How Ebola uses our humanity against us. Slate

A sick boy in West Point, Liberia. The man here is taking a huge risk by interacting with him. Slate/Getty Images

Ebola thrives on compassion, an article in Slate argues. The people most at risk for Ebola transmission are families, women and medical professionals, all people who take care of the stricken. The article points out how human nature compels people to help those in need, thus dooming the helpers. Simple acts of kindness, like comforting a child, helping someone to a clinic or a child trying to comfort a parent can spread the disease. The author points out how efforts to curtail the spread of AIDS failed because people were unable to stop having high-risk sex. Now, in western Africa, we have high-risk compassion, which is even less likely to stop. 

My Comment:

It won't be often that I link to Slate but in this case the author is 100% right. This disease does spread through compassion. It would take very strong willpower, or a complete lack of humanity, to not comfort a family member who is suffering from Ebola. Even knowing how dangerous it is people would want to do the "right" thing, which is of course, the wrong thing to do. The article also helps explain how the disease has been spreading so easily. It seems that the only way to protect people from this outbreak is to completely isolate the victims from their families and to have doctors without any compassion. Neither of those things are possible.

And it's important to explain how easy this disease spreads. Lets say you are a parent with a sick child. What is the first thing you do? Check his temperature with the back of your hand? Got a tiny cut on your hand? Touch your eyes or mouth afterwards? Congrats, you just caught Ebola from being a good parent. And god help you if you change a diaper. Ebola only needs a couple of viral particles to enter the bloodstream and once that happens you will have the disease. But how on earth can we expect a parent to ignore a sick child? How do we expect family members to not help a sick person? How do we expect doctors to treat patients without touching them at all? There doesn't seem to be a solution here so the disease will continue to spread. This situation is incredibly bad and I just don't see it getting any better anytime soon.