i feel the time has come to say this

I just want to say, as a Texan, we already had Rick Perry. Ebola is just salt in the wound here.

In related news:

I have never spent so much time having to fact check people on ebola and google on my phone what it does, is, and how you get it. I have never spent time fact checking anyone, to be honest--generally, listening to other people be paranoid or wrong is an enjoyable hobby and one that requires minimal effort on my part, that being "staying awake", which gotta admit can be hard. Yet I do it, because not only is it bad information and wrong information, even when it's right conversation is drifting dangerously close to "And Obama will use this to take my guns so I cant' shoot ebola when it shows up" or so I assume; I'm telling you, it's getting very weird.

I get this is a horrible disease, I do. And I get that people are afraid, which makes sense: see "horrible disease". However, I'm also lazy; I don't get having to expend effort in feeling terror before we're at minimum out of single digits for the entire US. I don't even get out of bed for a tornado warning unless something achieves three feet levitation in my vicinity. How do people have this kind of energy?

Between Wikipedia's wealth of information on the cat genome, Cracked teaching me about the pros and cons of being a pickpocket or running Afghanistan as military governor, and trying to decide if I really need to go to the bathroom now (standing up?) or can wait (no standing up!) it's like--dude. You could right now be finding out all the forms aphasia can take and how many cities in India have a population greater than 1 million. And you are spending it on a disease in single digit numbers in the US. *

You could be on reddit reading in nosleep and realizing far, far too late what a terrible idea that was, but at least your irrational fear would be of cameras and eyedroppers--seriously, that was creepy.

This has been a message from me, as it's been a very long week.

* this applies to US citizens only, especially those on talk radio who really, desperately need naps or possibly muzzles.

Comments

[ithiliana]

I've been doing a bit of noting of the facts on FB, and especially people who bug me personally about ME (my MOM called to worry about me getting Ebola on the grounds that we live in Texas--60 plus miles away from Dallas--and I'm getting on an airplane Friday). I was wrestling with a dicey computer download and got grumpy at her. But I'm getting way tired of it, and it's downright boring. (And I tend to try not to teach unless i'm getting paid for it.)

More or less "I'm more likely to get killed on 635 driving to the airport, no time, bye now."

Influenza is a greater threat, but you don't see people freaking out about it.

I'd say as somebody who has been living in Texas for 21 years that you all had George W. Bush and Rick Perry.....but yeah. Not fair.

[lilacsigil]

Sadly, it doesn't only apply to US folks! A nurse in Brisbane who had returned from volunteering in Liberia went on home isolation, developed a fever and (sensibly and as per protocols) reported it to hospital. OH NOES EBOLA! It wasn't even actually ebola, but it's still all "evil immigrants" around here.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you.

All those in the area are in my thoughts. Hang in there.

[lillian13]

JFC, I KNOW. A person on my FB feed just posted "Ebola vacuums in Dallas!!"...it was one of those grease sucking trucks that go to fast food joints. Another person I know refused to go to the State Fair...because Ebola. (With a nice side of racism, as it was "those people" spreading it.)

I can't even listen to NPR without them leading with it every half hour. Bleah.

[out_there]

I hate to say it, but my knowledge of Ebola is incredibly minimal (I think it was mentioned once on the Simpsons, maybe) but I feel for you. Having people panic over something that is still in single digits is a little ridiculous.

[mareen]

The most annoying/horrible thing for me is that while we panic in our nice little western countries with almost perfect medical treatment possibilities, people in Western Africa are actually the ones suffering. But instead of thinking about them, the panic is just about us even though the chances of contracting Ebola here are minimal. It's ridiculous and a whole new version of First World Problems.

[seperis]

There's no perfect medical treatment for ebola. All of it is currently experimental and the disease has a very high mortality rate. While my entry reflects my disgust with the manufactured terror, it's because it is not an epidemic here, not because this isn't a very serious, very terrifying disease.

It's ridiculous and a whole new version of First World Problems.

To clarify, worrying about ebola in the US is stupid because cases are in single digits and is leading to obvious race and immigration related paranoia and stoking racism under the guise of 'public health'; that I very much object to.

However, worrying about health and the spread of disease is not a "First World Problem"; this is something I think is universal to the human experience through all of history. Poverty would also be a contributing factor to getting adequate medical care for routine or common illnesses, and poverty is not limited to developing nations.

[mareen]

While my entry reflects my disgust with the manufactured terror, it's because it is not an epidemic here, not because this isn't a very serious, very terrifying disease.

As did I. I did not say that Ebola is not a serious disease, I said it is not a serious disease in western countries and therefore for me a first world problem. Even if a western country gets 5 cases, maybe 10, maybe even 20, that is nothing compared to the thousands dead in West African countries. And still instead of worrying about them, western society is going into a frenzy of fear over an imaginary possibility of Ebola spreading in their own countries.

[seperis]

Ah, then I misunderstood this: nice little western countries with almost perfect medical treatment possibilities.

I assumed you were referring to successful treatment of ebola with this. There are no 'perfect medical treatment possibilities' for ebola anywhere.

[akacat]

I'm stuck in the airport with my parents (we're returning from a trip to Germany.) I showed my dad your first paragraph and he literally LOLed.

(In other news, yay for free wifi in the Billund DK, Iceland, and Toronto airports.)

[princessofgeeks]

so much this.

Ebola

[pudacat]

I work for a dentist, and, God, the patients who are freaked out. My awesome boss just asks me to research, what to tell them, and then repeats it.

I'm not making light of disease, but, after all my research, "Cracked" nailed it.

"Cracked" may simplify things, but they do seem to get it right.

Also, we're in Wisconsin, so, no, just stfu to all our panicking patients. The 'flu will hopefully kill you instead. (Joke: Don't die from the 'flu. That was hyperbole)

[msilverstar]

There's so much racism involved it makes me sick.

I had blood drawn yesterday by a very gentle large man with an African accent, with no worries whatsoever. Putting my money where my mouth is.

It also proves that humans are shit at statistics! and risk assessment Over 30,000 people a year die in car crashes. Over 20,000 die from flu. There are ladders and rivers and danger all around us. And being in a room with a person who was on a plane with a person who later came down with Ebola freaks people out.

[fyrdrakken]

So I live in Dallas and work in healthcare -- specifically in a biological specimen testing facility, and a week or two back we had a brief meeting so the lab supervisor could say that, yes, they'd been getting some questions from my coworkers about risks of exposure, and the official response is that we're spending all damned night handling blood samples and testing them for all sorts of contagious things, which is why we're all in there wearing lab coats and gloves (and the people actually opening test tubes are supposed to be wearing face shields, too). (And then she announced that if any of us get ebola, it's going to be from chewing gum on the lab floor, so they're going to be cracking down on that and writing people up for it.)

I got caught up on the phone yesterday looking for creepy doll stories and wound up prying myself away and leaving the house just barely in time to get my voting done.

I've been catching up on Rachel Maddow and the Daily Show and Colbert Report from last week, and while Maddow's been brilliant about the factchecking, Stewart had this wonderful bit specifically responding to Pete Sessions (whose district I live in, sadly) and noting that the anti-vax movement and Rick Perry's refusal to expand Medicaid mean that Texas itself counts as a region of inadequate healthcare resources trying to cope with an epidemic of various infectious and potentially deadly diseases...