People in this country are panicking over Ebola. Every new case is a headline. Every new suspected case, no matter how flimsy the grounds for suspicion, is a lead story. We are collectively transfixed by the ever-changing tally of "Number of People Who May Possibly Have Been in the Presence of Someone with Ebola".
Yes, that's dismissive. Don't get me wrong - Ebola is a terrible disease - but rabies is going to kill six times as many people in Africa this year, even with this particularly virulent outbreak. And it's unlikely, in the extreme - even with our eviscerated public health infrastructure - that the disease will go much of anywhere in this country.
It's something to be afraid of, but it's something to be afraid of in the same sense of a lightning strike or getting stung by a lionfish at the beach. We've got bigger things to be worried about.
Read on . . .
Even while people are panicking over a disease that will likely never affect them or anyone they know, they drink water out of their faucets without a thought about the long-term effects of the chemicals that are supposed to be there, much less what may have seeped in from groundwater contamination – especially in areas where there have been coal ash spills, or other industrial accidents, or there’s been wastewater injection for fracking and (by a complete coincidence) peoples’ tap water suddenly turned flammable.
They buy fast food, with meat provided from Gods-know-where, though at least some of it was likely processed overseas in countries that have been caught more than once adding in substandard meat, or meat from more . . . creative animals. And that, of course, is assuming the meat and the animals it came from were actually healthy back at the largely unregulated operations that provided them. And all this then shipped back here and loaded with so many chemicals that – as many people have demonstrated – you can leave the burger on a shelf, unwrapped, for two years and it won’t mold, decompose, or look any different than it did when they tossed it to you out the drive-thru window.
They ignore the fact that Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which are animal-torture centers beyond what your mind can imagine, are pumping their livestock full of antibiotics (accounting for 80% of all domestic antibiotic use, in recent years), helping usher in the age of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, which are already showing up and putting us back in the 1800’s as far as treating infections. They’re also acting as giant, filthy petri dishes for new flu strains, and have already been linked to an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico. As an added bonus, the toxic runoff from these operations is promoting the rise of flesh-eating bacteria in formerly clean waterways.
They eat food that has been ridiculously over-processed, and sometimes genetically modified, with long-term effects that are only beginning to be understood. They eat fruits and vegetables from plants modified to produce their own pesticide. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the pesticide Roundup, and a similar toxin known as Bt, are prime choices for this, and have now been detected in the blood streams of pregnant women and their fetuses during a Canadian study, and some research suggests that they may kill off beneficial “gut bacteria” (the dearth of which, in turn, is starting to be linked to autism), or even modify it to produce the toxins itself, right in your own digestive tract.
And if you’re reading this, a lifetime of exposure to plastic, especially for food and drink containers, has likely left you with a bloodstream full of a toxic chemical called bis-phenol-A (BPA), which can negatively impact the growth and development of children and, honestly, who knows what else.
And, of course, we’ve crossed so many Points of No Return on climate change it hardly matters what else we do now.
But Ebola – yeah, Ebola’s what we should be worried about. Why, exactly?
I could be cynical, and say because there’s no money in Ebola, while all these other things are either making people rich, or are the side effects of things that are making people rich, but I won’t. I just think it’s because Americans have gotten dumb. Specifically, we’ve gotten dumbed down.
Our news used to report what mattered, and ignore what didn’t. Now it reports what’s attention-grabbing, and ignores what isn’t – and the new standard is more often than not the exact opposite of the old one. That’s why they reported on a Malaysian airliner for 17 ½ months, or however goddam long it was, and why, in three weeks, Ebola will slide off the headlines when a Pretty Young White Girl goes missing/is murdered/goes on trial for something.
It’s why every issue they do debate is argued, not by experts who have to present facts and show their work, but by the same recycled pundits and politicians slinging whatever talking points they’ve been fed by lobbyists and handlers, and often just trying to out-shout the other guy. It’s why a show like “Crossfire” was ever seriously considered as a “discussion of the issues of the day”, instead of the glorified cockfight it was.
It’s why we all circulate ice bucket challenge videos to raise money to fight ALS, but nobody asks why ALS research funding was cut so much in the first goddam place. And it’s why we’ll panic over Ebola - a disease which will likely kill fewer people in the US than bee stings - but very little will be said - and less listened to – about funding for the CDC, or for Ebola research, or why they were cut, or why we haven’t had a Surgeon General in over a year (who, among other things, would command the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service – who, among other things, is supposed to be helping with situations like, oh, disease outbreaks).
So, seriously . . . what are you going to worry about today? Ebola – or one of the thousand things that can actually affect your life?
And are you going to do anything about it?