Overcast with a near-calm wind this Tuesday afternoon on California’s north coast — sortie forth once again.

Too cloudy earlier this morning for ‘orionid‘ watching,, unfortunately I was awake but the darkness passed uneventful.
Life has become infected: Ebola was tied with the federal budget deficit, education, the battle against Islamic State militants and the decline of morality as a top concern of 5 percent of the public, Gallup said. The economy ranked No. 1 at 17 percent.

(Illustration: Rene Magritte’s ‘La Clairvoyance‘ found here).

And the whole Ebola episode is gaining frightful ground — in the mind, mostly.
Via the LA Times:

A Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday found that 41 percent of Americans said they worried that they or someone in their families would be “exposed” to the Ebola virus, up from 32 percent two weeks ago.
The survey also showed that while a majority of Americans express some confidence that the government can “prevent a major outbreak” of the virus in the country and that U.S. hospitals can “diagnose and isolate” cases, fewer than 1 in 5 say they have a “great deal” of confidence.
…
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday found that by more than 2 to 1, Americans supported “restricting entry to the United States by people who have been in affected countries.”
Ninety-one percent of Americans supported “stricter screening” of people from those countries.
…
The virus’ spread in the U.S. has attracted the attention even of Americans who normally pay little attention to news.
Almost everyone surveyed by Pew, 98 percent, said they had heard about the current outbreak, with 49 percent saying they were tracking the news “very closely.”
In comparison, only 16 percent reported paying very close attention to the midterm election, and 29 percent said they were closely following news about the U.S. military action against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
As is often the case, political partisanship has colored people’s concerns about the news.
Two weeks ago, very little partisan gap existed on Ebola, but that has changed as concern has grown.
In both the Pew and Gallup surveys, Republicans were significantly more likely to say they worry about the virus than Democrats.
About half of Republicans said in the Pew survey that they were “somewhat” or “very” worried compared with just over a third of Democrats.
The reverse was true during the George W. Bush administration, when Democrats were more worried than Republicans about an outbreak of avian flu.
Such responses reflect a common judgment by political partisans that their party will manage government more effectively than the other party, according to political scientists who have studied the pattern.

That last item there a knotty-problem is this Ebola shit does get out of hand.