So, Ebola Didn't Kill Everyone In The U.S.?

            Can anyone tell me why the hell we panicked about Ebola? Anyone? No? Awesome! It seems to me that this is now just ‘water under the bridge’, and everyone is acting all cool and calm now. But a few months ago, everyone was freaking out because we brought two infected aid workers over from Africa (they were US citizens by the way, so it is the responsibility of the US Government to help out), and everyone thought that as soon as their plane landed Ebola would sweep through the US and kill everyone like the Bubonic Plague back in ye olden Medieval times. And lo and behold! What happened? Nothing. We had 10 total people infected (8 of which, became infected in Africa before they got to the US), only two people contracted Ebola in the US, and that was because they were nurses who were treating one of the two people that died (And both people who died from Ebola were infected in Africa). To summarize; the US had a total of 10 cases in which 8 people survived, giving us an 80% survival rate from a virus that kills 70% of the time in Africa. WHY DID WE PANIC!

We, The American People, Are Stupid…

            That’s right, I said it! We are stupid! We saw the images and heard the reports every day for about three months about how Ebola is ravaging three countries in Western Africa (Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone). I hate to inform you all of this but you know that Africa is across the Atlantic Ocean? Right? We knew that small detail? So that means we all know that the United States is not part of Africa? Alright, just wanted to clear that up.
            Just because something is happening in Africa and people are dying does not mean the US is instantly infected. Do you know how many Ebola outbreaks there have been in Africa since 2000? Twelve! That’s a 1 in front of a 2, 12! That means that Africa deals with this shit almost every year! Where was our panic then? Nowhere, that’s where! Apparently, we were smarter back then. We didn’t care because we knew that we had nothing to be afraid of. Just like this time around.
            We are so over-reactive it’s sickening. It makes sense, though, because we get weird about things that are foreign and unknown and that can kill us. I’ll set the stage here for you. In the past 10 years, Ebola has killed two people here in the US. If we do a quick average, that’s 0.2 people dying form Ebola per year. So your chances of dying from Ebola in the US are 1 in 160,000,000,000! If you can’t read the zeros in that number correctly, it’s one-hundred-and-sixty-billion. You have way better chance to win the lottery. In reality, the number is closer to zero because both individuals who contracted Ebola in the US have fully recovered. I like my chances to survive this “epidemic.”
But even using the 1 in 160,000,000,000 chance to die from Ebola here in the US, let’s compare it to something commonplace in the US. Let’s take something we should be scared of, the flu. The common, happens every year, we know about it but don’t really care about it, flu. So what is the average death toll from the flu the past 10 years? 32,000! Average. Every year! That means that 320,000 people have died from the flu (or complications of the flu) over the past 10 years! That means your chances of dying from the flu are 1 in 100,000! Which is 1,600,000 times higher than your chances of dying from Ebola! TIME TO FREAK OUT! Wait…There’s a vaccine? Never mind, we’re good! Carry on wearing shorts in the middle of December!

Different Places, Different Medical Knowledge

Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone are very small and very poor countries with very little in the way of health care. Do you know why the death rate is so high when it comes to Ebola in Africa? Because they do not have the resources to fight the virus! We have to remember that not every country enjoys the luxuries that we here in the US have, like, I don’t know, research facilities that are dedicated to deadly diseases! These people are lucky if they have a hospital that can administer an IV drip within a days walk from the village that they live in. Let alone a hospital that can give effective treatment to someone who is actually sick with Ebola. Did you see what happened when we brought people to the US for treatment? We send the infected patients to the facilities that have the proper equipment and resources to help combat the disease…80% survival rate! Complete 180 from what is happening in Africa. Now granted a 20% mortality rate isn’t great, but it is a disease in which you basically bleed internally and then shit out whatever parts of your body have liquefied. Ebola is a pretty serious thing. It isn’t a case of the sniffles.
The people who are getting infected by Ebola in these West African countries are in remote villages that are connected to other villages through dirt roads in which you have to walk to get anywhere (there are few if any cars, and if you are lucky enough to have motorized transportation, the roads are so bad you can’t get through, and they still use rope bridges that you only see in Indiana Jones movies) and they believe that Ebola does not exist. They believe that the disease is brought about by Red Cross workers…or demons…or magic…you know, the way epidemics are normally spread. The people who live in these infected villages attack outsiders coming in to help because they believe that those outsiders are the ones that are causing the deaths of their loved ones. If these scared villagers don’t attack, they send the infected members of their village to the next village over to keep them from being taken away because they don’t understand that the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are coming to treat those people who are sick. Now that infected person is in a new village and the virus begins to spread through a new population! Do you possibly see why Ebola is hard to fight and why it is killing so many people?

We Know Nothing About Other Cultural Practices (Stupid Part II)

            Another reason why Ebola is spreading still, even after months of the outbreak starting, is due to the burial rituals of these villages. Ebola can only be transmitted through direct contact, DIRECT CONTACT, of an infected person’s (that is showing symptoms) bodily fluids such as sweat, blood, urine, feces, etc. This means you have to smear the blood, or sweat of that infected person on to an open sore or swallow it, or inhale it; which I guess is way more common here in the US than I thought due to the uproar people had about how easily Ebola was going to kill us all. I didn’t know so many of us were taking shit baths.
The people of these villages have burial ceremonies in which the recently dead individual is carried by their relatives without any protection whatsoever. Now a person who died from Ebola is still contagious, actually more contagious than when they were alive because the body begins to break down and oozes fluids everywhere. That’s why we do cremation or the whole embalming process; you get a little gross when you kick the bucket.
            With all this info about the African villages, I wonder why Ebola is spreading in places that have no safeguards in place to protect people from contracting it, and still has very limited education on what diseases are and how they spread. What a shocker!
            Americans see this and think that it can happen here in the US. And those people are all idiots and should be hit over the head with a high school biology book because they obviously never paid attention in class when they were in 10th grade. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has shown time and time again just how difficult it is to contract Ebola. AND! They have shown time and time again just how easy it is to protect yourself. You ready for their recommendation. Wait for it, it’s complicated…wash your hands! That’s it! All you idiots need to do is take the same steps that you do to protect yourself from getting a cold or the flu and you are golden! Problem solved, moving on.

These places in which Ebola is running rampant are developing countries. Know what that means? They are just now becoming educated about how the world works, getting infrastructure set up in the country, and getting up to speed on 21st century medical knowledge and practices. We forget so easily that not everyone understands the concepts of germs and hygienic practices. These regions still rely on medicine men and believe in black magic or demons causing illnesses. It’s going to take time to get these places up to speed, but until that happens, we need to understand that not everyone has the ability to run to a Walgreens and get a box of Tamiflu to help them feel better.

It is our responsibility, as a developed and medically advanced country, to help in these places that do not have the ability to combat these potentially devastating outbreak by themselves. The reason why is because we have the ability to turn these deadly viruses into something we only read in history books, because we can find ways to treat, put in preventative measures, and educate the people of these developing countries. So stop freaking out, support those that are volunteering to go over to Africa and fight Ebola, and just relax. We’re not going to die from Ebola. It’s probably going to be some super-bacteria that we have created from using hand sanitizer for so long. Wash your damn hands!

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