[UPDATE AD NAUSEUM]:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – An American Airlines flight from Dallas was quarantined in Nashville after medical scare. Health officials said there was no risk for Ebola.
[…]
The Metro Public Health Department said the passenger with the medical issue had no history of contact with anyone with Ebola in Dallas and had no travel history to Africa. Officials added there was no concern the passenger had Ebola and there was no risk to other passengers on the plane.
This was the second Ebola scare in the mid-state in the last 48 hours. First responders in Hazmat suits quarantined a Mt. Juliet gas station late Saturday night.
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Oh fer crissakes. With the arrival of cold and flu season, expect to see more stories like this one:
MT. JULIET, Tenn. – A Mt. Juliet gas station was closed for several hours after a woman called emergency dispatchers with what they described as Ebola-like symptoms.
Wilson County officials said the woman was complaining of chest pains just after midnight Sunday. After dispatchers began questioning the woman for additional information, they determined she could have symptoms of the Ebola virus.
EMTs responded to the Mapco gas station at the intersection of Lebanon Road and Mt. Juliet Road wearing full protective gear. The gas station was closed while crews worked.
The woman was transported to TriStar Summit Medical Center in Hermitage, were medical crews had already been alerted to the possible Ebloa threat. Nurses met the patient at the front door wearing masks, gloves and protective masks.
After evaluating the woman, the situation was “cleared,” according to officials. No Ebloa protocol was activated.
A spokesperson for Summit Medical Center said doctors have cleared the woman, and she does not have the Ebola virus. No threat remained at the hospital.
Here’s a quick meme to determine if you might have ebola:
There is a rampant, overriding, highly politicized culture of fear in America. It’s been with us for about the past 30 years, maybe more. It used to thrive on the fringes of American society, where people afraid of the coming zombie apocalypse would stockpile their canned goods, guns and ammo. Hell, I remember in the mid-70s my mom kept a stash of canned food and 50-gallon bottles of water in our garage “for the revolution,” and we were not a nutso survivalist family.
But since 9/11 this culture of fear has been mainstreamed. It’s been aided and abetted by talk radio — mostly right-wing radio, but I’ve heard my share of fear porn on left-wing radio, too. The news media has fear as its default position (Missing white women! Shark attacks! Immigrants! Terrorism!) and political entities exploit it for profit.
I have this theory that fear sells so easily here because we are such a prosperous country. People who have a lot, have a lot to lose, and thus tend to be more fearful. Fear is an easy sell, but it’s also incredibly damaging. It’s turning America into a ridiculous parody of modern civilization.
When I read stuff about random people thinking they have Ebola all I can do is laugh at them.
[UPDATE]: And another one, in Birmingham, Alabama. This one was at an airport so the “abundance of caution” makes slightly more sense.
[UPDATE] 2:
The only thing more depressing than this story are the search engine terms WordPress tells me has brought folks here today: “ebola scare in mt. juliet, tennessee,: “mt juliet ebola,” and this one: “is it true that a woman has ebola in mt juilet.” Seems like the full-court fear has begun.
I am slightly encouraged by “george zimmerman is an asshole,” however.
Southern Beale 
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/cartoons/2014/08/07/cartoons-on-the-ebola-outbreak?int=a01309
There’s also a strain of enterovirus going around
Enterovirus D68 — 2 children have already died. Hundreds sickened. People should be focused on that, IMHO.
Fear has been mainstream in America for a good long time. The War on Drugs, and before that The War on Crime were all about fear. Fear of Communism (and of appearing to be weak on Communism) were what gave us Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Red Scare, and the Cold War in general. Before WWII, people were so afraid FDR had to go on the radio to tell them not to be.
Good points. It’s our national psychosis.
Don’t forget the huge Millennium panic. Maybe it was just in my part of the USA, but in mid-to-late 1999, all the rwnj’s were stockpiling supplies and buying up food dehydrators for the coming apocalypse on 1 January, 2000.
Oooh yeah I forgot about that one. Yeah, I remember trying to fill my one-gallon water bottle at what was then Wild Oats and there was a line of people with giant 5-gallon jugs.
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I think it was Hiroshima that changed everything. That was the first time we had to realize that man’s actions could cause that great a dying. And the possibilities grew larger when we were not the only one to have the bomb, and we knew that a nuclear war could end life on Earth, something no previous generation had to face. Then there have been a series of similar scares, nuclear meltdowns, and now the possibility of global warming.
Which brings me to ask if we can make a blanket statement that ‘fear is a psychosis.’ It is the unreasoning superstitious fears of the type you mention that are the psychosis, but it seems as if we — rather those of us on the other side — are encouraging those fears, exaggerating them, with no pushback for sanity. (Instead our candidates seem as afraid as anyone else, but of the imagined ‘silent majority’ or ‘pitchfork army’ that we fear will arise if we stand boldly for what we believe.)
There has to be a solution, but how we can show people that they don’t need to be afraid of the Muslim, Ebola-spreading, white- (and America-)hating demonic resident of the White House, when even the supposed right-mainstream is echoing WorldNutDaily is a hard one. (Sadly, as ridiculous as those are, there are far too many people who believe one or all of these ‘big lies.’ And yes, I say again that that is the technique we are facing. We had weapons against those forms of propaganda, once, but we lost them a few decades back.)
I dunno, Jim. Seems like back in the 1920s and 1930s when you had big disease outbreaks and child mortality rates were really high people had a very realistic connection to their mortality. You can see it in the old church hymns, that were all about death and dying and the afterlife.
I think it has to do with the death of American exceptionalism. With 9/11 we realized we were vulnerable and stuff happening across the oceans could affect us directly at home. Ebola taps into that same fear.
George Carlin had it about right when he said that we should stop worrying about saving the planet when we can’t even save ourselves. He went to say t hat the earth would shake humanity off like a plague of fleas and continue on it merry trips ’round the sun.