Chris Cuomo is feverish as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

All because a biker confronted him when he was out of his house while infected with the coronavirus!

When the biker confronted him, Cuomo said he’d wanted to respond, getting heated when he detailed how the guy “didn’t know the rules” and how he’d made sure to take social-distancing measures.

NO! Social distancing isn't enough when you actually have the virus! Cuomo was endangering everyone, perhaps thinking the rules don't apply to him because he's a celebrity.

But “here I am in an almost powerless position against this asshole because I’m a celebrity and he’s allowed to say whatever he wants to me. And I have to take it or he’s gonna call the New York Post and lie about something and then I’m going to have to deal with it,” Cuomo continued.

The anchor then alluded to a caught-on-tape incident last August, when he launched into a profanity-laced rant against a man who called him “Fredo.” “I have to tolerate people’s opinion about me because I’m a public figure,” Cuomo said. “I don’t want to do that, I don’t think its worth it to me.”

He's arguing that he can't have the freedom a non-celebrity has — the freedom to get into an angry  confrontation with a stranger. Out of fear that the biker guy — that "jackass, loser, fat tire biker" — would go to the press and report the shockingly bad behavior, Cuomo chose to rant about the entire experience on the air and to go on about how he hates his job:

"Hey, team Biden is Joe and I’m sitting here in Wilmington, Delaware. It’s a scary time. A lot of people out there confused things are changing every day, every hour."

"So I wanted to have this conversation with you now if we could, why am I doing this? Well, first so we can keep talking with each other or we can’t hold rallies anymore, but we’re not gathering in large public spaces.... And a, the second reason is I think this podcast could offer some really helpful information. I’ve seen these kinds of crises before and uh, and I’ve sat in the situation room in the oval office and we’ve grappled three crises from Daniel outbreak to the Iran nuclear deal to the auto industry rescue. And, uh, during that time I’ve been able to work with some pretty accomplished experts, women and men who have steered us through epidemics and demic.... [T]he young people who think they don’t have to worry about social dissonance distancing I should say. You know, do it for older people in your life.... You know, I have overwhelming faith in the American people when the American people have never, ever, ever, ever, ever let their country down when faced with a challenge. Never. And they’re smart. I am so darn proud. It sounds corny to be an American. How, look how we’re pulling together.... And, uh, you know, my heart goes out to all those folks who have lost somebody or have someone in the hospital who’s suffering. It just, it’s an enormous, enormous burden. And, uh, but, uh, we’re thinking about you. I really mean it and I, all Americans are pulling together, so we’re going to get through this... And, uh, in the meantime, everybody stay healthy, stay safe, and, uh, I’ll be talking to you regularly. Thank you so much."

That's Joe Biden, from a transcription of a podcast from the Joe Biden for President Website. I've added ellipses where I've taken things out, but I haven't changed anything else. You can also listen to the audio at that link.

IN THE COMMENTS:

Rick: "What is a Daniel outbreak?"

"U.S.-built Ebola treatment centers in Liberia are nearly empty as outbreak fades."

Great! Or... not so great?

The U.S. military sent about 3,000 troops to West Africa to build centers like this one in recent months. They were intended as a crucial safeguard against an epidemic that flared in unpredictable, deadly waves. But as the outbreak fades in Liberia, it has become clear that the disease had already drastically subsided before the first American centers were completed. Several of the U.S.-built units haven’t seen a single patient infected with Ebola....

“If they had been built when we needed them, it wouldn’t have been too much,” said Moses Massaquoi, the Liberian government’s chairman for Ebola case management. “But they were too late.”

Not noticing the whole "Person of the Year" business.

I loathe Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" annual nonsense. Nevertheless, I'd always given it some thought as it approaches. Who will be Time's "Person of the Year"? I'd believed it was an irresistible question, best to confront, endure, and get past in preparation for the announcement. Then there's the announcement, and you briefly note and critique it and move on.

This morning — I don't know, something about waking up at 4 a.m. — it occurred to me to check who's considered to be in the running this year, and I was surprised to see the announcement had come a couple days ago.  I realized I'd seen pictures of the cover, but the image had not registered at a "Person of the Year" cover:



Who did the ebola fighters nudge out? The first runner-up seems to be "Ferguson Protesters, The Activists":

Protest is a performance that can make the unseen visible. In this angry epic, thousands found a role.... A black President who so often seems reluctant to talk about race was forced into the fray.... This outcry was better focused than Occupy, bigger than the one that followed the Trayvon Martin case.... But to many, it was hard to square the anger with the Molotov cocktails whistling through the night....

So... raise a Mazel Tov cocktail to the ebola fighters. How can that choice possibly cause complaint? The runner up who's an actual person — an individual — would have required too much of the patient, pedantic explanation that "Person of the Year" is not an endorsement.



Keep going with the uplift... and maybe I can finally actually, fully, and completely not notice Time's "Person of the Year."

Kaci Hickox says "I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me 'the Ebola Nurse' – now!"

I like the dissonance between "please" and "now!"

I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola. I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark. I am now past the incubation period – meaning that I will not develop symptoms of Ebola.

"Nurse Kaci Hickox left her Maine home Thursday morning for a bicycle ride with her boyfriend as police could only watch."

"'It's a beautiful day for a bike ride,' the defiant nurse cheered to assembled reporters as she and Theodore Wilbur wheeled off."

"You could hug me. You could shake my hand. I would not give you Ebola... I’m not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it’s not science-based... I’m fighting for something much more than myself. There are so many aid workers coming back and it scares me to think of how they are going to be treated, how they are going to feel."

"Ebola is a lot easier to catch than health officials have admitted..."

"... and can be contracted by contact with a doorknob contaminated by a sneeze from an infected person an hour or more before...."

That article, the top link at Drudge right now, makes the same point I focused on last week in a post titled "Ebola and the wet-dry distinction."

Lawyers for Kaci Hickox — released from New Jersey quarantine to quarantine at home in Maine — say she won't do it.

"She doesn’t want to agree to continue to be confined to a residence beyond the two days," said Steven Hyman of the New York law firm McLaughlin & Stern.

Maine health officials have said they expect Hickox to agree to be quarantined at her home until 21 days have passed since her last potential exposure to the virus. Twenty-one days is the maximum incubation period for the Ebola virus....

Another attorney representing Hickox, New York civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, said she would contest any potential court order requiring her quarantine at home. “The conditions that the state of Maine is now requiring Kaci to comply with are unconstitutional and illegal and there is no justification for the state of Maine to infringe on her liberty,” he said.

Hickox is certainly advancing the debate about quarantine. Her essay was extremely effective in making New Jersey look oppressive and abusive putting her into custody. She made a lot of people think differently about what's right and wrong, but now she's resisting the home-based quarantine, which seemed to many of us to be a respectful and safe enough middle ground.

But she's stepping it up and demanding more. This empowers those who like the extreme approach of state custody, because you can't trust these health-care workers to sacrifice their self-interests to the public's demand for protection. Those who empathized upon reading the essay of one woman abused by government are unlikely to have such warm feelings in response to the words of a bunch of lawyers expounding legalistically.

ADDED: As a number of commenters are prompting, this story needs to be connected with the news this morning that "The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said."

Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.

"The Russian government has blacklisted the California-based Wayback Machine, a comprehensive archive of the Internet..."

"... over an Islamist video available on the website."

The video, called "The Clang of Swords," by the notorious terrorist group Islamic State, was declared extremist by a court in Russia's southern Stavropol region in July.

The state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on its website Friday that it had found 400 online copies of the video and requested their removal.

A handful of sites, including Wayback Machine's domain Archive.org, did not comply, leading to their blacklisting.

I'm impressed that the Wayback Machine lasted as long as it did. I'm sure it gets you too all sorts of things the Russian government would prefer its people not to read.

In other freedom-of-speech news from the Moscow Times:

A notoriously outspoken Russian actor and former Orthodox priest who suggested last week that Ebola victims were coming back from the dead as zombies has been banned from entering Latvia over earlier incendiary comments he made about gay people.

In December 2013, [Ivan] Okhlobystin said that all homosexuals should be burned alive because they represent a "living danger" to his children. 

So his comments were literally incendiary.

Last week he suggested that some victims of the Ebola virus were turning into zombies, explaining that he had heard of many cases in which those who died from the virus were mysteriously resurrected several days later. In case there was any doubt, the actor added that he "was not joking" and that he had purchased a crossbow, "just in case."

A crossbow? On a zombie? Does that even work?

The Doctors Without Borders nurse who didn't like the way the U.S. authorities treated her upon arrival at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Kaci Hickox tells the story from her perspective, and it's getting a lot of attention. I'd like to hear the story told from the perspective of the authorities who are said to have treated her with not just an abundance of caution but with disrespect and outright abuse. You should read the whole thing, but I'll quote the part that made me wonder what really happened:

Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101.

The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.

I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset....

Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong....

The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. “Your temperature is 98.6,” they said. “You don't have a fever but we were told you had a fever.”

After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts [sic] my neck and looked at the temperature again. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. “Your face is just flushed.”

Why — before the blood test results — would the doctor feel her neck with his bare hands? What is the protocol? Either we're swinging from one extreme to another on how much to isolate people who've been in the proximity of ebola, or different officials and health-care workers have different ideas about the degree of isolation. Health-care workers have a personal self-interest in remaining free citizens, and they may lean — like Dr. Craig Spencer — toward feeling confident that as long as they don't have a fever they can go about the city — bowling, etc. — like anybody else. Others — those with political accountability/vulnerability — lean toward the crowd-pleasing Theater of Extreme Precaution.

"He's a hero to me... He's a fantastic humanitarian and that is how people should think of him."

"He wanted to be a doctor without borders from when he was a kid. It's all he wanted to do.... He didn't just want to be a doctor, he wanted to be a doctor without borders."

Craig Spencer's uncle is distressed to hear criticism of his heroically humanitarian nephew, who went to great lengths to do good, but also did some meaningless little things — riding the subway, going bowling — that he could so easily have avoided.

Ebola and the wet-dry distinction:

From the excellent New Yorker article "The Ebola Wars":

There are two distinct ways a virus can travel in the air. In what’s known as droplet infection, the virus can travel inside droplets of fluid released into the air when, for example, a person coughs. The droplets travel only a few feet and soon fall to the ground. The other way a virus can go into the air is through what is called airborne transmission. In this mode, the virus is carried aloft in tiny droplets that dry out, leaving dust motes, which can float long distances, can remain infective for hours or days, and can be inhaled into the lungs. Particles of measles virus can do this, and have been observed to travel half the length of an enclosed football stadium. Ebola may well be able to infect people through droplets, but there’s no evidence that it infects people by drying out or getting into the lungs on dust particles. In 1989, a virus known today as Reston, which is a filovirus related to Ebola, erupted in a building full of monkeys in Reston, Virginia, and travelled from cage to cage. One possible way, never proved, is that the virus particles hitched rides in mist driven into the air by high-pressure spray hoses used to clean the cages, and then circulated in the building’s air system. A rule of thumb among Ebola experts is that, if you are not wearing biohazard gear, you should stand at least six feet away from an Ebola patient, as a precaution against flying droplets.

Did you understand that wet/dry was the relevant distinction in the communicability of ebola? Do you think this distinction has been effectively, clearly, and honestly conveyed by the various experts and officials who are trying to keep us informed and at the right level of vigilance? I sure don't.

AND: This is what Rand Paul was talking about:



WaPo's FactChecker Glenn Kessler analyzed Paul's statement and gave him 3 Pinocchios!

SO: "ZWZCYZ Children fashion PM2.5 anti-fog haze antibacterial ventilative mask Ebola disease prevention... Ideal for Dust, Germs, Allergies, Smoke, Pollution, Ash, Pollen, Crafts, Gardening, Travel, Anonymity... Kids Size, Made In China..."

Ebola bowling, ebola subway-riding, ebola Uber-cab-riding... in New York City.

Craig Spencer returned — by commercial airline — from his sojourn in Guinea where he treated ebola patients. He returned to the exquisitely crowded American island called Manhattan.

He didn't keep to himself within a small area, but hopped on the subway, went all the way to that other crowded island, the long one with the particularly crowded western end called Brooklyn. He went bowling. Going back to Manhattan, he opted for an Uber-cab. Thence, onward to an ambulance and to the storied Bellevue hospital, the oldest public hospital in America.

But NYC has been preparing for ebola we are told. The professionals know how to contain ebola and avoid contamination, even as Dr. Craig Spencer himself surely knew. He must have been so sure he got it right. Otherwise why would he have gotten on the subway and gone bowling?

Mayor Bill de Blasio reassured New York citizens: "Being on the same subway car or living near a person with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk."

In itself. 

I take Bill de Blasio to be an honest man. Something made him say those hedge words: in itself. 

Now, the health department tells us, it is "actively trac[ing] all of the patient’s contacts to identify anyone who may be at potential risk." But what counts as a contact with potential risk? Not simply riding in the subway car or bowling in the same bowling alley, right? Because that's not enough to put someone at risk in itself. But Craig Spencer must have believed that he had done nothing that put himself at risk. Spencer's fiancée and 2 of his friends are under quarantine. That's the scope of the relevant potential risk. The taxi driver, we're told, isn't at risk.

The city's health commissioner says that Spencer was not at "a stage of disease that creates a risk of contagiousness" that night he went bowling. And: "We consider it extremely unlikely, the probability being close to nil, that there will be any problem related to his taking the subway system."

Close to nil.

They can't shut down the subway. Meanwhile, the bowling alley was closed last night. Nobody has to go bowling... ebowla-ing.

"We don’t want to be seen as capitalizing on the tragedy."

"You don’t want to be seen as, 'We’re sending in the robots.' It sounds insensitive and crass."

Rush Limbaugh calls my name... and calls out Obama for woman-kissing and other possible sexism.

Here's the transcript of a segment of today's show, where there was discussion of 2 related incidents: 1. The "don't touch my girlfriend" scene in Chicago where Obama, demonstrating how to vote, ordered a woman to kiss him, and 2. Obama's description of an ebola-related appearance at Emory University hospital: "I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed, not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory because of the valiant work that they did in treating one of the patients."

A woman had called in about that ebola incident, and — as Rush put it:

"[W]hat she thought was that since he made a big deal out of not kissing the doctors, that he wanted to make everybody aware that he wasn't gay. And her point was, what's wrong with being gay? 

My point would be that he used the stereotype that doctors are male and nurses are female. But, yeah, on top of that, what's wrong — within his world view — with men kissing men?

Well, he is married. If he was gay, that would be a problem....

Wait! If he's distinguishing kissing males and females, he's specifying that kissing is sexual, and kissing the women should be a problem for a man married to a woman. If it's not sexual, he should kiss both sexes indiscriminately (which would work to deny the sexuality of kissing unless he's bisexual).

... so he's going out of his way to say he's not gay. That's her interpretation. 

If that's correct, then Obama made a homophobia faux pas.  Rush connects that incident to the "don't touch my girlfriend" scene that I wrote about — here — yesterday. Rush describes what happened and says that some people think the scene was scripted. His theory — which is nothing like mine — is that it was supposed to make Obama seem attractive and supportive to women, to counteract Tina Brown's recent statement: "I don't think [Obama] makes [women] feel safe." Whether the Chicago incident was scripted or not, I didn't read it as a demonstration of making women feel safe. I thought it was an intrusion on the woman. But Rush proceeds to quote me:

Like Ann Althouse on her blog said, "Wait a second, I thought men weren't supposed to --" You know, you have to get consent to do this now on every college campus. You can't just kiss a woman without her permission, and you can't approach her and put your arm around without her permission, without her consent. Obama just forced his way on that woman. And she looked like she wanted it, by the way. She looked like she didn't mind, honored to be given a hug and a smooch by the president, cocksman A. 

In my book, it doesn't matter how she acted. He didn't know in advance how she would feel. Even if she loved it, he assumed he was welcome to impose on her body. And her reaction doesn't convince me that she loved it. She was on camera, overwhelmed by the most powerful man in the world, and forced to think quickly about what might be in her interest. How was rejecting him or acting offended even an option?

Rush continues:

So that happens, and everybody's laughing and Obama walks out around her and he's looking like he's pulled off some major score here. Talks about this guy, why would a brother want to embarrass me like this and so forth. So people are wondering if the whole thing was scripted since it followed, by one day, Tina Brown saying that Obama makes women feel unsafe.

Clearly this woman was not feeling unsafe. She's laughing. She's all excited. 

I don't think that's clear. She was put on the spot... by the President of the United States. She might be laughing out of sheer emotional overload, confusion, and the weirdness of it all. Are you allowed to fight off the advances of The Leader? Droit du seigneur?? Is there some core of personal autonomy and rectitude that I can voice right now? The safe bet is to let it all roll over you. Pretend you're into it. Safe bet. Women want to be safe. Tina says. Safety is one way to play the game of life. But the other players should not assume that your silence means consent. If they do, they don't really care about women. Yes mean yes. Silence does not mean yes. Silence may mean: I am subordinated.

Rush finishing the segment, trying — I think — to pick up on what I'd said:

But it's very clear that she did not sign a consent form before he embraced her. It wasn't an embrace. He put his arm around her shoulder. But there was no consent form. She didn't sign a consent form before he embraced her and kissed her. And that's illegal in many places in America now and on college campi. Just did it.

Ebola robots.

Can robots take the place of human beings?

Some tasks done by health workers — decontaminating rooms and moving supplies — could be taken over by delivery robots, decreasing contact between healthy people and those affected by the virus. Also, telepresence robots make people affected by the disease feel less alone, connecting quarantined people or infected patients with those they love.

AND: "My weekend as a telepresence robot."

How to say something perfectly dumb.

It's easy to say something dumb, but it takes something special to say something as dumb as "Not sure when @SenRandPaul became a doctor, but says Ebola can spread from a person standing 3ft away #uhmm." That, from a CBS producer named Katy Conrad, who was being sarcastic about when Rand Paul, who is a doctor, "became a doctor." Well, I think you just have to get lucky to say something that perfectly dumb.

Why should Ron Klain be the Ebola czar?

Seriously, what are the qualifications for this job... and what exactly does the job consist of?

Klain is highly regarded at the White House as a good manager with excellent relationships both in the administration and on Capitol Hill. His supervision of the allocation of funds in the stimulus act -- at the time and incredible and complicated government undertaking -- is respected in Washington. He does not have any extensive background in health care but the job is regarded as a managerial challenge...

A former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and also to then-Vice President Al Gore, Klain is currently President of Case Holdings and General Counsel of Revolution, an investment group. He has clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court and headed up Gore's effort during the 2000 Florida recount and was portrayed in the HBO movie Recount by Kevin Spacey.

Oh, well, then, that makes perfect sense. Which Supreme Court Justice did he clerk for? And why not hire Kevin Spacey? I'm sure he'd do a convincing job of assuring us that everything is under control. He was excellent delivering lines like "The plural of 'chad' is 'chad'?" and Chad — coincidence?! — is a country in Africa.

And by the way, I thought we'd stopped using the job title "czar." We're back to the retrograde messaging implicit in the title of a long-ago Russian autocrat?

ADDED: It seems that Klain is called a "czar" because Republicans were calling out for a "czar." From The Daily Kos a few days ago:

Thus McCain, as usual, follows in the footsteps of the House crazy person caucus, but now the Republicans demand that Obama institute an "Ebola czar" even after those selfsame Republicans were muttering about abuse of power and tyranny and impeachment over the "czars" the gubbermint already had has been catapulted into the Sunday show orbits of Serious Debate, by mere virtue of Sunday John saying it. We don't have enough czars. We demand more czars! Why isn't Obama leading by appointing czars?

And now, here comes Obama, leading by following, appointing a czar. Or a guy to do whatever it is Ron Klain is good at doing who will be titled "czar." What the hell does a czar do? We'll find out when we see what Klain does. He's certainly good for something, like the way he allocated the funds of the stimulus act. We'll find out how that kind of expertise and orientation plays out in the ebola context.

AND:  The (unlinkable) OED defines "czar" only as: 1. "The title of the autocrat or emperor of Russia; historically, borne also by Serbian rulers of the 14th c." and 2. "transf. A person having great authority or absolute power; a tyrant, 'boss.'’" But there is a "Draft addition," lingering in "draft" status since 2001: "orig. U.S. A person appointed by a government to recommend and coordinate policy in a particular area and to oversee its implementation." The oldest use is, interestingly enough, beer czar:

1933   S. Walker Night Club Era 167   There are several versions of why Mulrooney quit the job to become the state beer 'Czar.'

The most prominent use of "czar" — where the term really took off — was "Drug Czar," applied to Bill Bennett in early 1989, as George H.W. Bush was about to take over the presidency. But it wasn't Bush the Elder who created the position. Congress did that, over the objections of President Reagan. As for the choice of Bennett, the biggest critic, amusingly enough, was Joe Biden:

''What concerns me most is his total lack of background in law enforcement,'' said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss says the Kevin we need to assure us that everything is under control, that all is well, is not Kevin Spacey but Kevin Bacon:

How racist is Newsweek's "Smuggled Bushmeat Is Ebola's Back Door to America"?

That Newsweek cover story is from last August, and so is this criticism of it, "The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place," which I saw this morning (I think) on the "Most Read" list in the sidebar at The Washington Post.

I see that the Newsweek cover also has the words "Post-Post Racial America" (referring to a different article) and the choice of a chimpanzee rather than a fruit bat (the creature most closely associated with the current outbreak), so Newsweek does seem to be trying to insinuate itself into the magazine-buyer's subconscious. Also: "back door." What's your first association? I asked Meade, and his was the same as mine, and I asked Google too, and it agreed, putting this as the top hit. The ape threatens rape... anal rape... fatal anal rape.

Now, let's read The Washington Post article. It's written by 2 assistant professors Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne, who study, respectively, "African politics, conflict, and development" and "identity, public opinion, political behavior, and policy aimed at improving the human condition, with a focus on African countries." They review the history of depicting "Africans as hyper-sexualized savages" and they define and deploy the term "othering":

Newsweek’s use of a chimpanzee to represent a scientifically invalid story about an African disease is a classic case of othering. It suggests that African immigrants are to be feared, and that apes — and African immigrants who eat them — could bring a deadly disease to the pristine shores of the United States of America....

Newsweek’s piece is in the worst tradition of what journalist Howard French calls “Ooga-Booga” journalism, the practice of writing in exoticizing and dehumanizing ways about Africa....

The long history of associating immigrants and disease in America and the problematic impact that has on attitudes toward immigrants should make us sensitive to the impact of “othering” African immigrants to the United States in the midst of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Scare-mongering about infinitesimally small risks in one context serves no purpose to the greater good of trying to curb disease transmission and relieve people’s suffering in another context.

"Ebola now functions in popular discourse as a not-so-subtle, almost completely rhetorical stand-in for any combination of 'African-ness,' 'blackness,' 'foreign-ness' and 'infestation'..."

"... a nebulous but powerful threat, poised to ruin the perceived purity of western borders and bodies. Dead African bodies are the nameless placeholders for (unwarranted, racist) 'panic,' a conversation topic too heavy for the dinner table yet light enough for supermarket aisles."

ADDED: Whether you agree with the quoted analysis or not, you need to be aware that this is how some people are processing the news. The issue is swirling within our politics, and this is a separate phenomenon from the disease itself.

Time to read/reread the 1978 Susan Sontag essay "Disease as Political Metaphor."

In the sense of an infection that corrupts morally and debilitates physically, syphilis was to become a standard trope in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anti-Semitic polemics. In 1933 Wilhelm Reich argued that “the irrational fear of syphilis was one of the major sources of National Socialism’s political views and its anti-Semitism.” But although he perceived sexual and political phobias being projected onto a disease in the grisly harping on syphilis in Mein Kampf, it never occurred to Reich how much was being projected in his own persistent use of cancer as a metaphor for the ills of the modern era.

You need to pay to get farther at that link. Here's a link for buying the book with that and more. (I've just bought it myself.)