The current news about the Ebola virus coming to the United States has a great many people worried. I am one of them. I want to make clear, however, that I am not particularly worried that Ebola, at least in its present form, poses a real danger of a massive pandemic. I am not worried that Ebola may spread and become a major national health emergency.

What I am worried about is that the most recent case in Texas, the result of what has been labeled a “breach of protocols” by the nurse who contracted the virus, is a sign that many hospitals and health care workers in the United States don’t have sufficient facilities or training to handle cases of Ebola. As I have listened to the various news reports and the many experts on Ebola and related diseases who have filled the media in the past week, it is clear to me at least that while we are certainly far better prepared to deal with this insidious disease than were the hospitals and health care systems in West Africa, we are not fully up to the standard that the public expects.

Time and again we have discovered that our governments and our institutions have not been fully prepared for major disasters. Certainly, this has been the case in regard to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. It has been the case in the past regarding some of the more serious flu epidemics. It was the case regarding our ability to handle the anthrax scare more than a decade ago. And now it seems to be the case in regard to Ebola.

Time and again I have heard emergency experts say that it is impossible to prepare for all possible disasters. They have also said, no doubt with a great deal of truth, that financial cutbacks by governments have hampered preparedness efforts. These are explanations but they are not excuses.

The first job of government is to protect the public. We have one of the most expensive health care systems in the world and yet it appears that many front line health care workers have not been given the training or the facilities they need to deal safely with Ebola.

This certainly seems to have been the case in Texas. This is not the infected nurse’s fault. On the contrary, the nurse who cared for the Texas Ebola patient without having been given adequate training is the victim. Doctors and nurses are front-line responders in the war against disease and pandemics. They risk their lives to help others. As a society we owe it to all of them to ensure that they are as safe as possible when they do their jobs. When a high government official explains that a nurse had been infected because “protocols were breached” this is a stunning indictment of our government and our health care system.

What has happened in Texas must make every government official and every health care executive realize that there is no more time to waste and that no budgetary restrictions should be permitted to deprive our health care workers of every protection they need. If we fail to protect the front-line workers in our health care system then the long term effects of Ebola will be magnified when these doctors and nurses and others who deal daily with those who are infected finally refuse to put themselves at risk. If this happens then Ebola will truly have become a plague of biblical proportions.