Ebola! Media hype or honest threat to the United States?

Okay, it sure sounds scary enough, and if you read the press or listen to the news, there is much hand wringing, and panic being tossed about.  I’m sorry, but this is hyperbole at its finest.  We’re talking a disease that is not spread via an airborne pathogen.  In other words, you can’t get it from breathing it in.   Instead, it spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, either from an infected person, or some who recently died from it.  This limits the ability of Ebola to spread, and for most, if not all, developed countries with decent hospitals, this makes is much simpler to control any outbreaks.  Sadly the numbers appear horrific, but in reality, the world has far more dangerous threats from other diseases.  SARS for example.  The global numbers for that one exceed the Ebola Virus by several thousand.  H5N1, West Nile Virus, and other airborne transmitted diseases have far more staggering numbers of deaths than Ebola.  So why the panic?  Why the hype?  Why now?  I have no intention of answering these questions, because I don’t really have the answer.  What I can say is that as consumers of the news, maybe we should collectively be asking them.  In my opinion, we’re being misled and over-hyped again, and sadly, while we are looking at the “shiny” thing, other far more insidious things are lurking in the weeds.  I can remember when the Press, or 4th Estate, was tasked with keeping people honest, and providing accurate information we needed to know, as opposed to the half truth, agenda oriented, garbage they want to toss at us in the guise of news.  How far they have fallen from the days of Winchell. ~ Michael S. Pauley