I must confess: I was initially concerned that I am perhaps not sufficiently qualified to weigh in on our planet’s current Ebola panic, seeing as I am neither a doctor nor a nurse nor a scientist of any kind nor an African fruit bat nor Dustin Hoffman.

But then I discovered that singer and odious woman-puncher Chris Brown had recently offered his opinion on the matter (he thinks “this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control”, which is technically true, I guess, though not in the intentional, cosmic way I suspect he means); and so has bleating conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, who called Obama’s African roots a “more dangerous infection” than the virus itself; and so has psychiatrist and large animatronic thumb Keith Ablow, who alleged that President Obama “may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations … allowing illegal immigrants and, potentially, even diseases to flow through” – and I realised that I am more qualified to comment than at least three famous idiots who have already inflicted their opinions on millions and millions of people. After all, I read The Hot Zone when I was 14. I bet Chris Brown hasn’t even seen Outbreak. And you call yourself an armchair epidemiologist, sir. The gall.

And anyway, there is one area in which I am eminently, objectively pedigreed to comment – relative to famous idiots or not – and that is in my capacity as a human being living in a culture where panic is marketed as both disposable entertainment and a way of life.

Realistically, something will wipe us out eventually, though it probably won’t be Ebola. We’re hurtling toward a wall, even if we can’t see what it’s made of or when we’ll hit. Again, I’m not a doctor (so please stop emailing me pictures of your weird toe), but I’m a fairly educated, competent adult and I hate the way we talk about this stuff – like it’s simultaneously the end of the world and just another fun Dustin Hoffman germ-thriller. It’s a dead end. You can’t fix the apocalypse, and there’s no reason to fix fun.

Somehow, in America at least, we seem to be taking Ebola both too seriously and not seriously enough. Rightwing xenophobes rage about closing the borders and impeaching #OBOLA (heads up, white Americans: if anyone has a track record of deliberately introducing devastating diseases to the North American continent in order to wipe out the population, it’s not half-Kenyan lawyers), while the rest of us titter proprietarily over the gory doom that we know will almost certainly never touch us; meanwhile, we’ve skimped on funding infectious disease research ever since the 90s Ebola scare lost its lurid lustre, and healthcare workers are paying the price. As Wired reported on Monday: “If there were more infection-prevention research, the nurse in Dallas (and probably the one in Spain, who may have contaminated herself doffing her gear) might not have become infected.” Not only that, but Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, says that, if it wasn’t for funding cuts, we would probably have an Ebola vaccine by now.

Sooo … do we learn from that? Are we going to invest in medical equipment that protects doctors and nurses from contamination? Procedures that minimise human error? Education campaigns about the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria? Or even, um, a functioning healthcare system? Anything constructive? Nah, said John McCain on Sunday. Instead, he suggested, Obama should appoint an Ebola tsar to assuage Americans’ superficial, borderline recreational anxieties about a disease that mainly affects people in west Africa living in extreme poverty without access to clean water and modern medical facilities, along with the underfunded, understaffed medical personnel desperately battling the epidemic. Not to mention the fact that the Obama administration almost certainly has not just appointed officials but entire agencies to contain Ebola in the US (if I learned anything from Outbreak, Rene Russo is also on the case), and that McCain’s party hates tsars, government oversight in general and probably Rene Russo, too.

Perhaps John McCain and his cohort ought to invest in a Get a Grip tsar.

Or, if he’s genuinely interested in prolonging and enhancing the lives of his constituents, he should advocate for an Influenza tsar, or a Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci tsar, or a Living Wage tsar, or a Forgive My Medical Bills/Student Loans tsar, or a Tell the Police to Stop Murdering Black People tsar. Any of those would be more useful, in the scheme of things. Not that Ebola doesn’t deserve attention – it absolutely does, and fast (and my deepest condolences to every single person who’s been affected) – but it deserves attention centred on west Africa, and not the kind of attention that deliberately whips the public into a panic so that their panic can be used as a political bargaining chip by elderly iguanas while the problems that cause and perpetuate the disease go unaddressed.

I will retract my iguana comment when John McCain starts agitating for a Global Clean Water tsar.