SARS, Part IV: The Revenging

As horrified as I've been about the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa and the very few isolated cases here in the U.S., I'll admit I've also been fascinated by it in a sympathy-overload/morbid train-wreck kind of a way. It's not the death and misery that draws me in, it's the sweaty first-draft-of-history hyperbole in media it gins up and all the instant mythology of rumor/lie/conspiracy congealing on the periphery of our collective view of it. I can say that I've learned that no matter how intense or insatiable my thirst for Ebola-related news and opinion might be, it's never going to be appropriate to characterize it as "Ebola-fever." Try it out if you want, but you're going to get tsk-ed at. Or worse, thrown in an iron lung by a team of dudes in mylar suits, like the ones led by Peter Coyote in E.T. Only there's no Henry Thomas leading a gang of latchkey hooligans on their single-speed bikes on the way to rescue you, man. Peter Coyote's going to have his way.

Look, there's little to be said for the way the media has covered this. So far, one person in the United States has died from it and he was the guy who got it in West Africa. As I type this, the ones in the U.S. who got it in the U.S. are in treatment. Three other people who got it this year and are from the United States have recovered. If you're a math nerd, what we've seen since August are seven cases, resulting in one death. Logical reaction? Let's close a bunch of schools!!! I feel like the point doesn't even have to be made: for-profit news divisions benefit from viewership. Viewership is driven by a) the drama of "breaking" events and b) fear. Put those two things together and you can reassure the people at Crest and Mountain Dew that their adverts are being seen and the price of their ad-buys were totally justifiable on networks whose primary non-Ebola audience is more worried about reverse mortgages, diabetus and that shifty colored fella who hates America from the comfort of the White House.

The most infinitely fascinating thing about the whole experience has been the re-emergence of my oldest friends, the anti-vaxxers. What they would like you to know is that his Ebola thing was either bullshit to cover up the definitive announcement that vaccinations do totally cause autism AND/OR is a trick to freak people out so they'll get more vaccines, which we all know means "unknowingly participate in biological warfare trials organized by the World Health Organization and probably the company that makes Viagra." Meanwhile, people in West Africa are paranoid enough already that they're staying home and dying instead of seeking medical treatment, so another layer of media-carried hysteria from the media-est country in the world should probably really really help. I'm convinced the anti-vaxxers won't be happy until all the children are dead.

Congressmen have offered their own unsolicited and deeply inexpert advice designed to speak to the lizard id people use to spastically lash out at threats real and imagined AND to decide whom to vote for (apparently), calling for a travel ban that will, everyone who isn't a cable news whore and Sanjay Gupta say, only make the problem a lot worse a lot faster.

I've decided to be convinced that I'm going to get Ebola, even though I know it's not true. For all my perceived rationality, there's still a tiny little knot in my gut where, as much as I know neither I nor anyone I know will even be exposed to this, the ideas of exposure, illness and death all live together in a very comfortable but tiny modern condo overlooking the ascending colon. Those seeds were planted by evolution and my will to survive long enough to procreate. I fear disease because all the ones who came before me who lacked that respect all died from something avoidable and undignified, like dysentery. The discomfort comes from the uncertainty, where the vagueness of the threat is the threat itself. No, I envy the conspiracy people and the panic-ridden their certainty. And what's the best case scenario here? I don't get Ebola even though I knew I was going to, so I get a nice surprise of non-eye-bleeding death (eventually). Great. Or I do get Ebola, just like I fucking told you I would and bam! Vindicated. Who loses there? Well, besides my orphaned children I guess...