I believe I used the term mollycoddle, Stim. I really think that it's the mot juste.

And the isolation model is as old as the middle ages for Europe, it's nothing new, but science is why we know it works, and how. And the procedures are NOT being followed because people are still getting it, obviously, duh! If they were (a) isolating the ill (b) not traveling if well and (c) keeping faith healers out, as did the 2 or 3 localities where the disease has been successfully stopped, then it wouldn't be an issue now, because after the first few dozen cases there wouldn't have been any more.

It is a fact that it it a virus and it is a fact that we know how to stop its spread.

Of course there is something to worry about - the fact that thousands of their fellow citizens are dying of a largely preventable disease! Of course science and not religion will save them! You don't have to believe in it for it to work, that's the *point*! Whether they have a soul or whether they think they have a soul or not not is completely irrelevant!

Besides, I hadn't heard that they thought that westerners were stealing their souls, I don't even know that they think they do have souls, that actually sounds like something made up by westerners to make the people they are mocking sound primitive. I do know some people think that westerners invented the disease (and it's likely that western exploitation of the natural resources are what got it out of the mammals it wasn't killing and into people, but that is a separate question), but the fact of the matter is that it is a virus that we know how to stop, and we're not stopping it in large part out of misplaced respect for the disbelieving who, I agree, are ignorant and not stupid.

It's the same imbecilic attitude that says respect for parents' beliefs in demonstrably false idiocies trumps an American child's right to a decent education. Bah! Humbug! And, in this case, Danger, Will Robinson!