Thomas Eric Duncan has died of Ebola.
He came to Dallas from Liberia carrying the virus that causes the disease. He checked into a hospital and was given the best treatment possible anywhere in the world. Still, the disease killed him.
It’s a sad end to a man’s life.
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/08/dallas-patient-diagnosed-ebola-dies/
Now what? Do we panic? Do we quarantine the entire hospital staff? Or those who came into this man’s room?
Not at all.
Yes, I blogged recently about the difficulty of maintaining my composure when Duncan arrived in Dallas, given that I have immediate family members living in the Metroplex. My head has cleared since then.
I hope we start listening to the medical experts who are saying the same thing — over and over, repeatedly. The only way one can catch the killer disease is to come in direct contact with someone who’s infected.
CNN’s coverage of this “crisis,” as usual, has been a bit overblown — in my humble view. The network’s reporters and anchors keep harping on the crisis aspect of the disease in West Africa — and it’s real. However, I am concerned about what it’s doing to the American psyche as it relates to this disease.
Yet the network is trotting out infectious disease experts from all over creation to tell us that a single case of Ebola in one American city should not be cause to push panic buttons, or to sound sirens, or send people into undisclosed secure locations.
If this situation is going to produce any positive outcome, it might be this:Â We’ve got a lot of brilliant medical researchers right here in the U.S. of A. who are quite capable of finding it. If the Ebola scare has done anything at all, I am hopeful it has scared researchers into redoubling their efforts at finding a cure.