Since my last post about Ebola, one person has died from the dreadful disease. Another two have been diagnosed with it. Those two were medical workers who tried to save the man’s life who died. They are being treated. Oh yeah, and about 16, 348 people died of heart disease. So please, everyone keep enjoying your deep fried bacon-wrapped bacon phalluses on an edible sugar stick while kvetching every time the one dude in the office from Morocco sneezes because he has hay fever allergies. You definitely have your priorities straight.
Keep in mind that Morocco does NOT have any Ebola cases, but it is in Africa, and I generalise that anyone who thinks that a bacon garnished bacon dong is a good idea to eat probably does not differentiate the many countries in Africa. They just round up to Ebola.
Just to be clear: Heart disease: 16,348. Ebola: 1.
AIDS has killed more people in this country than ebola ever will, and no one gave a damn when it reached our shores. I guess it’s a matter of who is affected by the disease. All of a sudden, people are treating ebola like it’s an unarmed black teenager in Florida.
Many lawmakers have raised cain about closing our borders and warning of immigrants sneaking over from Mexico carrying the virus. Some have suggested we quarantine African immigrants in their specific communities and severely inhibiting their movements until ebola has run its course. Believe me, they’ll do it. Texas has a long history of making life hard for people who came from Africa. Others suggest a travel ban and visa delays on West African countries, blocking anyone from going into or leaving West Africa. Forget that there aren’t any direct flights to Western Africa from the US. One college rejected applicants from Nigeria, the first country to contain and eliminate the ebola threat, based on the fact that their country had ebola cases. Don’t worry, though the lie the administration used when this was brought to the public eye sounds COMPLETELY legit and not racist at all: “We don’t need any more Africans; We’re focusing on getting some Asians in our school”.
Now we have an “ebola czar” to see to the “crisis”. Well, I know what the new ebola czar needs to do in order to contain the health threat in the US: We actually DO need to close the borders...to Texas.
The initial response to the first ebola case was that it was the patient’s fault for not giving enough information, even though he stated in his initial forms that he was in Africa and he had a 103 fever. Texas Governor Rick Perry rejected any federal assistance for Medicaid expansion, and the uninsured in Texas are costing the rest of the US $9.2 billion because of it. He was very proud of his decision, that kept 25% of the population without health insurance, upholding his state’s right to have horrible, horrible medical care. There was a measles outbreak last year. MEASLES. Who the hell gets measles anymore? The United Health Foundation gives them a rank of 36 out of the 50 states in terms of healthiest places to live. Nearly 1 in 3 Texans is obese, and with that stat, a myriad of life threatening peripheral illnesses follow. Of the 50 hospitals with the most ER visits, 5 Texas hospitals are in the top 10. Don’t expect to get quick service when admitted, either. Let’s talk about spontaneous lead poisoning for a minute: Texas is second only to California in gun deaths. You may think that this is a crime issue, but from a health perspective, those deaths mean that there are at times efforts to help a victim survive who may or may not have insurance, which means that someone else is footing the bill, which means a family that may already be struggling will fall further into debt and poverty. If you are a woman in Texas, your uterus is pretty much a ward of the state. Birth control and abortion laws are some of the most restrictive in the nation. Let’s face it: Texas is just bad for our health.
It is almost certain that we will still hear panic in Congress and talking heads screaming bloody murder about ebola, all while another few thousand people die of the flu and heart disease. It is hard not to see the irony in American media calling for citizens to coil in fear of yet another thing that descended from Africa that probably will not harm them. A poll reported that 40% of Americans think that ebola is a real danger. Ironically, the people who took that poll had to put down their beef tallow grease pie a la mode in order to fill out the survey form. The real danger is right under our nose, though. It’s Texas. You don’t want to mess with it, but it’s because it’s probably got something...
No comments:
Post a Comment