Comparing Ebola with AIDS

Sacramento Bee: Only in hindsight will we truly know whether the global response to Ebola was rapid enough to stop it from spreading into a pandemic. Yet it is still, for the most part, a West African outbreak.

The U.S. appears to be moving with admirable haste, while not overreacting to some of the more paranoid voices calling for extreme measures. Only in hindsight will we truly know whether the global response to Ebola was rapid enough to stop it from spreading into a pandemic. What makes the United States’ rapid response to Ebola all the more admirable is the view of it through the prism of another pandemic that began in Africa: AIDS/HIV. Of course AIDS is fundamentally different from Ebola. But had the U.S. and world leaders reacted with the same sense of urgency to the AIDS virus, many fewer people may have died.