You beat me to it. OP, do you have examples?
Yeah- unfortunately I think it actually is taking on some political dimensions. Which is absolutely stupid, but that’s humanity for you. This is a serious problem and nothing is foolproof, but at the risk of sounding like a guy at the beginning of a horror movie, it’s extremely unlikely that it’s going to become an epidemic in the U.S. for all the reasons people are citing rationally: advanced medical facilities and training, better sanitation, etc.
I’m going to quote you when the Ebola Apocalypse starts!
Ah. TR.M reveals a tiny portion of the non-grammarian side of himself.
Rather unattractive, I think.
Dammit, Tim R. Mortiss was right. My head exploded while I tried to think of a way to explain that Africa isn’t in Mexico.
I’m calling it. October 4th, 2014 is officially the day when it became impossible to discuss literally anything in the US without someone trying to shoehorn it into a narrative of partisan political conflict.
Well the above already cited the Daily Show. Several posters here have already tried to equate ‘pooh-poohing’ the threat with ‘rational thought’ or ‘liberals’ with ‘scientists’ and ‘intelligent people’.
And you only need to go to Drudge Report to see the right-slanted view.
So what exactly are you asking?
This is a paranoid and unreasonable position to hold. “Science is subject to change” does not mean “any worst-case scenario I can come up just might come true.”
I mean, think about it. HIV could become airborne. It’s not impossible that it isn’t spreading through the air right now! Why not semi-seriously run through emergency scenarios in case your city gets hit with flying AIDS?
…coming soon… on AMC… 
20 years ago a lot of people were asking this question.
And its a fair question for public health officials and epidemiologists to ask. Its what they studied, what they are paid to think about.
For me, wasting time on “what if AIDS went airborne” or “what if I get sweated on by someone with Ebola” aren’t really good uses of my time. I have anxiety in my life…manufacturing it isn’t necessary. Educating myself so I can make the same decisions that health officials make also doesn’t seem like a great use of my time - I’m not an expert of pandemics, and from what I understand it takes years to become an expert on pandemics.
In the meantime, reasonable precautions to make sure my family minimizes ANY illness seem reasonable - flu shots, vaccinations, hand washing, teaching the kids to cover their mouths when they sneeze and get their tissues into the trash.
I don’t know enough about Ebola to make pronouncements on the internet about it. It’s fine if you feel confident enough to do so, but just because I don’t, doesn’t mean I’m “paranoid and unreasonable”. It means that I don’t “believe” in anything.
Science does change. Technology improves, someone discovers they transposed some numbers or didn’t perform an experiment the right way…and suddenly what we “know” shifts a little. All the uncertainty is why I am a fan of science but not faith. I love being able to say, “To date, this is what the science indicates…”. The moment I start going there with “This is absolute truth!!! YOU’RE AN IDIOT IF YOU DON’T AGREE!!!”, then I’ve become someone I don’t want to be.
Being a little wary is not the same thing as being paranoid. It just means that if I ever have to be around someone who’s symptomatic Ebola, I’m not going to turn down a face mask. There are plenty of people catching the virus who have no idea how they caught it. This makes it markedly different from HIV.
And it’s not a housing bubble, it’s a natural and permanent adjustment in the market. All the experts say so. Just a few cranks saying there’s a problem, y’know. Ignore them.
Or “It’s nothing, folks, stay in your seats. Play, Mickey, play!” - Eddie Foy
You know it’s possible for non-Mexicans to cross the Mexican-American border, right?
Well, for one thing there’s plenty of other deadly diseases (like measles which are quite lethal in small children, but easily spread by unvaccinated children) out there that people in the United States have a much, more likely chance of catching than Ebola.
It’s a valid area of scientific inquiry. Members of the public who were up in arms about this 20 years ago wasted their time, and I suspect it’s the same with Ebola.
Lots of stuff is possible. Africans with Ebola could cross the border from Mexico, yes. So could terrorists, as some people keep trying to remind us. Terrorists with suitcase nukes full of Ebola are possible, I guess. In the real world, the number of people immigrating to the U.S. illegally from outside the Americas is very small, and the history of people using fears of disease-ridden foreigners to discriminate against immigrants is long- and disgusting. For reasons that should be obvious, the vast majority of illegal immigrants to the U.S. come from the Americas and illegal emigrants from Africa are more likely to go to, say, Europe. So Ebola has jack shit to do with illegal immigration.
You seem to be forgetting that ISIS is going to bring Ebola through illegal immigration in order to abortion our gay marriages with Obamacare.
People also went nutty that HIV would go airborne, back in the day. And it still hasn’t.
Anyway, I did read (from a reasonably sane source) that the DNA within the Ebola virus has changed (“mutated”, if you want to be scary) 300 times since this oubreak began. I imagine people who read that in the newspaper go “o noes! It’s a short step to it growing legs and jumping into your laptop bag!”
Not sure if it is “liberals” per se but the danger is being dismissed because there is no danger to 99.999999999% of Americans <— Science!
Also there is a racist connotation to much of the coverage (strongly implied it is coming to America from brown people who either just don’t know any better or are maliciously spreading it).
Ebola is a real problem in Africa because they lack infrastructure and a strong government. Come to think of it, maybe Texas should be a little worried because they also lack those things.
That aside, unless you while away in the vomit, blood or feces of an Ebola victim, you don’t have to worry.
I think that there are several things in play here.
First, on a basic psychological level, liberals **tend **to be optimists (aspirational- “what can we gain”), where conservatives tend to be pessimists (conservative in-the-not-political sense- “what can we lose”). I recently heard this on the radio (NPR 
), so I don’t have a cite. I do believe that both impulses are valuable to society.
Second, liberals tend to be more trusting of capability of government for achieving good things, where conservatives are not. This would apply to the health agencies.
I also suspect that there is component of basic politics in play- the current administration is Democratic, and therefore “liberal”, and may ultimately bear the blame for any badness that comes out of this. I hope this component is small.