That nurse is a heroic human being, as are the other nurses and doctors who are desperately trying to stop this epidemic.

Christy and Cuomo, politicians in general, not so much.

a level of care for others.

Ebola is yet another example of literally thousands where a rightwinger will be wrong about everything, from their reaction to who to blame, etc.

Embryos and zygotes. Other than that....

I have not been following this story super-closely).

That Christie is a real piece of work. OTOH, he seems perfectly well-suited for today's Republican Party.

Small bands of hunter-gatherers that each have their own territory and only get together for special occasions don't provide the conditions for epidemics. Only agriculture does that.

It took lots of people living in close proximity with one another and with their domestic animals -- and clearing the forests so as to displace the animals there -- to create the conditions for epidemic diseases to take hold and spread.

Even in the Americas before Columbus there may not have been epidemics, because the indigenous peoples were completely vulnerable to European diseases. The Europeans may have brought syphilis back with them (the jury is still out on that one), but there hadn't been syphilis plagues ravaging the New World.

For that matter, it's equally inaccurate to say, "And as long as there have been human beings, there have been human beings with power over other human beings. As long as there have been human beings with power over other human beings, there have been governments." Hunter-gatherer societies have no government in a sense we would recognize -- and they're very careful to keep any one member of the group from getting too big for their britches.

There's nothing wrong with arguing against the ginned-up panic over Ebola. But blaming it on human nature does a discredit to us humans.

Present-day hunter-gatherers are vulnerable to picking up diseases from their civilized neighbors, but the best evidence is that when the world was all small foraging bands, epidemic diseases were rare to non-existent.

http://books.google.com/books?id=7yCpBRAY22UC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=epidemics+hunter-gatherers&source=bl&ots=LIN5JXcw0X&sig=6U8aW_j65iaks4CZrcGIx0rrnTA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZodOVNG-O9S3yAT1woC4AQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=epidemics%20hunter-gatherers&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=SXpGhERTtOEC&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=epidemics+hunter-gatherers&source=bl&ots=e8EyY52pzo&sig=euhHdo0zYY5nIYZG2Z77qfU145Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UYdOVIaJLJOnyATg7IKICQ&ved=0CEsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=epidemics%20hunter-gatherers&f=false

I.E. not agriculture. In the early 1900s, when typhoid was called "the white plague" and was one of the main killers, doctors in upper Canada would send native people back to their homes as that was the best chance for recovery. The death rate for people living as hunter gatherers was far lower and the only explanation they could come up with was the difference in diet.

Thank you for your post as it is important to have correct information. I have read about the theory that Spaniards contracted syphilis in the Americas, and the thought is that the native peoples might have been carriers but did not show symptoms. Agriculture may have been the change that brought about the beginning of the destruction of the environment. I argued in another thread that agriculture allows for population booms that are impossible in hunter gatherer societies which naturally leads to the depletion of resources. Plagues and war are the only things to keep it in check, but it seems even those can't keep apace with population growth.

Love, love, love Charles Pierce. He tells it like it is and does it so eloquently.

This is how you deal with sensationalist media headlines (like "A GHOST ship laden with cannibal RATS is sailing for our shores, experts fear – as nobody knows where it is!" from The Sun)

Someone needs to get in Christie and Cuomo's face about this

is looking stupid with a lawsuit thrown in.