No matter your feelings on crazed grocery runs, a definite strangeness surrounds America’s leading Ebola narrative. There is, for instance, a whole lot of condescension going on. On Monday, online magazine Slate ran a “myth-busting” piece on Ebola, explaining why you’re pretty much a moron to worry even a little bit about a contagious virus that can melt your insides. The article included an alarming-looking photo, featuring three individuals in hazmat suits, with the following caption: “Members of Doctors Without Borders wear protective gear on July 23, 2014, in Conakry, Guinea, in a scene that’s not coming to the U.S. anytime soon.”

Ah, the smugness. Can you feel it? America is rich, you see. Africa, meanwhile, is The Other. This sentiment, explicit or not, is echoed repeatedly in much of the “don’t panic” press. Slate’s caption, when you think about it, isn’t too far from a recent headline from the satirical news site The Onion: “Experts: Ebola Vaccine at Least 50 White People Away.”

Along with the media’s passive-aggressive smug-a-thon, there’s a more subtle subtext to America’s expert-driven Ebola narrative: a striking, desperate search for a sense of control. Our government, we are reminded, is far more organized than that of Sierra Leone or Nigeria. Our government, we are told, knows what it is doing. Our government is filled, after all, with “experts.” Our government also, lest you forget, is an often-confused behemoth that recently “misplaced” 327 vials of “biological materials,” including dengue fever, influenza, random mystery viruses, and six vials of smallpox, in a random cold storage room in Bethesda, Md.