Talking heads from every spectrum have weighed in on the problem, calling for travel bans, border closings, quarantines and a host of other ever-more draconian measures involving military personnel and concentration camps for potential virus carriers.

 

They do it more for ratings and to gin up their favorite political base, rather than any genuine concern for the public welfare, but people are truly alarmed.  We may not have experienced any wide-ranging pandemics in our recent history, but they are not all that far back in the past.

 

The “Spanish Flu” of the early 1900’s killed millions world-wide before the virus mutated into a more benign form that was not fatal to the human host.  Even with the limited travel available worldwide in 1919, the disease still managed to circle the globe before it finally ran its course.  It was so unusual in its rapid development that scientists still study variants of it today, and the source is still unknown.

 

A NASA experiment some years ago reportedly proved that some forms of disease bacteria can survive exposure to space for long periods of time.  A much debated theory from astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle of Cardiff University holds that the Spanish Flu virus may have been carried to Earth in the dust from passing comets.  Not so far-fetched when you consider that geologists and amateur rock-hounds regularly find meteorites on Earth that had their origin on Mars.

 

The Bubonic Plague was a mystery to the medical profession when it first appeared as well, with “plague doctors” in freakish long-nosed leather hoods (see illustration) prescribing medical treatments like “buttered bread soaked in vinegar” as a curative.  There were more modern-seeming efforts as well, such as closing theatres and public entertainments, and sealing the inhabitants of plague houses indoors for “five weeks after the last plague victim died within.”  With adequate supplies of food and water, of course.  Many of those houses never opened their doors again.

 

In 1603, the Black Death took 38,244 lives in the City of London alone, and 63,001 in 1625. Nobody connected the lack of hygiene and the hordes of ship-borne rats and their fatal fleas with the continuing epidemic for almost a century, and how could they have?

 

We have it much better, in that we know what it is we are up against.  Research says the Ebola virus is carried, most likely, by the West African fruit bat, and passed to game animals and so to humans.  We have, or will have soon, the technology to safely treat cases in specialized facilities around the nation.  But even with all that, the disease still has a 50 per cent mortality rate.

 

I would still rather see us using hospital ships off the coast, or Guantanamo Bay, or anyplace that is not here, and I can’t see the problem with restricting travel to plague areas, or more screening for arriving passengers from all destinations.

 

But we don’t do that.

 

Oh, and it might be nice if we had a Surgeon General on the job in Washington D.C., you know, for when Dr. Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Fauci of the National Institute of Health are dragged in front of a committee of bloviating House members to answer childish questions instead of dealing with the Ebola outbreak as they are trained to do.

 

The nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy as the next Surgeon General stalled in the Senate over a year ago after the National Rifle Association announced that it would “score” any vote on his confirmation because he had taken a position advocating stricter controls on firearms.  Any member who voted in favor of the nomination of Dr. Murthy would be torn from the comfort of the NRA coffers and cast into the outer darkness, un-funded and alone in the next election cycle.

 

Too bad you can’t kill a virus with a rifle.