Fear the librarians, and other infectious Ebola musings

The history of the world and humanity, the record of all things spiritual, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, is contained within the walls of our libraries, the repositories of knowledge … and now the single-largest health threat in modern times.

I’d rather live in ignorance than ever step foot in another library again until every last librarian is held to account for his or her role in the spread of Ebola virus, a disease the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is comparing to a modern-day plague, according to the Internet and a couple people on Facebook.

Several schools closed their doors Thursday for fear of Ebola, including a temporary scare at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. It seems the infection and cross-country jaunt of Dallas nurse Amber Vinson, the second American to be diagnosed with the disease, has exposed half of the Western Hemisphere, from the catering staff at a wedding in Cleveland, to the second cousin twice removed of a guy who knows a guy who drove by an airport Vinson’s plane passed overhead.

But they are all missing the point. Why have we not closed the libraries in this country? There are roughly 120,000 libraries of all kinds, from public schools to state and municipal libraries. They employ roughly 150,000 librarians in this country.

I don’t know about you, but 150,000 librarians seems a manageable number to round up and quarantine, at least for the standard three-week incubation period of the disease.

I spoke with Brawley Public Library Director Marjo Mello on Thursday afternoon, who played coy on the subject.

“That’s an interesting idea, because we do come in contact with the public every day,” she said, “but as a profession I’m not worried about it.”

Mello said she’d be fine with a quarantine as long as there were enough books and Kindle editions.

Wow. Just wow.

“We librarians do so many different types of jobs that having a three-week quarantine to read would be a bonus for us,” Mello said.

Um, OK.

She said about two weeks ago an apparent Liberian applied for a position as a library page in Brawley; “true story; she wrote ‘Liberian’ on her application,” Mello said. “Whatever,” I said.

Like I told Mello, I don’t know what the significance of that whole “Liberian” story was, but she seemed to be dodging the real issue of the public health threat that a nation of unchecked and unmonitored librarians pose. I mean, really, we all know librarians are widely credited with this pandemic. In fact, according to unconfirmed reports via a meme of this one chick’s Facebook page, the first U.S. casualty of Ebola, Thomas Eric Duncan, was librarian.

Sadly, this might be the biggest unpatched hole in the Ebola storyline, and the industry doesn’t want to deal with it. We sent an inquiry to American Library Association media relations specialist Heather Cho. Considering she asked for a list of emailed questions, it’s clear she’s hiding behind the library illuminati, with its apparent stranglehold of knowledge and a fearful public.

These are among the issues she would not address:

“Do you foresee a mass movement to quarantine librarians? If so, how will advocacy groups such as yours respond? In a worst-case scenario, when public hysteria reaches the point of angry mobs trying to round up the 150,000 or so librarians in the United States, what will the ALA do? Does the ALA have Ebola protocols in place, travel advisories for its members? Has the CDC contacted the ALA? I hear a populist movement is building to block all Librarians from entering the U.S. through land, air and seaports. What will happen to the librarians on U.S. soil?”

Conveniently, at the 11th hour, Imperial County Librarian Connie Barrington returned my call. I was a little taken aback by her responses; it’s as if she was egging on the public, warning all of us to tread lightly.

“We get a better cross-section, if you think about. We have adults as well as children. That makes us more dangerous, and we do consider ourselves the place where everyone is welcome as long as they behave civilly,” Barrington said. “And I bet there will be someone, somewhere who comes in with a symptom, asking us if that is one of the behavior policies for a library.”

While no one from the CDC has apparently contacted the ALA or local libraries on protocols and procedures, Barrington said, “We really should have hazmat suits for the staff if we want to protect them.”

The staff? What about the rest of us, Connie? Must we live in fear of librarians? Well, I never …

This column initially appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Oct. 17, 2014.