What exactly is this "panic" the CDC, government in general , "they" etc are trying to prevent?

[hedgehog]

A run on the banks? A run to cabins in Idaho? A run to the grocery store for milk and bread? People giving up and abandoning shopping at the mall? A riot at TIffany's?

[NuclearDem]

1. A sale at Penny's!

[HereSince1628]

2. Sort of hard to predict panic...I suspect they worry about over-reactions

Shear speculation but...

It's not all that hard to imagine panicked masses protesting to keep ebola cases out of local hospitals--that's just an extension of travel bans already expressed.

Or the flip side of that, runs on ERs by people frightened they've got it? Thus interfereing with the function of ERs.

Refusal of taxi drivers to drive people to hospitals?

Refusal of people to ride in taxis because rumors say people with ebola symtoms rode in them from the airport?

What about refusal of EMTs to staff ambulances or attend patients with ebola-like symptoms?

Refusal of people to ride in ambulances that rumors say held ebola victims.

[pinboy3niner]

6. Plus discrimination against immigrants

Especially from Africa, but also from Mexico and Central America. Irrational hysteria about securing the southern border to block terrorists, Ebola, and Ebola-infected terrorists (!) already is ramping up.

[HereSince1628]

7. IMO, thats already at work on DU in the thread on

fear of weaponizing ebola.

Which pushes speculation infected terrorists could walk across the southern border of AZ.

[pinboy3niner]

8. I didn't even look at that thread because the subject line was so preposterous

For terrorists, there are a lot of things easier, more available, and more deadly to weaponize. I may have to take a look now just to catch up on what's going on there. I hope I don't need a HazMat suit.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. You don't remember what happened here with aids?

It was pretty disgusting. We are not, in general, good people in a crisis.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. About 800 calls or emails a day to the CDC

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/10/08/since-ebola-was-diagnosed-in-dallas-5000-false-alarms-zero-new-ebola-cases/

Or, in the UK, parents pressuring a head teacher into not allowing a boy from Sierra Leone come to the school, even though he and his mother have been officially classed as no risk?

It is not the first time Kofi has been to the school, Ms Mason-Sesay told the Independent. But despite the family’s sustained links with the area and the support of the school, the headteacher and its governing body have been “bullied” by a handful of parents into cancelling the child's attendance this month.
...
Ms Mason-Sesay, who is the country director of Educaid, an education charity based in Sierra-Leone, travels to the UK twice a year for fundraising efforts.

She had herself and Kofi assessed by Public Health England when arriving in the UK and was given a category 1 rating, meaning the pair were given unrestricted movement while in the country.

“You can’t be lower risk,” she said. “Even if I were a health worker with this level of risk I could carry on practicing.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sierra-leone-boys-uk-school-placement-cancelled-over-misguided-hysteria-by-parents-over-ebola-9781366.html

[MerryBlooms]

5. People wrapping their houses in plastic and duct tape. n/t

[Eleanors38]

19. I do that to hold it together.

[hlthe2b]

9. How about some of the ugly stigmatization and discrimination towards immigrant communities perceived

to have originated from Africa--as has been seen in Texas? How about those who may be stirred by the likes of the Republican Congressman, who called for killing Ebola sufferers, rather than treating them?

I'd say there is room for concern.

[Adrahil]

10. The local idiot who wrote into my paper who said we have to close to border to

.... prevent Africans or anyone that LOOKS African from coming into the country.

Scratch any problem in this country and it seems there is a nasty case of racism under it somewhere.

[cali]

11. people taking their kids out of school, vigilantes

people sealing off neighborhoods. floods of false alarms.

[gratuitous]

12. Mostly the stuff being whipped up by Fox

And if you think it can't happen here, may I introduce you to Sinclair Lewis?

[Eleanors38]

20. Ought to re-name it "Pox."

[Bluenorthwest]

13. Gee whiz, Mainstream America did so super well with the AIDS crisis!

Political leaders calling for relocation camps, children harassed and chased out of schools, people fired for being sick, for being at risk, for knowing someone who was sick. A travel ban was put in place that lasted 20 pointless, discriminatory years while none of you said a thing about it. People could not find doctors, housing. Businesses were lost, families torn to pieces.
Folks spent lots of time speculating about what they said was the 'near certainty' that this virus would 'mutate so you can catch it from walking next to one of 'em'.
It was not pretty.

But you are confident that although the majority did so many shitty things when they feared HIV they would never, ever do shitty things out of fear of a different virus? Why is that? Please educate me.

[hedgehog]

17. At the beginning, no one knew what caused "GRID" but I think most guessed it was a sexually

transmitted disease. Primary caregivers and various hospital employees were fearful until they were given instructions on how to protect themselves. Later there was some public concern about the possibility of being exposed to infected blood if someone who carried HIV was around.. But I think the worst problem was a Federal government that ignored the disease and did little to allay public fears or to educate people on how to protect themselves. I think ignoring a disease is a different reaction than giving careful information as to the cause of a disease, a discussion of how it is spread, and a discussion of how our health care system, flawed and chaotic as it is, is still far more capable of handling this than those found in West African countries emerging from years of civil war. What I am questioning is the conviction by some that our government is lying to us "to prevent panic".

[Bluenorthwest]

18. At the begining, you did not know about it. I was there. Drop the lectures.

By the time Reagan mentioned the disease and America got around to real panic there were already over 20,000 dead in the US, cases in 113 countries, the disease named AIDS and the virus which caused it identified.
It was called 'GRID' for about two years.
Your memory is very faulty and seems to be made up not of recollected experience but of things you read later on.
Mike Huckabee, still an active Republican, called for quarantine camps in 1992 and stood by that view in 2007. That was mainstream political discussion. This does not fit with your images of a calm public with just 'some fears about infected blood'. Straight people fired and evicted gay people, sick or not. 29 States still allow your people to fire and evict gay people at will. Back then, your community took full bigoted advantage of that fact. Reprehensible behavior was common as dirt.

And your OP? It seemed to me to be suggesting that the very idea of the public having bad reaction to unhinged fear is laughable to you. But I remember elected officials calling for me to be put in a camp. So I skip the laughing part.

[hedgehog]

21. I am sorry for having irritated you so much.

I had two cousins who became HIV positive back in the beginning; one died way too soon 30 years ago, the other lived to raise her daughter and is still around; a long term survivor.

As to "my community", do I need to mention my lesbian daughter very active in human rights circles?

It is possible for people of good will to have different experiences.

[AngryAmish]

14. Skellingtons

[hedgehog]

15. Several people have suggested that the CDC could be soft pedaling the hazard in order to

prevent discrimination and/or violence against perceived carriers - Africans and Latinos. If that is the case, why are some DUers posting dark comments about how "they " are lying to us in order to prevent panic?

[randome]

16. Because different people see different things?

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