Thank you to Kaci Hickox, whose bravery and selflessness in going to Sierra Leone to fight Ebola helped all of us in Maine, the U.S. and the world.
If we are going to defeat this and future epidemics, we need to stop them at their origins. If not for people like Hickox, the world would be a far more dangerous and brutal place. Hickox was willing to sacrifice her time and, possibly, her life in giving her hard-earned expertise to the people of West Africa and the rest of the world to stop Ebola at its source.
We should consider the Ebola epidemic a dry run for a devastating epidemic that is coming, sooner or later. Epidemics have always been with us. They are as inevitable as hurricanes and earthquakes. Ebola has been known for 40 years, and the public health and medical systems have substantial experience in fighting it. Ebola is one of a myriad of hemorrhagic fever viruses to which we are vulnerable — Lassa and Marburg are others. Fortunately, these viruses are transmitted only through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola; they are not transmitted through the air, like the influenza virus, nor by contact with people who are incubating the illness but are not yet ill.
Two secondary cases of Ebola occurred among nurses who were caring for a dying Ebola patient in Dallas. Patients are most infectious when they are in the terminal stages and proper precautions are not followed. Patients who are ill with Ebola need to be cared for with utmost attention to personal protection.
On the other hand, there have been no secondary cases in the U.S. among people in the early stages of disease who used public transportation or other public services. Hickox is not ill, and she is not a danger to others. Should she become ill, there will be sufficient time to care for her in a proper setting. We should be ashamed that a teacher from our own state was put on leave simply because she visited Dallas. The hysteria surrounding these two cases is far more frightening to us than the epidemic itself.
In 2003, the world was struck by an outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a virus that, like influenza, is transmitted by the respiratory route — coughing or sneezing. SARS spread rapidly to more than two dozen countries in Asia, North America, South America, Europe and Asia, causing 8,000 cases in a short time and nearly 1,000 deaths. SARS was a close call and was arrested only through a vigorous, science-based international response.
Another epidemic like SARS or influenza is likely and will only be controlled if we all work together, using proven interventions, and have people like Hickox who are willing to make sacrifices as members of the human family.
Gov. Paul LePage’s intrusion into the realm of public health, an area in which he is totally uninformed, smacks of electioneering and represents a distraction from the more urgent issues of accelerated vaccine production, health worker recruitment from North America, and hospital preparedness.
Thank you to Kaci Hickox for the reality check. By standing up for her own rights and just saying no, she said no to hysteria and yes to science and public health.
To quarantine health workers discourages health workers from volunteering to go to the epicenter of the epidemic to help stop it at its source. But that is the very act that is in all our best interests.
When the big one comes, irrational fear will be a huge impediment to success against a really serious adversary, like SARS or influenza. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Dr. Peter Millard is a family physician and epidemiologist. He is an adjunct professor of public health at the University of New England and practices at the Seaport Community Health Center in Belfast, which is affiliated with Penobscot Community Health Care. Dr. Bruce Brown is a recently retired pediatrician who was affiliated with Eastern Maine Medical Center.