MICHAEL GERSON:

Right. But the fear, I think, it is not irrational in this case.

It is overdone, to some extent. We do not have an outbreak. We have a few incidents. The outbreak in West Africa, we do not have that. We know how to control it. The procedures have been there since the '70s. Ebola has been controlled in various outbreaks. And we know the disease itself is not as infectious early as it is late.

So it's a real threat to health care workers, which we have seen, not so much the general public even in those cases. But there's one area where we don't have enough fear. And that's what's happening in West Africa, where the CDC is talking about the possibility of 5,000 to 10,000 new infections a week by the end of the year.

You could be — have real threats to the economic, social and political stability of countries in West Africa, which could dramatically spread the disease. If we want panic, that's where productive panic would be employed.