EU vs. USA on Ebola

The thing that bothers me about this whole Ebola crisis is the media. In America it seems that the only thing the media is doing is scaring the crap out of everyone. Instead of reassurance, we get news people telling us that we're probably all going to die. There are theorists saying that our world is due for a new crisis because there are too many people. People are taking it into their hands to create blogs with all of the worst possible cases of this disease and trying to pass it off as the real deal. 

Now, to back-track, I'm not saying that Ebola isn't a big deal. It is. It's actually a huge deal. According to the World Health Organization there have been somewhat major Ebola outbreaks dating back to 1976, possibly even earlier. It's a deadly disease that kills most of its victims, and has terrible symptoms. If you've read my last two blog posts about the matter, you'll know exactly how big of a deal it is.

As far as I know, there has been one reported death from Ebola in the United States. He contracted the disease when he was escorting an infected and pregnant neighbor to a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia (which, I might add, is the center of where this outbreak happened). This is the only death that America has had so far.

There have been a handful of other cases that have been treated as well. Teresa Romero, one of the other patients has been cleared of Ebola. She has one more day of testing to do before she is allowed to leave the hospital. The doctors tested her friends, family, and anyone she was associated with for symptoms and they all came up negative. This happened in Madrid, Spain.

I think it's safe to say that when looking at the big picture, America is perfectly capable of handling the virus as of right now. Something that caught my eye on my Twitter feed today was a headline from the Huffington Post. It said, "EU Seeking To Create $1.27 Billion Ebola Fund". By the end of this week, European Union workers are working to reach 1 billion euros to send to West Africa to aid the fight to end Ebola. The goal is to build more treatment facilities and have better training for health workers. This is exactly what America needs to be doing. Instead of freaking out every time someone coughs, we need to be cutting this off at the source. Sending money and supplies to Africa is the best way to fight Ebola. As of today, the Ebola contributions from Europe equal around 500 million euros ($640 million). 

We need to stop sitting around and listening to the media tell us how we're all going to die. Instead of waiting for a chance to freak out about Ebola, we need to be aiding the contribution to help set up better facilities, better training programs, and better measures of safety in West Africa. So the next time I sneeze in public and someone says Ebola, I am giving myself permission to strangle them.