[update below] [2nd update below]
Voilà the tagline of a spot-on post by Wonkette blogger Doktor Zoom, “What stupid pointless Ebola freakouts are we having today?” It begins
Now that the first group of people to be exposed to Thomas Eric Duncan — including his fiancée and other members of his family in Dallas — have made it through their 21-day quarantine period without developing the disease themselves, you might think that maybe people might be calming down just a little bit, maybe. But then, maybe you are not a panic-mongering moron, so you may not be typical, you un-American weirdo. Maybe you’re not rushing out to buy flimsy “protective” gear or Vitamin C (or “colloidal silver” to turn your skin blue), but plenty of people are — or at the very least, scammers hope so. And it’s never a bad time to have a good old-fashioned panic over every last rumor and sneeze, like the nice people in Mississippi who pulled their children out of the local middle school when they learned that the principal had recently visited Zambia, which doesn’t even have any Ebola diagnoses, but is very definitely in Africa. Or the timid souls of Strong, Maine, who insisted on turning their town’s name into a possible Twilight Zone locale when they convinced the school board to place an elementary-school teacher on a 21-day leave because he’d been to an educational conference in Dallas. Those monsters should be coming down Maple Street any minute now…
And then there’s this freak-out story from New Jersey, where
The start of school for two students at Howard Yocum Elementary School is being delayed 21 days, Fox 29 reports, because the children recently arrived to the U.S. from Rwanda. Which is in east Africa. Which puts those students approximately 2,600 miles away from the closest West African country with Ebola cases — a distance roughly equivalent to that between Seattle, Washington, and Philadelphia…
And this one, about the good citizens in Beeville, Texas, who
are worried about what they claim is a potential risk of Ebola after 4 new students from West Africa [from Ghana and Nigeria, the latter having had eight Ebola deaths, out of a population of 175 million], enrolled in schools there just this past week.
And now we learn that the Ebola hysteria is shifting the dynamics of the North Carolina senate race and in favor of GOP candidate Thom Tillis, who, in a rally the other day,
sent a deep sigh and a shudder rolling through the crowd of Republican activists with just one word: “Ebola.”
Contrast this with France, where there is no particular panic over Ebola, or even great concern, with the exception of Air France personnel working the daily Paris-Conakry flight (yes, Air France is still flying to Guinea; pour l’info, there are 79 flights a week to Paris from destinations in West Africa, compared to 37 to the entire United States—and there has never in history been a direct flight between the US and Guinea or Sierra Leone, and none to Liberia since the 1980s).
Question: Could somebody please explain to me why Americans, in addition to being stupid dumbfucks so ill-informed, are such pussies so fearful? Just asking.
UPDATE: As we learn via MoJo, there are still Americans made of stern stuff
Peter Pattakos spent 20 minutes Saturday in an Akron bridal shop, getting fitted for a tux for his friend’s wedding. Thursday, his friend sent a text message, telling him that Ebola patient Amber Joy Vinson had been in the store around the same time.
[…]
Pattakos, 36, a Cleveland attorney who lives in Bath Township, called the health department, which told him to call back if he exhibits any Ebola symptoms. He called a doctor, who told him not to worry.
“I didn’t exchange any bodily fluids with anyone, so I’m not worried about it,” he said. “I’m much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola, even if you were in the same bridal shop.”
Tout à fait.
2nd UPDATE: The Onion has an informative map 🙂 “Tracking Ebola in the US.”
Amen!
One, unless I misremember, Ebola has featured in, not one, but several American best-selling medical thrillers over the past 30 years, so it is already part of American imagination somehow. So this is a case of reality trying to imitate fiction (and thankfully failing in the US and Europe, but not in 3 West-African countries).
Two, Ebola with the rapid, graphic, painful death associated and no proven cure as yet, resonates strongly with our so-called European heritage, with the centuries old depopulation of Europe by the Black Plague. No wonder a panic – to be sure irrational in the US but that’s normal – is just around the corner.
Three, whereas something like a third of Americans were German-speaking prior to WW I, it became a virtue afterwards to not speak a foreign language and many wore this like a badge of honour. And the same goes for geographical knowledge of the World ex-America, as American stand-up comedian Sarah Palin eloquently demonstrated again some years ago.
Fourth, ever since WW I, there has been a strong isolationist current in the USA, thankfully defeated several times, but strong still. Close the borders, we’ll be safe!
Fifth, it looks like the public crisis management has been better handled in France than in the USA.. I am thinking in particular of public health authorities adamantly refusing to discuss suspected cases in France until they are confirmed through testing.
Sixth, the idea that individuals behave rationally has for many decades been very seductive – and in my field, economics, ruled theoretically for a long time. It has however been empirically demonstrated in the past 20 years that it does not fit the facts and that approaches combining economics and psychology are a better fit. Do not be surprised when crowds do no behave rationally. They never do.
Last, consider yourself lucky that Howard Yocum Elementary School parents do not know about Marburg, of which there is an outbreak currently in Uganda (as there usually is). Uganda of course neighbours Rwanda. Shoot, I was there not long ago, I have to stop here to get tested.