does not pose a significant risk to the U.S. public.”

So, Ebola does not trouble me. I’m more concerned about the flu - which kills between 35,000 and 40,000 Americans every year - and the enterovirus, a nasty respiratory illness that’s hitting Southern California kids pretty hard right now.

But I’m especially worried about an epidemic far more contagious than any of those infectious diseases: hysteria.

Hysteria is easy to transmit. Unlike Ebola, hysteria is airborne - on the radio, on television - and easily passed through paper and ink. Excessive contact with Twitter and Facebook is also a surefire way to develop chronic hysteria. Hysteria does not discriminate. It thrives on the left and the right.

It’s been disappointing to see so many of my conservative friends lose their minds over the Ebola scare. Case in point: Jonathan V. Last, an otherwise excellent writer and reporter, attempted to make a case in the Weekly Standard for “controlled, informed panic.” One of those things is not like the others.

Unfortunately, Last let his imagination run wild. “It isn’t crazy to see how a health crisis could beget all sorts of other crises, from humanitarian, to economic, to political, to existential,” he writes. “If you think about Ebola and mutation and aerosolization … for too long, you start to get visions of Mad Max cruising the postapocalyptic landscape with Katniss Everdeen at his side.”