The New Yorker:Ebola vs. Flu

[LiberalElite]

Last edited Fri Oct 17, 2014, 09:37 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dont-forget-flu

-snip-

If you go by media coverage and public sentiment, the most important public-health problem in the United States right now is Ebola. Though the virus has infected only two people here, a recent poll found that forty per cent of Americans see Ebola as a “major or moderate threat” to public health, as Michael Specter points out in this week’s Comment. Meanwhile, over the past month, another infectious disease, Enterovirus D68, has made its way into the headlines. The virus causes respiratory problems, often severe, in children, and, in rare cases, kids infected with the virus have come down with muscle paralysis (it’s still not known whether the virus is actually causing the paralysis). So far, almost six hundred children, in forty-five states, have been infected by the virus, and though most have recovered quickly, five have died. Anxiety among parents has grown so much that some now wonder if we’ve been worrying too much about Ebola, and not enough about enterovirus.
-snip-