Our nation has been struck with Ebola fever— not literally, of
course, but rather a rising tide of fear that the virus will sweep
across the United States. In fact, since the first case cropped up
in Texas, tracking Ebola has become something of an American
obsession— and not a healthy one.
“The idea that Ebola will take over the United States is an
unfounded fear,” said Dr. Liise-Anne Pirofski, chief of
infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of
Medicine. Because the incubation period is relatively brief—
only 2 to 21 days —Ebola isn’t likely to spread undetected and
suddenly emerge in vast numbers, added Dr. Robert Schooley,
chief of infectious diseases at the UC San Diego School of
Medicine. As for the Ebola case in Texas? “I think it was very
much an exception,” he told Yahoo Health, adding: “It’s a threat
in any place that airplanes can land, but we have the means to
prevent it from spreading. I don’t see Ebola as the biggest
infectious-disease worry for the people that I take care of.”

So what should we be worried about? It’s tough to predict since
it is the unpredictability of certain bacteria and viruses that
often makes them so alarming, Schooley said. But there are
some existing viruses and bacteria that pose an ongoing threat
— and that you’re much more likely to catch than Ebola.
1. Influenza
The flu doesn’t have an exotic, tropical-sounding name— and
we are able to vaccinate against it with some degree of efficacy.
Yet it is still a major killer in the United States. “More people
will die this winter from the flu than Ebola,” said Schooley.
Influenza does pose a very real, mortal threat, “particularly
because we’re never able to predict with 100 percent certainty
which strains will be circulating,” said Pirofski.
In fact, as recently as 2009, a strain emerged that wasn’t
covered by the vaccine. And it wasn’t just the normal
populations of concern— the very young and the elderly —that
were struck down, said Pirofski. An unusually high number of
people in the prime of their life were affected. The reason: In
some cases, young, healthy people’s immune systems may
respond too exuberantly to the flu virus, and the resulting
inflammation may actually exacerbate the illness, explained
Pirofski.
2. MRSA
There are an estimated 75,309 cases of methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus , or MRSA, infection in the United States,
according to CDC tracking data. Compare that to one currently
confirmed case of Ebola in the United States. What exactly is
MRSA? Simply put, it’s a strain of staph bacteria that doesn’t
respond to the antibiotics traditionally used to treat the
infection.
“Antibiotic resistance is a major threat,” said Pirofski. “By
definition, these organisms can’t be controlled with existing
therapies, and they are very entrenched in some of our larger
cities and more advanced tertiary- care hospitals. You don’t
have to go to West Africa to get them —you can go to your
local hospital, or maybe even some other health-care provider
settings, and you can acquire these organisms.”
Although MRSA infections in hospitals are on the decline, a
CDC study revealed that the resistant bacteria is still capable of
causing life-threatening infections, particularly in hospital
patients.

3. Resistant Gonorrhea
An estimated 820,000 new cases of gonorrhea crop up in the
United States each year, and now, we’re grappling with a form
of the bacteria that doesn’t respond to the treatments we’ve long
relied on. In the early 2000s, strains of gonorrhea resistant to
cephalosporins— the antibiotics used as the primary defense
against the sexually transmitted infection —began to show up in
East Asia. Now, the resistant bacteria are here— a problem the
CDC calls “an urgent threat.” “[Resistant gonorrhea] has really
emerged as a concern in the United States more recently,”
Pirofski told Yahoo Health. According to a 2013 CDC report,
there are an estimated 246,000 cases of resistant gonorrhea in
the country each year.
And alarmingly, many people, particularly women, who are
infected don’t show any symptoms (or have only very mild
ones), giving resistant gonorrhea the potential to easily spread.
“We really do not know what causes some people to become
very ill and some to just [harbor] it,” said Pirofski. “But even
people that just [harbor] it are capable of transmitting it. That’s
a huge problem.”
Although it rarely kills people, when left untreated gonorrhea
can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women.
And, according to the CDC, it can spread to the blood, resulting
in a potentially life-threatening condition called disseminated
gonococcal infection, which is characterized by arthritis,
inflammation of the tissue covering tendons, and dermatitis.