Not Like in the Movies

 A deadly disease spreads from Africa to the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and the military swoop in and take complete charge of the situation to protect the homeland. Teams of folks in hazmat suits descend from helicopters. Active carriers of the disease are immediately isolated behind plastic sheets. It’s all buttoned down neatly, seemingly within a few minutes.

But despite its reputation, Ebola doesn’t make for a good movie monster. First of all, it’s not airborne; it requires transmission by bodily fluids. Second, it doesn’t show up right away, it takes several weeks before symptoms appear. And third, when they do, it’s almost impossible at first to distinguish the disease from the flu – no instant horrible disfigurement. And the CDC, the crack federal agency that we assume will run the show, doesn’t really have that authority, at least automatically. In reality, that’s left up to local government and health officials -- and mistakes are made.

We wonder: Should we be afraid? The news outlets have learned that if fear doesn’t motivate us to stay glued to the TV or whatever screen we spend the most time with, then outrage is a good substitute. When the Ebola carrier from Liberia showed up in the U.S., the Texas hospital screwed up and sent him back out into the community. The family members who were hosting him were quarantined, but not immediately removed from the crowded apartment building where they lived, and left to deal with contaminated bedding the carrier had used. The system basically collapsed.

Not very satisfying, movie-plot-wise. But life is like that. The villains among us are too subtle. Rescuers move ineptly, or get there too late. And because we’re conditioned to look for big villains, we miss the smaller or slower ones. The enterovirus has spread through many states, only fractionally as fatal as Ebola, but equally baffling. Measles and other childhood diseases are rampant again, it’s said, because many educated, affluent parents in some places are distrustful of vaccinations for their children. But where’s the high drama, or the instant fright? Then, in another sphere, there’s climate change. The scientists keep moving up the date when catastrophe is supposed to occur. Hollywood even took a whack at it (”The Day After Tomorrow”) But it just doesn’t happen that way. These kinds of catastrophes occur bit by bit, and like the frog in the slowly boiling water, we don’t react until it’s too late, or almost too late.

And we have to cut ourselves a little slack. Human beings don’t always behave like movie heroes. Balls get dropped. Whizbang technology fails. It’s always tempting to point fingers and make heads roll, but can’t we simply focus on not making the same mistakes again? The best practices and the solutions to problems sometimes take a long time to develop, and the mistakes happen to teach them to us.

It’s really the smaller and slower stuff we should be sweating: the stuff that creeps up on us. The stuff that doesn’t appear and disappear in two hours, like in the movies.

Choose Your Virus

It’s very interesting where we choose to put boots on the ground. Without what seems to be much hesitation, President Obama has called for sending 3,000 troops to West Africa to build local treatment centers in the fight against the deadly Ebola virus. Even though it seems we are responding quickly, the experts are saying we are only leaping into the firefight when the house has almost burned down – and with the number of those infected doubling every few weeks, the urgency seems warranted. Will Ebola make it to the United States? Probably not, those same experts say, but if the population infected is allowed to explode, that likelihood increases. Without flinching, one expert said this disease had the potential to rival a Black Death that ravaged Italy in the 1300s.

I am probably by no means the first to draw a parallel to the situation in Iraq and Syria, with the spreading virus of ISIS. We have no prickly political issues at the moment keeping boots off of West African ground, it seems, but the weariness created by two less-than-popular wars kept us from involvement in Syria while its unrest morphed into civil war, and we couldn’t seem to get out of Iraq fast enough. Is there something the West could have done to prevent the loss of some 200,000 lives and the displacement of millions? We of course will never know – and what good would it do us at this moment if we did?

Now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, says we may indeed have to put boots on the desert sand again in the form of advisors embedded with local forces taking on ISIS. This road should seem very familiar, as we’ve been on and off it for the past 50 years. In 2003, the reasons for entering Iraq may have been manufactured. But are they this time? It’s unlikely that ISIS would strike the United States in our homeland – perhaps equally as unlikely as Ebola spreading here, for the moment at least. But will that remain the case if we do nothing?

The troops we are sending to West Africa are no less in harm’s way than those who will be heading to Iraq and possibly, Syria. But there simply may be no alternative to getting our boots dirty.

A Tale of Three Heroes

Journalism, as we are often told, can be dangerous work. The latest reminder has come in the beheading of Jim Foley, held by ISIS in Syria. While it’s sad that some military personnel have to die in combat, we expect that consequence in war. But when it happens to a reporter, especially in the form portrayed in an awful video designed to send a message, we are shocked, because it’s not supposed to happen to journalists, whose only weapons are newsgathering equipment. It’s safe to say, though, that Foley was no stranger to the risk he was taking, a risk that hundreds of journalists around the world take on a daily basis.

The U.S. rejected a huge ransom demand and put “boots on the ground” to rescue Foley and other hostages held by ISIS in Syria -- another great risk, not only physically, but politically. The mission failed, because the hostages had been moved. I’m reminded of the failed attempt to rescue hostages in Iran back in the 1970s. I’ve always believed that Jimmy Carter would have been re-elected President had that attempt succeeded.

Whether we like it or not, we are now at war with ISIS. The only sensible response is for us to “behead” the organization. We know who many of the leaders are, and we may have to send elite military teams in to get them. Simple bombing, droning, and even a massive invasion won’t work, but a targeted effort just might.

On a considerably happier note, there are two other heroes to celebrate: the American doctors who are said to have recovered from a disease that has heretofore been almost exclusively fatal: Ebola. Like Foley, Drs. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol knew the risk they would be taking on the ground in Africa to help deal with an epidemic. They had to take a second risk: submitting to the use of a largely experimental drug. The favorable outcome holds promise for its future use.

When bad things happen to such people, maybe we shouldn’t be too shocked. The perils they face come with their respective territories. They are no less heroes of war than those who carry guns. We do need reminding, though, that wars of many kinds go on all the time, and the warriors involved aren’t always wearing the uniforms and carrying the weapons we expect.