Whatever happened to Sandusky, Sanford & Ebola?

Medical mistakes — missed diagnoses, medication errors, infections caused by lax hospital procedures — lead to an astounding 400,000 preventable deaths in the United States each year.

Lack of rigor is to blame. Hurried cleaning staff overlook half the items in a hospital room when preparing it for the next patient. The germs are left to linger, causing an infection.

Stressed medical staff frequently fail to clean their hands in between patients, carrying germs from one bed to the next.

Preparing hospitals to cope with Ebola will encourage discipline and attention to correct procedures. That will save lives, even if we’re lucky enough to be spared more cases of this deadly virus.

The untold story, though, is about bare-knuckle Pennsylvania politics, old grudges and perceived slights. It involves a stagnated child sexual abuse investigation that, to some, took a backseat to higher-profile cases and a gubernatorial campaign. It involves a head football coach who knew too little and, still, failed to do enough. It includes a passive school board of trustees that for months ignored a lurking controversy and then, under pressure to preserve Penn State's reputation, quickly fired its legendary coach without ever talking with him.

The jurors poured through everything, including defense arguments and cross-examinations, for a day and a half and finally declared Sandusky guilty of 45 counts of various degrees of abuse. Sandusky, now 70, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years behind bars.

An appeal by Sandusky for a new trial went nowhere and an appeal of that appeal is, legal experts believe, likely to find the same fate. Meanwhile, Sandusky sits isolated for 23 hours a day in a Western Pennsylvania prison cell, running out the clock on his sorry life.

The Sandusky "Truthers" hijacking of this story is an insult to the vast majority of Penn State students, alums, faculty, staff and fans who have approached this with open minds and great responsibility. That includes ones who still have reasonable questions about the culpability of their school and the actions of the Board of Trustees and those who understandably rail against vast NCAA sanctions or treatment by the media.

Therefore it is the duty of every American to vote to have all hospitals demolished and all medical professionals put to death.

That'll bring down that damn death rate!