Unsung heroes vs. "we've got this"

As I contemplete the tragedy that is (was?) the COVID epidemic, I am reminded of, several years ago, some unsung heroes when Ebola came to visit in Liberia, especially inasmuch as the Firestone plantation (where much of the world's natural rubber is grown) is concerned.

Now the heroes of which I write today didn't take heroic measures to combat Ebola.  They didn't come up with new therapies to combat it, didn't derive spectacular models to figure out what was going to happen mathematically, and they didn't invent new medicines.  What they did was far more profound and powerful.

Who were they?  They were the staffs of the chief hospitals that Ed Garcia, then the chief manager of the Firestone Plantation, contacted when he realized that workers were coming down with arguably one of the scariest infectious diseases out there.

What did they do?  Simple; they told Firestone/Bridgestone that they had no clue whatsoever what to do, forcing them to set up their own hospital--isolated from the healthy--and to use the best equipment they had--hazmat suits--to reduce the biohazard.  They still lost a number of people to that horrible disease, but the epidemic was stopped.

Contrast that with the U.S. model with COVID, where hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes more or less said "we've got this"--and in doing so, destroyed any pretense of a quarantine, exposing millions to the disease who were extremely vulnerable to it.  

If we had instead followed the Firestone example, we would have set up separate clinics where sufferers would have gone until they were very sure that they were no longer infectious. They would have replaced face masks with real hazmat gear, would have implemented laminar (clean room) flow to reduce viral load in the air, and would have had intensive opportunity for figuring out which antiviral therapies (yes, ivermectin and the like) were most effective.

So if you're in a case where you've been asked to do something you're not quite sure you can do, don't be afraid to say "that's beyond my ability right now."  Liberian medical authorities did exactly that, and their country is largely Ebola-free as a result.  Hail to these heroes!