I suspect most Americans perceive Ebola like this
I can’t work out if the fear being spread within the media about Ebola is deliberate or just ignorance.
Yes Ebola is a terrible plague that kills a large percentage of those it infects, no Ebola is not going to infect us all. Maybe it’s the lack of basic science knowledge these days, maybe it’s a media who love to sell panic and fear, but the hysteria over Ebola seems wildly out of sync with the actual threat it presents us.
Ebola can not be spread by respiratory infection, that makes it vastly different from SARS or influenza, it is spread by body fluid contacting with body fluid and there is no sign that the latest Ebola virus is mutating into an air-borne infection, so the risk to the rest of us here in the West is infinitesimal in comparison to heart disease, violent crime, drunk driving or cancer.
My suspicion is that American pop culture’s love affair with zombies has more to do with the current state of hysteria than any genuine perception of threat.
The scramble to re-invade Iraq instead of sending appropriate response teams to Africa shows how disconnected our priorities are.
Ebola is a tragedy for Africa because it highlights the none existent health system and the ongoing population and resource pressures that are pushing humans deeper and deeper into environments infected by these viruses. Poverty, bushmeat and desperation has more to do with the spread of Ebola than the middle class hysterics currently being performed by the Western media.
Meanwhile…
Fear doesn’t help us make good decisions, but I think we should be very concerned and vigilant. The long incubation period of Ebola makes it a difficult disease to get rid of. The ease with which gastric bugs spread in our communities show that you don’t need airbourne transmission for infections to be a serious problem. What strikes me as one of the saddest things about Ebola is that people are dying alone, without family to hold them in their last hours.
Already gun sales increases have been attributed to zombies…
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Spike-in-gun-sales-attributed-to-Zombie-Apocalypse–181630821.html
…and recently in the US, sales of rectal thermometers have increased by a factor of 23.4% since Ebola outbreak in West Africa…
Republican lawmakers sharply criticized the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the Ebola outbreak as agency director Thomas Frieden said the virus is not a “significant public health threat.”
Asked the difference between rectal thermometers and ordinary under-the-tongue thermometers, Frieden laconically replied:
“The taste”
Enough said.
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