Cogent and Fallacious #4

For my fourth and final cogent/fallacious reasoning article I decided to look at Aljazeera for an opinion piece. I am specifically drawn to articles on ebola in Dallas, as my home and many of my friends are there. The article I found is titled "Ebola scare revives post-9/11 public fears," and although being pumped up by fear is frustrating, this article resonated with me as not a typical fear based article.

The author Paul W. Kahn makes several great points about the United States perception that these types of tragedies can't happen here. For example, Americans not considering that Middle Eastern terrorists would arrive here directly from the Middle East to attack our country and the misconception that we are immune to ebola showing up on our doorstep in our local emergency rooms in a time when thousands of people travel in and out of our country and around the world every day. He continues on to point out that we can be terrorized even without the terrorist and we are currently being terrorized by ebola. We are ill prepared to deal with this disease entering our country. He is encouraging us to be more forward-looking when it comes to these types of issues and not wait for the problem to reach our doorstep.

I found the article to be cogent. The author referred to facts when talking about 9/11 and the current handling of the ebola crisis. He made several great common sense points such as the need to pay attention, he called for better systematic protocols at airports and suggested ample investment be made into preventing a possible tragedy.