Ebola Hysteria Is A Greater Threat Than Ebola
October 20, 2014

 
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In the Summer of 2001, before “9/11”, reports of an 8 year old Florida boy losing an arm after being attacked by a Bull Shark grabbed the headlines. A day or two later, a New York man vacationing in the Bahamas lost a leg in a shark attack. Barely a week after that, another Florida man was bitten six miles from the spot where the first boy was bitten. The media went into hysterics and suddenly it was “The Summer of the Shark”, despite the fact that the annual number of shark attacks was actually DOWN that year as compared to 1999 & 2000. But 2001 was already shaping up to be a slow news year and they needed something to fill the empty airtime. It was “tabloid TV” at its worst, creating fear & panic without justification just to give the Media something to talk about. And we’re seeing it again now with the hype over “Ebola”.

A grand total of THREE people in the entire United States have developed Ebola while here in the U.S., and ALL THREE linked to the same man. The family of the man that has since passed away… who had been living WITH him in the same house and were then imprisoned in their own home WITH his infected sheets and other personal items for weeks… did not contract the virus and are perfectly healthy. The health care worker that stupidly flew cross country WHILE running a fever… the man that sat next to her on the plane… he’s infection-free as well. For a disease that is so infectious (easily caught), it’s not turning out to be easily contagious (easily spread).

In 1978, a movie called “The Swarm” capitalized on the hysteria over a report that “Africanized Killer Bees” were making their way up from Central America, across our Southern border and into the United States. The movie may have bombed at the box office in part by people too afraid to leave their homes to go to the movie theater for fear of being attacked by bees. Eventually, the bees did get here, but in relatively small number and reports of “death by killer bees” are incredibly rare. But the panic at the time was very real. Of all the things people had to be frightened about, sky-darkening swarms of “Killer Bees” decimating entire cities wasn’t exactly one of them.

This really caught my attention yesterday morning (from the opening minutes of “Meet the Press”):
 

More deadly than Ebola

 

15 minutes into their hour long Fear Fest over Ebola, Chuck Todd produced the above list of things you have a FAR GREATER chance of dying from in the U.S. than Ebola, yet that didn’t stop them from spending the entire hour preying on people’s irrational fears for the sake of ratings (in fact, ALL FOUR major network Sunday Shows yesterday were dedicated to the topic of “Ebola”.) I’d just like to point out for the record that the name “ISIS” never came up once on ANY of these shows. Two weeks ago, we were “all gonna die” as ISIS/ISIL made it’s way into the U.S. across Rick Perry’s extraordinarily porous border with Mexico. Why must every mortal threat to Republicans cross the Mexican border?

You have an almost 54 THOUSAND TIMES greater chance of catching & dying from THE FLU than Ebola. And you are TWENTY-SIX TIMES more likely to be struck & killed by lightning, but for some reason, THREE cases… only one of which was fatal… all connected to the same man… has everyone in a panic.

And when I say “everyone”, I of course mean Republicans. Because, as I’ve been pointing out for weeks now, Republicans are terrified of EVERYTHING. They live in constant blinding fear of everything from “government plots” (see: “FEMA camps” and “Death panels”) to black kids in hoodies. They sleep with a gun under their pillows and think one guy with Ebola in Dallas is going to lead to a nation-wide pandemic (though by definition, a “pandemic” is global.)

A number of prominent Republicans are harnessing that irrational fear of Ebola for political gain, attacking President Obama’s “failed response to controlling the Ebola outbreak“… which I remind you has been just THREE people in Dallas. And it doesn’t help matters any when a spineless White House seems to concede their ridiculous claims by “admitting” they could have handled their response to the Ebola “crisis” better. And even when Chuck Todd gave several medical professionals an opening to criticize the GOP’s refusal to appoint a Surgeon General (who normally would be in charge of setting national policy on an issue such as this), they were quick to dismiss the idea that a Surgeon General is even necessary.

One of the (ridiculous) key criticisms being levied by the GOP against President Obama’s choice of “Ebola Czar” is that he’s “not a doctor” (which is stupid because no one expects The Manager to be able to do the job of his staff. Could your boss do YOUR job?). But you know who WOULD be “a doctor”? A Surgeon General, which the GOP has chosen to block (Sen. Roy Blunt defended the GOP’s year-long obstruction of Obama’s nominee by putting the blame on Obama for “not appointing someone they could support.” Does anyone reading this believe there is ANYONE Obama could have nominated they wouldn’t have blocked? They’ve blocked FAR less controversial nominations for purely political reasons. And now it looks as though voters that haven’t been paying attention will reward their unprecedented obstruction, awarding control of Congress to a Party with an approval rating lower than Ebola.)

The Big Talking Point right now that Republicans seem to be gaining the most traction with is a “Travel Ban” to/from nations in Ebola “Hot Zones”. This “quick-fix” has a lot of appeal to easily-panicked Americans that have been fed a steady diet of Fear by the GOP-led media for the past month. I mean, it seems so obvious! “Why hasn’t Obama cut off commercial travel to Ebola-infected territories?”

Here’s why:

  1. There are no direct flights between the U.S. and these tiny West African nations dealing with the disease, making identifying travelers a logistical nightmare. It’s not like you know which country a passenger is returning from when they arrive in the U.S.. It would be like trying to screen out people that visited Martha’s Vineyard before allowing them into California when there are no direct flights between the two.
  2. If you make travel to these regions “a crime”, you drive potentially infected travelers underground, afraid to seek help should they become ill for fear of being arrested.
  3. And following up on #2, a willingness to come forward and/or seek help means greater tracking & accountability. We are presently able to track/contact other passengers & coworkers that might have come in contact with infected patients. Drive the victims underground, and tracking their movements becomes impossible.
  4. “Bans” & “Restrictions” create panic. If we start restricting travel in & out of these countries, you’re going to see people trying to “sneak in”. And I don’t mean “across the Mexican border” like Rightwing fear-mongers would use to terrify their racist hoards, I’m talking about simply getting your passport stamped in a “non-restricted” country so they can fly in without being questioned.
  5. And when people start to panic, their irrational fears get the best of them. Soon you have every idiot with a mild fever clogging up the ER because their nephew’s classmate has a cousin from Liberia. Add to that, doctors spending additional time running (expensive) unnecessary tests checking otherwise healthy patients for a disease that’s less common than being mauled by a black bear and a brown bear on the same day.

Republican governors across the country that are suddenly worried about the spread of Ebola haven’t exactly helped matters any by refusing Federal Medicaid funding to provide health care to tens of thousands of poor Americans. So now you have an enormous pool of high-risk people that will be slow to seek medical help because they can’t afford it.

One of those governors is Rick “Oops” Perry, who is on a world tour criticizing President Obama (remember when criticizing the president overseas was a major no-no?) for refusing to ban travel to Ebola affected regions. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the ONLY place that has seen a person-to-person transmission of Ebola is Dallas in Perry’s home state. So when this idiot starts calling for a travel ban in & out of Texas and orders the closure Texas’ airports to the rest of the country, I’ll give him a listen. Till then, he’s just stoking fear to score some cheap political points.
 

REMINDER: In many states, Early Voting begins today. Don’t allow Republicans to be rewarded for their obstruction, Sequesters, Shutdowns, pointless investigations, refusal to expand Medicaid, and an almost certain likelihood of attempting to impeach President Obama, by allowing them to win control of the Senate or Governor’s race. Vote!
 

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October 20, 2014 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, fake scandals, Healthcare, myth busting

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