RAND PAUL IS AN EBOLA TRUTHER

Media insiders, here's your hip, sophisticated poster boy for Republicanism 2.0:

Glenn [Beck] interviewed Senator Rand Paul on radio today to talk about some key elections and the outbreak of the Ebola virus here in the United States. Paul thinks it's a huge mistake to downplay the threat of an epidemic, and believes political correctness is what's hampering a real discussion from taking place....

"I do think you have to be concerned. It's an incredibly transmissible disease that everyone is downplaying, saying it's hard to catch. Well, we have physicians and health workers who are catching it who are completely gloved down and taking every precaution and they're still getting it. So, yes, I'm very concerned about this. I think at the very least there needs to be a discussion about airline travel between the countries that have the raging disease," he [said].

Of course, that's not what's going on. Here's the truth:

Health care workers in poor nations often do not have enough protective gear to keep them safe from being infected with blood-borne viruses such as Ebola and HIV, a new study shows.

While the study was conducted before the current Ebola outbreak began in West Africa last spring, its findings are confirmed in statistics released Monday [August 25, 2014] by the World Health Organization (WHO)....

"In many cases, medical staff are at risk because no protective equipment is available -- not even gloves and face masks," the WHO statement added.

However, in the study reported online Aug. 26 in the journal Tropical Medicine and International Health, Johns Hopkins researchers found these shortages existed long before this latest Ebola outbreak.

In Liberia, only 56 percent of hospitals had protective eyewear for doctors and nurses and only 63 percent had sterile gloves. In Sierra Leone, those figures were 30 percent and 70 percent, respectively, the researchers found....

The mainstream press hates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and is just dying to anoint someone, anyone, as the modern, hipster embodiment of a rejuvenated GOP. Rand Paul, with his groovy dudebro libertarianism, is the one the insider journos have pinned the most hopes on. Well, yeah, this Ebola trutherism is hip, but it's hip the way vaccine skepticism is hip among upscale parents.

And who knows -- maybe that is the future of hipsterism. Maybe the GOP should add "Republicans are anti-vaxxers" to that "Republicans have tattoos and beards" ad they just did. But if that's the future, we're doomed as a society.