Ebola: an infectious disease brought on by fever and internal bleeding spread through contact with body fluids by the filovirus (Ebola virus). Also, known as the most commercialized illness as of recently. Shockingly, Ebola isn’t as new as people may think, it’s just now on the global scale. If you read our very own Colin Tobin’s column on Ebola, you would see that it was first discovered in 1976 in Uganda. With that being said, most people have a very vague idea of what is going on right now.

President Obama has sent roughly 3,000 troops to the three main countries affected in west Africa; Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is setting up the “largest international response in history.” according to the Guardian. We’re also setting up an “air bridge” with the Air Force from Senegal to the three most infected countries to keep the continual flow of medical attention going. Additionally, Obama and the U.S. Health and Human Services are setting up hospital and field treatment centers. As of recently, there has been a supposed new method of essentially curing Ebola; it’s similar to the flu shot: the infected patient receives the virus and then the patients body reacts to it and basically, kills itself.

Although Obama has good intentions for striking this illness down by assisting other countries, what is our next move as a country? With our country’s health and people in mind, we need to mitigate the amount of travel between the U.S. and the affected countries. We also need to take that extra step and close our borders for awhile, because it’ll benefit us tenfold. Unfortunately, some countries, like Liberia for example, feel like they’re being excluded when in a time of need, but they have to understand that we have to think about everyone rather than just one sole country, especially since the virus is moving incredibly fast, so fast that we cannot keep up. In fact Obama said, “Right now everybody has the best intentions, but people are not putting in the resources that are necessary.” Ultimately, we’re putting our resources into the wrong place. As conceited as this sounds, we need to think about ourselves over others.

One of our bigger problems regarding the outbreak is the issue of letting people in and out of the country. Whether this be because of, vacationing, business, etc., we aren’t checking the passengers well enough. Recently, there was a woman on a cruise ship that had Ebola-like symptoms, and instead of taking precautionary measures, they let her get on–fortunately, she and her friend were not infected. But, if we were more cautious and smart about checking people on their symptoms, we wouldn’t scare the public as much and we wouldn’t put others at a higher risk of becoming infected.

If we protect ourselves first and not jump the gun to save other countries before ourselves. we might have a chance of increasing the safety of everybody, as well as decreasing the chance of people becoming infected with this fast moving illness. For now, we can only pray for the best, and appreciate the presence of our family and friends…then sanitize our hands immediately after.