Good work media. You're scaring the hell out of people.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans are concerned about a widespread epidemic of the Ebola virus in the United States, and about as many in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say the federal government is not doing enough to prevent it.

Indeed, more than four in 10 – 43 percent – are worried that they or an immediate family member might catch the disease. That’s similar to the level of concern about other viral outbreaks in some previous ABC/Post polls – but more consequential, given Ebola’s high mortality rate...

There’s also a sharp difference by a combination of partisanship and ideology: While 27 percent of liberal Democrats worry about catching the virus, that rises to 44 percent of conservative Republicans. (Each group accounts for about one in seven adults.)
The reason seems clear: Conservative Republicans are vastly less likely than liberal Democrats to express confidence in the federal government’s ability to respond effectively to an outbreak, 48 vs. 84 percent.

Conservative Republicans also are far more apt than liberal Democrats to express concern about the possibility of a widespread outbreak, 73 vs. 45 percent, and to say the United States should be doing more to try to prevent further cases, 77 vs. 40 percent. (Differences also are reflected by partisanship alone and ideology alone. The divisions simply peak among the two most disparate political/ideological groups.)

The difference between these groups is much wider in terms of their confidence in the federal government to respond compared with their confidence in their local hospitals and health agencies. There’s a 36-point gap between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans on the former, compared with 15 points on the latter.