Even more frustrating, from my perspective was the proposal that all medical providers who visit west Africa to assist in the Ebola outbreak be routinely quarantined on return to America regardless of symptoms. The real medical problems afflicting this country are often ignored by the news and rarely ignite conversation with my peers and acquaintances. The latest interest in a disease I’ll likely never treat or even witness confuses me. These are real problems in this country but they are rarely topics of conversation when people find out I am a nurse nor are they headline news material. Most of my frustration is based upon the reality of the ignored epidemics I see everyday such as heart disease, diabetes, renal failure, liver failure, and substance abuse. I’ll gladly eat my words if I’m wrong, but I see the media frenzy on the African epidemic affecting America as more damaging than good. The truth is that the flu is more dangerous in the industrialized world than Ebola.
To many sci-fi movies such as World War Z and 28 Days Later have bred a false sense that infectious diseases have an instantaneous and immediate onset.
The protections in the industrialized world such as public sanitation measures, the strength of medical response networks, and governmental authority all reduce the potential for an outbreak to be widespread. However, the causes for the epidemic in Africa are multifactorial and have a lot to do with the culture, widespread poverty, and ultimate lack of medical infrastructure to respond to an outbreak. In no way do I make light of the horrible things happening in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the number of people affected by this devastating disease in such a short time frame is terrible. I try to respond respectfully, but honestly, I find the zealous fear hard to appreciate because the likelihood of an outbreak here or in any industrialized country is extremely low. As an inpatient nurse at a large medical center in San Francisco I find that that Ebola is frequently a topic of public interest – no social engagement is complete without someone asking me about Ebola preparedness and risks of infection here in the states and at my work.
I opened the pages of Camus’ The Plague looking for a cathartic relief from my ongoing frustration with my country’s irrational fear toward the Ebola epidemic currently ongoing in Western Africa. “A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s own work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” (237) Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert, 1948
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