In less than a month, voters will make their final election decisions and decide the course of public policy over the next two years. But this election season has proven less than captivating.
There are burning questions that will be answered: Will Republicans gain control of the U.S. Senate and further complicate the last two years of the Obama presidency? Will Gov. Paul LePage and other unpopular Republican governors win re-election? And how many chances will voters everywhere in the country really have to hear the people vying to represent them debate?
The questions aren’t burning enough, apparently. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found just 15 percent of adult Americans (including just 5 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds) are paying close attention to the upcoming midterm elections.
To which topics are they devoting more attention? Ebola, for one.
Some 36 percent of Americans are paying close attention to Ebola-related developments, according to the Pew research. And that response came before 42-year-old Thomas Duncan, the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola, died on Oct. 8.
Fears of a worldwide Ebola outbreak are still spreading. Authorities confirmed Sunday that the nurse who treated Duncan tested positive for the virus although she wore protective gear while treating him. In addition, a Spanish nursing assistant is in serious condition at a Madrid hospital after testing positive, and U.S. House members are calling for travel bans from the West African nations hit hardest by the outbreak. Last week, when a Freeport Middle School student apparently claimed to a classmate that her father was being tested for Ebola, the girl found herself immediately separated from other students.
The fear is understandable. The often deadly Ebola virus, spread via direct contact through broken skin, can cause internal bleeding, dehydration and multiple organ failure. The outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 4,000 people. The virus has no cure, though the U.S. health care system is better equipped to handle it than the West African health care systems struggling to deal with the outbreak.
As people in Maine and the U.S. fret over Ebola, their health-related concerns might be better directed toward other illnesses that are more likely to afflict people here and over which they have more control.
The PBS NewsHour last week assembled a list of six diseases that “should worry you more than Ebola.” There’s Enterovirus D-68, the measles, whooping cough, infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria, respiratory syncytial virus, and the flu and pneumonia.
All of those maladies are very much here. Enterovirus D-68 last month claimed the lives of children in New Jersey and Rhode Island and has been confirmed in 628 people across the U.S., the measles has resurfaced in the U.S. in recent years, the flu and pneumonia are constants, and whooping cough is almost always active — including in Maine.
And they have another common thread: There’s something we can all do about them.
Parents can be sure to have their children vaccinated against the whooping cough and measles. (Indeed, a main reason the measles has resurfaced after near eradication is the choice by many parents not to have their children vaccinated.) Flu shots are widely available. And there’s always the option of common sense to prevent the spread of contagious disease: Stay home if you’re sick, and try to avoid contact with those who are infected.
We also have a little bit of control over another phenomenon that is more likely to affect our lives but isn’t rivaling Ebola in capturing the national imagination.
That phenomenon is the mid-term elections coming up in less than a month. The little bit of control we all have? Our votes.