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Ebola For You
Ebola, if you don’t know, literally turns your organs into liquid. It’s extremely painful. You start with common flu like symptoms, which gets progressively worse, then you start bleeding from all orifices, including your eyes, and it’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies and hope I never experience what it feels like to have your insides turn into mush. It kills 90% of it’s victims. No cure. So, yeah, Ebola fucking terrifies me. And you should be scared too.
Do I think the media is a fear mongering piece of shit? Absolutely. If there’s one thing I learned from being a media major, and briefly pursuing a career in journalism, it’s that you should never, never trust anything you learn from the news. They feed off your fear. Because it’s about ratings. Fear generates good ratings. Always be aware of that.
But consider this: the regular flu kills some 20,000 in the U.S. every year. Usually the weak. For anyone who’s had the flu, they know how much it sucks. But most people recover. Imagine a flu that kills almost everyone who catches it? It doesn’t even have to be that many people. If 30,000 people die from Ebola, that sucks, sure. On the grand scale of things, it’s not that big of a hit. However, people will be scared shitless. People will stop sending their kids to school, stop going to work, the economy collapsing (again) over the fear of Ebola is more likely than you or I dying from it.
If an Ebola infected person is on a subway in NYC, I don’t see how it could even be contained at that point. I’m out. I’ll move back to LI with my folks. Quit my jobs. Wait it out. If I got Ebola, I would probably beg to be euthanized in a quarantined area, and let them dissect my body. It’s fine. I never thought I’d live long anyway. Give me a good morphine high on my way out.
The most important thing, is if you’re sick, stay the fuck home. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a train, or at work, and some one is coughing all over the goddamn place. Stay home! What are you doing! Go to a doctor. I’m a big fan of going to the doctor. I love my doctor (though she’s on LI, I’ve yet to find one in Queens). She wouldn’t tell you, because of confidentiality reasons, but if she could, she would tell you that I am a hypochondriac. I have freaked out over things that have turned out to be very minor. But the result has always been the same. No, I don’t have lupus, or cancer, or herpes, but I had something wrong that was cured by drugs, and I’m good to go. If I had waited, maybe I would’ve gotten better, but maybe I would have gotten much worse.
I don’t fuck around when it comes to diseases and my body. I’ll never be one of those people who’s afraid of going to the doctor because of what they’ll find. My imagination is always worse than realty. I know my body.
My biggest fear, the Ebola outbreak, is at it’s origins in the safety of the United States. Am I freaking out? No. Not yet, anyway. I’m not unrealistic. Can this be contained? Absolutely. Are people and our government stupid enough that this could spread to be an epidemic? You’re stupid not to think so.
Very cogent and insightful. I think one of the dumbest parts of this whole ebola phenomenon is the way people are in such denial of its potential to be a catalyst for the next apocalypse.
But I have one word to say about Dr.s: iatrogenesis. 225,000 deaths per year in the USA come as a result of that quirky little word, and that is only the ones that are reported. And I say this only after being nearly killed during a CAT Scan when some clumsy motherfucking ER attendant injected an air bubble into my vein (nearly as lethal as Ebola). And that’s just one of myriad ways in which the medical system can royally fuck up your day.
But I love to read your stuff Ms. Palminteri. Thank you for sharing.