I have been asked whether it’s hard to draw cartoons about Ebola. Yes, drawing about a deadly virus is difficult — perhaps impossible (even though editorial cartoons aren’t supposed to be just funny). But, as always, it doesn’t take long for politics to seep into the process, and therein lies the fertile material for the cartoonist.
Brave, selfless health workers returning from Ebola stricken countries haven’t been getting the ticker tape parade and heroes’ welcome they deserve. What we need is an Ebola Cza… Oh never mind.
If you’re reading this while driving your car: Deadly contagion, bloodthirsty Middle East terrorists, illegal immigrants, unsecured nuclear weapons and the other myriad of threats to the well-being of the general populace are literally the least of your problems right now.
With weak, let’s-play-catch-up national policy, patchy protocols, thin guidance and inadequate training, the brave health workers on the front lines of the Ebola crisis are being taken very much for granted.
Politicians who feign concern for the federal deficit to extract political gain and congressional cuts to the National Institutes of Health (and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) left us terribly unprepared to treat an outbreak of a virus like Ebola.
A ready antidote – which, given the time and funding, is perfectly well within our ability to create – would have been a nice thing to have shipped off to Western Africa earlier this summer.
Tune into any of the Ebola coverage on the cable news channels and you’ll never go outside again.
While we fretted last week about one government agency allowing a guy to breach the White House fence, the vigilant powers that be performed similarly well in preventing Ebola from hopping our national fence, too.
Nothing more disconcerting than when the Center For Disease Control sends a team of seven down to Dallas to supervise the first U.S. diagnosed Ebola patient – while saying, essentially, “everything’s under control.”
I can’t imagine us sending single-payer health care to help Liberia. That would be downright un-American.
President Barack Obama called the Ebola crisis a threat to world security as he ordered up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and deliver field hospitals, the Associated Press reports. Under the plan, the government could end up devoting $1 billion to containing the disease.
“If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us,” Obama said after briefings in Atlanta with doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from Emory University, where Brantly and two other aid workers with Ebola have been treated.
Obama acted under pressure from regional leaders and international aid organizations who pleaded for a heightened U.S. role in confronting the deadly virus. He called on other countries to also quickly supply more health workers, equipment and money.
