Ebola Patients Being Flown to America

I'm alternating between amusement and tear-my-hair-out frustration at the garbage I'm seeing with this situation (not here, elsewhere). From the conspiracy whackjobs (I refuse to call them "theorists"-they wouldn't know the difference between a hypothesis, a theory, and a personal opinion if Jenny McCarthy came up and boob-smacked them) who are saying that the CDC is going to unleash an ebola pandemic so Obama can institute martial law (like he's going to do every year when the flu breaks out too) to the holistic pushers who claim that cinnamon can save you and then get mad at people when questioned for evidence of that, it's just a sad testimony to the gullibility of our population. I get testy and lose my brain-mouth filter when I see idiots say "those people are as good as dead, leave them there" - no, they are not, but apparently compassion is.

Look, in the big picture ebola is worth being concerned about, and getting informed about, but it's NOT worth freaking out over. You are more likely to die of the flu, but look how many people refuse flu vaccines every year. You are more likely to die in a car crash. As my favorite blogger, Jim Wright, put it on his Facebook post on this topic: "Yes, there's a risk from ebola. So what? Compared to what? As an American my risk of dying from gun violence is measurably greater than being infected by ebola. Hell, I fully expect to get offed by some moron on the highway who's busy updating her f***ing Facebook page instead of paying attention to the road."

Ebola is not airborne. If someone infected with it sneezes directly in your face, it's called fluid transfer, not airborne transfer. Is there a chance it could become airborne, absolutely - it's a virus and it's mutating. There's always that chance. That's why funding research is so g**damn important, so we know what it's doing and can do something about it. We are more likely to have an infected traveler bring it here than the two Americans who were flown in through special isolated procedures, but even if we have an infected traveler bring it here the chances of an outbreak becoming widespread is remote - we Americans don't personally wash the bodies of our dead loved ones before burying them, we have professionals who understand what to do with disease-infected bodies. We have abundant medical facilities that can isolate patients, unlike poor villages where temporary isolation units are set up.

What should you do if we have an outbreak here? It depends on where it is and how fast it's spreading. If you're really worried, quarantine yourself and your family until it passes. Since it's spread by direct contact, remove that risk. Simple as that. Yes, doctors wearing biohazard suits came down with it, but do we know how tired they were from working nonstop in crappy conditions? Did they slip up and expose themselves in their fatigue, or did the virus become more deadly and make it past the suits? Until that's known, by taking samples and sequencing the DNA and testing it on animals in double-blind studies, there's no point in speculating or worrying needlessly.

The "actress", Playboy model, (used to be married to Jim Carrey) mouthpiece for the anti-vaccination movement. She is now a host on The View but has for years since her son developed autism pronounced loudly and at way too many occasions that it's because of his immunizations that he became autistic.