Top Reasons Why Ebola Pisses Me Off







  1. 1.2 million people die in car accidents in one year – that equates to 3200 traffic deaths every day but no one is freaking out about that.  Nope, we drive ourselves everywhere without a second thought.  But we don't care about driving because NOT driving would be inconvenient.  Going insane about a disease that is likely to infect 1 in 13.3 million people in America this year, that we can do.  
  2. The fact that no one cared about Ebola until someone in the US contracted it.  We are vaguely sad about thousands dying somewhere else in the world but OMG SOMEONE IN THE USA MIGHT HAVE THIS DISEASE, AHHHHHHH! Shut up.  All people matter.  Americans are not more important than others in the world.
  3. That we're all happy that some pharmaceutical giants are working together on an Ebola vaccine, even though it's not really a profitable thing.  For fuck's sake, pharmaceutical companies should already be working together and helping people, not trying to line the pockets of their board members, their investors, their CEOs
  4. This is one small blip in the deaths worldwide each day and yet it is dominating the news.  I suppose it is better than something that belongs in the tabloids, still, it is treated like a tabloid headline story.  Every news source has a new story each day, even if there is nothing to report. Why can't we have a well-reasoned account of this outbreak with the statistics on possibilities of contracting it (not as a vague afterthought either) along with some stories on things that are actually problems to a majority of the population of their viewership.
  5. School districts in Colorado, many states away from the nearest case of Ebola, are spending time and energy sending out informational emails about Ebola.  They have to reassure parents that their kids are safe going to school amid this "crisis."  Good grief!
  6. The incredible stupidity of our populace about anything scientific.  People are ignorant of statistics, p-values, rates of transmission, modes of transmission, graph/chart reading, and even the definition of the words study, data, and theory. What people are good at? Misreading and assuming, creating wild ideas and posting them as facts, half listening and filling in the details with truthiness.  
  7. This.  That people even thought up these crackpot ideas.
  8. The fact that if we were truly worried about this, we would go to those places most affected by the virus and treat the underlying problems that are causing the outbreak.  The WHO says, "The most severely affected countries, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have very weak health systems, lacking human and infrastructural resources, having only recently emerged from long periods of conflict and instability."  But instead of trying to help in those countries with the actual problem causing the outbreak, we are trying to come up with a quick-fix vaccine, which probably won't be available where it is needed most, and trying to bar people from our country.  
    
Now, please don't think I don't have empathy for those who are touched by this disease.  I do.  I think the US's coverage of  and reaction to the problem is biased, selfish, and downright ridiculous.  THAT is what I am railing against.

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