The Four Kinds of Political Ebola Panic
Ebola-carrying terrorists, martial law, and the other theories causing people to lose their minds.
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Buzzfeed's unstoppable Andrew Kaczynski has found video of South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson – who is still best known, I guess, for shouting "you lie!" during a presidential address to Congress five years ago – speculating about how terrorists could use Ebola to attack the United States. Not that they'd bottle it up and toss it over, or anything so simple. Let Wilson explain:
It's superficially easy to write this off as a case of "Republican Congressman Says," of a safe-seat red-stater saying something silly but uncommon. Wilson isn't alone. Jonathan Last, the wonkish Weekly Standard columnist, published a piece yesterday that ran through the "reasons to panic" about the devastation that Ebola could wreak.