There are two great truisms of life that trump everything else.
One is life will always find a way. The other is life is finite.
Although there are in fact people working on the mortality question, unless or until there is a major breakthrough, we have to live with the knowledge there will come a time for every single one of us to lay our burdens down.
With that in mind, here is the good news: there is almost zero chance any one of us is going to die from the Ebola virus.
Now, it is possible to become infected, and those so unfortunate have a real problem, but for us, Americans, citizens of the First World if you will, chances are exceedingly slim we will catch it to begin with and if we do, we have the benefit of a well-established medical infrastructure dedicated to our survival.
Yes, as far as fatal diseases go, Ebola sounds about as bad as it gets, but it is really a problem where the disease can get a toehold, and that is generally in places where hospitals, medicine, and widely adopted sanitation practices are in short supply; places like West Africa, for example.
Believe it or not, Ebola is actually fairly hard to catch. Unlike flus and colds, which can be spread by air, you actually have to ingest, in some fashion, a bodily fluid produced by a sick person.
Further, unlike the flu, there is no infectious incubation period. In other words, if the person isn’t sick, they are not contagious.
For all the hysteria about Ebola, to date only three people in America have been infected, and admittedly one of those has died. Now consider, on average, 10-15 Americans are diagnosed with the plague every single year.
We could go on but this information is out there, easily accessible, and if you are really concerned, we encourage you to look for it. Knowledge can be reassuring.
Of course, you wouldn’t think there is any hope watching the media theatrics over the past week or two. You would think Ebola is the arrival of the apocalypse.
By failing their consumers once again, major media promotes a good rule of thumb. If there is not a lot of action to talk about, really, and yet your media sources won’t shut up about it, they are almost definitely focusing on half the story … the riveting half.
Nuts and bolts don’t draw ratings.
If major media was really interested in helping Americans live longer, it could start screaming with equal abandon about how all those extra pounds we are carrying, the exercise we are not getting, and all that processed food we are eating is much more likely to kill us than the latest disease of the week.
At least when it comes to our own health, we pose a real threat to ourselves.
