Americans. Don’t you just love them.

America is a peculiar place. 

         Its land is vast with a population of over 300 million, enjoying the highest GDP on earth. The average American has an annual income of over $66,000. (We need not bother our heads over how this income is distributed). Suffice it to say that this is a per capita income that is exceeded by only a handful of tiny sheikdoms producing lots of oil, plus a few small European countries skilled in the management of secret money owned by extremely wealthy individuals. 

         Forty-two percent of Americans have a college education, bettered only by Canada (Number 1) and a few other OECD countries. America’s dominance in educating its people is underscored by the fact that 7 of their universities are among the 10 best in the world. It is well to note too that, in America, there are about 25 doctors for every 10,000 population; put in another way, every doctor registered to practice medicine in America has, on average, only 400 individuals to look after.  

          You may already be wondering where all this is leading. Well, the conclusion that any reasonable person would draw from this snapshot of Americana is that the land flows with milk and money. Sorry, honey. Enough honey to, at least, sweeten the temperament and lubricate neural circuits responsible for clear thinking. But most disappointingly, the country seems to fall down every time it is called upon to lead the world in rational thinking. Every time, before and since one of their greatest ever presidents asserted that the only thing that they have to fear is fear itself, Americans have consistently shown a fearfulness that is almost primal. They have been afraid to escape from the bonds of slavery; they have feared Japanese-Americans during World War II; they have dreaded communist bogeymen under the bed during the Cold War; they went wild with fear during the early stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Al Qaida petrified them to the point of incoherence (but that, you might say was a GW thing); and in 2014, Al Qaida’s progeny, ISIL leaves America quivering. And this year also, America is gripped by fear just because of a single case of Ebola entering their pristine realm. 

        Why, you may ask, is America not using all its valuable assets to inform public debate and policy about Ebola? Instead, what we see is a shambolic media and political show concerning the remote possibility of Ebola threatening the American way of life.

To be honest with you, I feel totally let down by these antics because I had believed that Ebola's spread in West Africa was due partly to a lack of public literacy in a region where factors of well-being are orders of magnitude lower than in America.

          There is no upside to this type of paranoia. But downsides are many. Not the least of these is the prevailing view that Americans going to West Africa to help control Ebola there may not be allowed to integrate back into their community when they return home. It should be clear to all that if Americans are prevented from returning to the bosom of their loved ones there is no way they would want to go to the region where help is most needed. Is this what America really wants? 
      Please tell me it is not so.

 Tell Fren Tru