BLUFFTON, Ohio — The emphasis was on perspective in “Ebola and Fear: A Public Health Perspective,” offered by Ross Kauffman Jan. 6 in a Bluffton University Forum.

Outlining the disease’s history, biology and impact since the outbreak began in Guinea, the assistant professor of public health noted that Ebola has killed almost 8,000 of the more than 20,000 people it has sickened.

And because they’re based on initial reports, those numbers — from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — may be low, he added, calling the 70 percent mortality rate recently forecast by epidemic’s end “definitely very frightening.” Among those dying have been health workers, whose loss has been among indirect consequences also including fear of the health system, economic downturns and fraying of the social fabric in the hardest-hit nations.

Still, Kauffman pointed out, the number of deaths from Ebola is “dwarfed” by the nearly 600,000 yearly deaths estimated from malaria — a preventable disease whose victims are primarily African children under 5.

That statistic, and others, emerged from a faux, mid-forum game show “hosted” by the Bluffton faculty member and featuring university students as contestants.

In one game, a student contestant correctly ranked, from fewest to most, the number of deaths in the U.S. from 2001 to 2010 from terrorism (3,032), auto accidents (402,703) and heart disease (6,448,388). That was a reminder that “priorities are not always rational,” Kauffman said. “Sometimes the things we worry about most, like terrorism and Ebola, are actually much smaller risks than the more mundane issues we face, like heart disease.

“Life will always contain risks; when considering appropriate responses to those risks, we must think carefully about what we are gaining and what we are giving up in those responses.”

Eradication investment

The “game show” also revealed that before its eradication in the 1970s, smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century — three times the combined number who died in the century’s armed conflicts — and that as of 2014 Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan were the only countries still experiencing uninterrupted transmission of polio.

With testing of possible Ebola vaccines under way, Kauffman reminded his largely student listeners that “if we invest time, money and effort, as we have done with smallpox and then polio eradication efforts, we can make significant progress.”

He added a recommendation for immunizations, calling for “maintaining our use of the effective vaccines that have been developed” against infectious diseases.

“Unfortunately, recent years have seen an increase in the anti-vaccine movement that is causing us to lose ground,” Kauffman said.

In addition to protecting recipients, vaccines contribute to “herd immunity,” preventing a disease from becoming established or being able to spread if most of a population is immune.

“Many of you may become parents in the not-too-distant future,” he said. “I hope you will decide to contribute to the community’s health by having your children vaccinated.”

Also considering a CDC estimate that public health efforts added 25 years to the average American’s life expectancy in the 20th century, “we ignore public health at our own peril,” he said.

Now in his fourth year at Bluffton, Kauffman earned his doctoral degree in epidemiology from the Ohio State University College of Public Health in 2009. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and environmental science from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.