Stacey Shick, Columnist

I'm Going to Africa, and I Won't Get Ebola

It would be a shame if all the panic over Ebola and our confusion about geography kept families from visiting Africa.

October 9, 2014 at 8:03 PM UTC

Stacey Shick is a former Bloomberg Opinion editor. She was a copy editor at the New York Times, MLB.com and the Tampa Tribune.

No Ebola worries here.
Photographer: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images

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When I tell friends I'm flying to Africa soon for a vacation with my husband and our young daughter, they react in one of two ways: elation (trip of a lifetime!) or horror (Ebola!).

Of course, there's virtually no risk of my contracting the deadly virus. We're going to Namibia, which has had fewer cases of Ebola (zero) than the U.S. The capital, Windhoek, is about as far away from Monrovia, Liberia -- where the outbreak is uncontained -- as Miami is from Seattle. And Ebola's transmission through direct contact with body fluids keeps it from spreading as far and as fast as, say, the flu.