By Brian Gupton, Staff Writer — Nov 5, 2014 and the total is nearly five thousand.
According to the CDC or Centers for Disease Control, and Prevention, almost 5,000 people have died of Ebola. Should we be scared?
Well lets answer that question with a question, do you know how many people get the flu each year? The answer is between 5-20 percent of the United States population resulting in 200,000 people being hospitalized each year according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. The total amount of people hospitalized for Ebola in this country is nine according to the New York Times.
As the facts show, the flu affects many more people, but more people care about the Ebola virus. In truth, the flu vaccine is available to the public but still some people choose not to get it. We should be concerned about Ebola, but we should not be panicking.
“It’s not a problem in our community,” school nurse Nancy Cooley said. “I don’t think we should be scared, but I think we should keep infected people out of this country,”.
Ebola is not as easy to get as the common cold, but it’s still contractible. According to to the CDC you contract Ebola through direct contact and bodily secretion. This means contracting Ebola is somewhat hard. If someone is in the same room and they sneeze that doesn’t mean everybody in that room is getting Ebola.
“I’m not walking around freaked out, but I am concerned for our health workers” Cooley said.
She stated this because she feels that are hospitals aren’t well enough equipped to handle Ebola. Meaning that are workers don’t have training to handle this virus. This statement is very powerful because even though it may not be a concern to the people in this community to think about those traveling to West Africa is very scary. The statistic shows that 13,000 cases of Ebola have happened in the World. Meaning that one of our health care workers could be part of the toll.
In the end Ebola is scary, but I think in our community it’s not a concern; as for our health care workers, I feel that Ebola is a concern.
[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]
