General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI believe that this vignette from an old MAD Magazine will suffice:
Many of us recall the comic strip Mandrake the Magician, wherein he, his helper Lothar, and his friend Narda ( a princess) solved crimes and fought threats against humankind, even those of extraterrestrial origin. Mandrake possessed incredible powers inherited from his father. In a MAD takeoff of the strip, the three characters are driving along and the car sustains a flat tire. Mandrake gets out of the car and states that he will repair the tire using his powers of hypnosis. Lothar says to him, "Mandrake, you can hypnotize me into thinking its fixed, you can hypnotize her into thinking its fixed, and you can even hypnotize yourself into thinking its fixed. But how are you going to hypnotize the tire in to thinking its fixed?
Thus we come to the new political football called Ebola. The folks are going back and forth, and arguing about each little thing and are trying to convince the electorate of one thing or another, but you know what? The virus is going to do what virulent viruses do: it is going to propagate, spread through various means, and infect and kill people and, in the worst case scenario, possibly even mutate into a more dangerous form. How many people over what time remains to be seen, but no amount of convincing and propaganda is going to stop the virus anymore than it will stop global climate change. You can talk and talk and talk but in the end there will be death. Now in a nation wherein you can convince the masses that it is good to go to war because three people are beheaded, it would be easy to convince people that we have to take drastic measures to save lives. This is not popular among individuals who claim personal freedom and right to associate and to travel.
But you and I do not have the right to make people sick. Public health trumps all and this is why people were quarantined during the periods of immigration into the US. Yes there were many instances of unwarranted discrimination including the return of people to lands which were dangerous if not fatal for them, but the inappropriate application of the statutes does not negate their strengths. We need to carefully determine how best to essentially eliminate the threat to the peoples of the Earth in toto. We need to fix the problem, not fix the blame
and quickly.
merrily
(45,251 posts)You described the Mandrake strip well and it's apt. (Never saw the strip, but that bit sounds as though it may have been borrowed from one or more vaudeville routines.)
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)All the niceties in the world will not change the nature of a virus, it will do what it is supposed to do, and propagate to its maximum extent. We need to see it as it is, and not as how we wish it would behave.