You have no doubt noticed that the current Ebola hysteria has really whipped up the smash-bash-and-trash-the-government movement.  What’s interesting is that, while this has usually been pretty much the purview of Republicans, many Democrats and the so-called “liberal” press including the New York Times have all jumped on the let’s-hate-government bandwagon.  The Ebola episode has made it the news obsession du jour to expose CDC incompetence (and by extension everything governmental).  Since we love to deal in hyperbole in America, you could say this frenzied attack on the CDC is like blaming the Japanese government for Hiroshima hospitals not being prepared to deal with the atomic bomb. 

There are 5,700 hospitals in the United States.  The CDC does not manage nor control any of them.  It issues standards, regulation and protocols.  Yet what happened in Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has now been construed to be a catastrophic failure of the CDC.

Some unnamed, probably low-level nurse at Presbyterian Hospital did not immediately quarantine Mr. Duncan when he first came to the hospital.  Please note, it is the hospital’s responsibility to train personnel and enforce those protocols but somehow, according to the politicians and the press, the nurse’s erroneous actions were explicitly caused by the CDC.  Evidently it is the DCD’s fault that some health care workers did not know how to put on protective clothing properly.  Perhaps they were just dumb or their hospitals’ staff did not adequately train them, but, no matter, it’s the CDC’s fault.

Then, another nurse preparing to travel called the CDC and reported a low level fever which was not prohibitive according to "protocols" and some unnamed employee said there was no existing restriction on her travel.  And, once again, this becomes uncontestable evidence of a thoroughly incompetent government agency.

Predictably, we have the obligatory congressional hearings and screams for the agency head to resign.  This, of course, resolves nothing, but it makes good political theater especially in an election cycle.

Now all this mess could have been avoided if our country were run according to former congressman Ron Paul’s ideas.  He wrote a column declaring that this whole Ebola epidemic would have been better handled by private industry.  In his column, “Liberty, not government key to containing Ebola,” he posits that private airlines have a greater incentive to protect their customers than governments and that Firestone which established its own Ebola treatment center at its plant in Liberia clearly demonstrates that the free market is our best defense against Ebola.  And this guy ran for president and his son wants to.

But I am going to give the CDC the benefit of a doubt and assume it is doing its job to do everything possible to protect the American public.  In the meantime, I am going to jump in bed and pull the covers over my head.