Ebola and politics

I’m a would-be politician running in the current election to represent my community in the Montana State House. The political season is in high gear, and candidates are being asked dozens of repeat questions about inconsequential issues at events staged to “meet and greet,” “press the flesh,” debate, glad hand, showboat — but will anyone ask about Ebola?

When a politician tells you, “Don’t worry, everything is fine, we can handle it, it can’t happen here,” consider what it’s going to cost in taxpayer dollars because an emergency room nurse didn’t realize a sick black man had Ebola in Dallas, Texas.

The sick man probably never saw a doctor, got sent home with worthless pills and somebody — probably the taxpayer — got a big bill for the service, and then he had time to expose a hundred more people before he returned four days later in critical condition. The governor of Texas,  with presidential aspirations, assures everybody that everything is just fine — totally under control.

Some problems have only a political solution, and Ebola is going to be one of them. I believe it will dwarf ISIS , Ukraine — everything else — in importance in the coming months, mind-boggling decisions will have to be made quickly, there will be huge mistakes made, and millions of people will die — and those who told “The People” not to panic will then have to say, “I had no idea.”

Talking heads on the TV say, “We can’t stop all airplane flights out of Africa, if we did it would cause panic.” It would also cost airlines money. We’re told we’re not at risk because we have clean running water to wash in and live in an advanced society with good education, modern health care — so what about American doctors, who keep catching it?

We are smug that we don’t eat bats, don’t have superstitious beliefs, but a friend, the leader of a local patriotic group, today shared his view that Ebola is really just a government plot. Dallas isn’t Third World, that Presbyterian Hospital looks like “city of the future.” Very soon, there will be no flights out of Africa, I predict.

Obama just sent 3,000 (today 4,000, tomorrow?) troops to West Africa in an effort to set up facilities to deal with the problem at its source — and he didn’t ask the Republican Congress because he knew what to expect from them — politics as usual in an election year.

There’s no time for politics. Obama told the leaders of the free world they need to get on board immediately. They’re thinking about it. Our troops are flattening the land with bulldozers and building plastic tent hospitals to care for the sick — who have beliefs similar to those of my friend, and who will likely avoid them like the plague.

It’s going to soon be apparent that this is too little too late, the people in Africa will look for any exit, and we will be in world-crisis mode. ISIS is calling for jihadists from all over the world, will offer an escape route, and the disease will spread into war-torn populated areas by heavily armed men from all nations who will board planes and spread it everywhere. What can we do? Nuke ‘em?

When you elect a politician to represent you, you’re looking for someone who will keep his head when everyone around him is going off the deep end. Think about what he does and then be decisive. Ebola is going to have ramifications which will have huge real effects on all our lives.

It will make the hijacking of a few airplanes on 9/11 and 4,000 dead seem insignificant by comparison. World War II might be more like on the same scale. Casualties are advancing at geometric rates. Half the people die, half survive and become immune. It could turn out that most of the world’s survivors come from where the disease originated, it could change the demographics of the world, put us back in the Stone Age.

Short term, we need to take Ebola more seriously than 9/11, take fast action to isolate the disease to Africa, and put huge resources into finding a vaccine. We know it probably comes from bats, so we need to start studying bats and their immunity. We know some people survive, and become immune, so we need to be able to identify them, pay them handsomely to do the “dirty work” to contain the epidemic, and study their immune systems.

If their blood works to help recovery, which it seems to, we need to study that. If some people (or bats, or apes) inherit immunity, we need to learn about that. It’s worth an investment on the scale of the Manhattan Project, because it’s even more important, and will have spin-off benefits of even greater value. Meanwhile, we need to feed the people so they don’t need to eat bats and stay put. We might have to quarantine a continent — by force. Frightening thoughts, aren’t they?

Obama doesn’t have time to wait for the election and the new Congress. We can’t wait for the “market economy” to find the cure or educate doctors either. Our system is designed for fast profits. There’s no fast profit in a cheap and effective vaccine or cure for people without money. By January, Ebola will be everywhere, and there will be millions (maybe billions) of deaths and worldwide panic.

America has to lead, and Obama knows it. And he’ll do it, I think. What choice does he have? We’ll follow, too, because we’ll have no choice either. The irony of history is that Obama may become one of our great presidents — if he fails. That is, if there is history after that. If he succeeds, it’ll be better. We need to support his efforts, no matter what we think of him. He’s our man, it’s his job, and he’s doing something.

Mid-term, we need to create 10 million new doctors, and it should start at the local community college level, and it should start now. The best and brightest youth and adults need to be identified, given highly enriched, heavily subsidized education opportunity, perhaps through the military, using their budget.

It should start with first aid, medic and EMT type skills so students are immediately useful in this epidemic and get fast-tracked into crucial needed occupations — especially in medicine and education. The government will need to lay a heavy hand on the shoulder of our greed-driven health care and education systems, and at the same time it makes vast resources available to them, it needs to keep them honest.

Education in math and science needs to be fast-tracked, and political resistance to good education, denials of scientific fact and pandering to superstition and racial fear need to be dealt with, put behind us. Medical, scientific and educational fraud needs to be treated like treason — because that’s what it Is.

Long term, education of everyone on the planet to live together in tolerance and productive beneficial peace with a reasonable size population of free, educated and healthy people will do more to make the world safe and better than all the governments, parties, religions, banking and monetary systems with their wealth, corruption, rules, laws, police and militaries — which exist for their own benefit, not that of “The People.”

We need to wake up and smell the coffee — we can change everything in the world, right here in America, with our votes. November will come and go, but the decisions we make then can make a huge difference in our future. Vote! Please vote. Thank you.

Chris Colvin, of Columbia Falls, is the Libertarian candidate for Montana House District 3.