Ebola as a Meme: We Are All Going To Die, The Question Is How

With all the panic that right wing politicians and media want us to consume about Ebola and how we are all going to die from it if we leave our homes, I wanted to write about just what all the fuss was about. I came to the conclusion that Ebola is not something to panic over, however it is something we fear more of for some reason. So I started to think about why we fear it so much. The answer is clear, while we all know we are going to die, it is the method in which we think about death coming to visit us that decides for us if we can live with it as an outcome or not. Death is a natural occurrence in all life. We are born and go through life and then suddenly without any warning at times we are here one minute and gone the next. We live with much more terrible things in life than Ebola however. Flu kills many more people than Ebola has. Same goes for car accidents, heart disease, lung cancer and diabetes. Yet Ebola send shivers down anyone who thinks about what could happen if we suddenly got it.

In my opinion we fear Ebola more than the above because of the way we check out with it. I mean few can think of anything worse than vomiting blood and having your internal organs explode from within over a 10 day period. It is in a large way just like some 50’s horror movie death from a zombie movie. Only with Ebola it is as real as it gets. The fact that people can get it from unknown causes as well as the known causes reeks havoc on ones internal routines and living structures. In our world viruses and bacteria are a billion dollar industry. We have everything we want over the counter to combat viruses and bacteria that float around all day. But with Ebola there is no easy remedy or cure. Matter of fact once you have it you have a very high rate of proceeding to the final stages of the virus within 10 days. And that 10 days can be a nightmare in hell for anyone who is unlucky enough to get it.

With other diseases we have a long way to go from diagnoses to eventual death, and those types of deaths are not as terrible as managing Ebola. So in a large way the reason people can quickly panic over it is because of how we die from it, and its unknown at this point just how easily is can be transmitted, which also can possibly keep us from shopping at the grocery store, or going to school, or work, or even being out in public spaces. Those in the right wing media have all but told us that we can get it from someone coughing or sneezing or just touching something we end up touching. They want us so out of our minds with paranoia that we will never leave the frigging house.

The reality is however that we will probably die from something else rather than catching Ebola. But leave it to right wing media to hype it up until we are all afraid to move. with the added benefit that we see just how ineffective the so called liberal controlled government is to save us, or even stop us from being exposed to it. That is where right wing politicians come to the rescue. Of course their plan is no plan at all. They want a global travel ban that freezes all travel to the United States, while leaving other countries to deal with it on their own. Yes, the right wing is all about every man for himself when shit hits the fan. The question is this: Is Ebola the shit hitting the fan, or is it just something we now have to deal with in combination of the thousands of other viruses and bacteria that roam the planet hidden beneath us?

There is no question that humans are now seeing that we can easily be taken out by some pesky bacteria that could ravage humans globally until few are left. However the real question I have is: is Ebola all that it is cracked up to be or is it just another in a long line of virus/bacteria hype such as Swine Flu, H1N1, Pig Flu, Bird Flu, Cow Flu, Chicken Flu, Milk Flu, Anthrax, and a host of other deadly organisms? Each one of those organisms were in the past slated and pushed in media as the pandemic we were all waiting on that will wipe out the human race. Yet, short of a few thousand people dying from them, the pandemic that was sold to us never happened, and we mostly went about our daily routines without dying from it or even getting it.  Ebola seems to be like most of these other organisms, easily hyped and easy to panic the population with, but in reality just another in a long line of things we have to fear and eventually deal with until we don’t fear it that much.

Granted I wouldn’t want to catch it, and that being said I have had my own panic stations with it, but overall the hype seems to be just that, hype. And those who are being watched now are all coming out of their self imposed exiles free of having caught it even though we were told that they may have been around it.

So at the end of the day it seems as if all we have to fear is fear itself. And while Ebola is a terrible way to go, it is not very likely any of us will catch it by going outside or in public or going about our daily routines.