Ebola – the word that has been presented to us in nearly every newscast for the last six weeks.  Ebola has been, and still is, the cause of a major public health crisis in West Africa.  The disease has claimed one life in the United States; that of a man who contracted the illness in Liberia before returning to Texas. 

                Two hospital workers who treated him have been diagnosed with the disease and, as of today, both are on the road to recovery with their conditions improved.  At least three others who contracted the disease in Liberia and were brought to the United States for treatment have been cured.

                An experimental Ebola vaccine will be sent by the Canadian government to the World Health Organization (WHO) for further testing and distribution by January 2015.  Human testing of the vaccine began last week in the United States.  Leading drug-maker Johnson & Johnson announced that it would spend up to $200 million to speed up production of an Ebola vaccine.  The company announced that vaccines will be released for "broad application" in clinical trials by May.  It also plans to collaborate with Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, which would allow the companies to manufacture millions of doses next year.

                These are all good signs in the battle against a disease that has taken nearly 5,000 lives in West Africa so far this year. Some more good news is that on Monday the WHO revealed figures that show there have been no Ebola virus transmissions in Nigeria for the last 42 days – a sign that education and prevention are working there.

                There is lots of positive news on the Ebola front but officials are still tripping over themselves to get tough on it.  Why?  It's still headline news and it is the election season. 

Think about it.  The flu killed 30,000 Americans last year, yet many TV viewers obsessed with Ebola fear won't get a flu shot.

                The Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch called it a "perfect storm" when he wrote "Cable news networks, especially MSNBC and CNN, have been losing viewers since the 2012 election and find the only way to boost ratings is to elevate an event as "breaking news."

                The WHO and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) haven't done a very good job of helping to relieve the panic.  Timely, truthful statements will go a long way to ease the fear of panicked Americans.  Skepticism of authority turns into cynicism.  People seek to build walls and to hide in their circle of trust.  They become afraid and fear, of course, breeds fear - a fog that alters perception and clouds thought.  That fear has closed schools and altered politics.

                We are mired in a cloud of understandable concern, misinformation, political opportunism and panic.  The line between vigilance and hysteria is blurry.

                Remember the panic that followed the anthrax attacks of 2001 and the West Nile virus outbreak in New York City in 1999?  The big difference today with the Ebola fear is that it is fed by social media and a 24-hour news cycle.  We've seen how our experience with Ebola has become a lesson in the ways things that go viral electronically can be as potent and frightening as those that do so biologically, perhaps even more so.

                This has become a national deliberation about the conflicts between public health interest, civil liberties and common sense.

                That's a reason to panic.