hedgehog
hedgehog's JournalLet's assume for a minute that some people are correct in saying that "they"
(They being the government, CDC, WHO or whoever) are lying to us about Ebola and that it is spreading worldwide.
So?
There's really no point in getting excited.
Either Ebola is hard to catch, and it's a matter of persistent effort to confine it to West Africa and ending the outbreak there.
or
It's very easy to catch, in which case there is really no good way to prevent a spread.
At the same time, it's better to look at history than at speculative stories to see what happens during a plague. Oddly enough, it seems that most people end up going about their business until/unless they get sick. There are some nasty stories from the Middle Ages, but also this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/20/349271621/ebola-battlers-can-learn-from-venices-response-to-black-death
Do some reading and see how life went on during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. Things got so bad then that it dropped out of my high school history book completely! (:sarcasm
Seriously though, did you learn anything in school about the small pox and yellow fever epidemics that swept the US from Colonial times into the 19th century? What about the on-going plague of Tuberculosis that lasted until a range of antibiotics were developed after WWII?
Two things I do know for certain:
1. We're all going to die of something.
2. Life will go on.
Folks! It's just Ebola! Now , if it were the STRAIN, then I could understand the
worry over air travel......
ER care and foreign travelers: for comparison:
My son came back from a work assignment in India and ended up in the ER for an emergency appendectomy. After being discharged, he ended up back in the ERand back in the hospital. My Dad was with him and told every doctor that came in - "He just got back from 6 weeks in India". It wasn't until the doctor who'd grown up in India came into the room two days later that anyone realized he had malaria.
Fortunately, a few years later, when he went in with fever and chills, someone was on the ball and he was tested for Chikungunya. Since it's viral, they really couldn't do anything for him, but at least he had a proper diagnosis!
Anyone else who was around back in 1980 during the first AIDS crisis having deja vu now
that the topic of the day is Ebola?
I'll grant you that Ebola is a faster killer, and is lightly easier to catch than HIV/AIDS, but the fear mongering is still awfully familiar.
So now we have the category of "gentle" rape?
Apparently, referring to statutory rape ( voluntary sexual contact between adults and teenagers) as "brutal rape" is considered over the top by many here. We have to decide, are some forms of rape OK? Less wrong than others? Where does sex with a drugged partner fall then? After all, the other person didn't have any objections at the time.
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Gender: FemaleHometown: Oswego County, New York
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Current location: Lake Ontario Snow Belt
Member since: Fri Apr 23, 2004, 11:56 PM
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