Tag: Ebola
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As Stupid Does
A barrel full of a nauseating-looking stew of what looks like sputum, blood and pus appears on the Nicollet Mall. Behind it is a large sign, set off by bright, blinking lights: BARREL MIGHT CONTAIN HIGH CONCENTRATION OF EBOLA VIRUS! Exposure Could Very Possibly be Fatal! If true, do not Lick, Drink, Rub on Skin…
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Parkas In The Third Circle
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The Star Tribune runs an astonishingly even-handed report on politicians’ finger-pointing over Ebola funding. The conclusion: they’re equally to blame. Which isn’t true, but is a far cry from Star Tribune’s reflex to blame Republicans. The article points out CDC funding in 2010 was $6.8 billion, 2011 was $6.9…
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This Is How Stupid They Think You Are
SCENE: The Admiralty, London, May, 1940. Winston CHURCHILL is poring over a map in the Admiralty’s operation’s center, looking over the deteriorating situation in France. He is joined by Admiral Nigel FRIEDEN, head of the Royal Navy’s public health wing. CHURCHILL: It is clear that we are going to have to evacuate the British Army…
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A Tale Of Three Nations
As the US flirts with Ebola panic, it’s worth noting that Nigeria – more corrupt than Chicago but probably not Camden, with ethnic and social divisions that would make the most hardened academic grievance-monger yak up her skull, and a nation that as a whole is like a Detroit that rarely ends – has managed…
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Airborne
The President is discussing sending 3,000 US military personnel to the heart of the Ebola outbreak, in west Africa. The proposal has brought out the crazy…on the right. To be fair, it’s only comment-section trolls, for the most part, but the claims – “Obamawantsto introduce Ebola to the US” – take me back to the…
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Perspective
As the panic industry gears up to make its obligatory buck or two off the Ebola epidemic, the bastion of empirical sanity, PopMec, chimes in with some common public health sense: However, despite its severity, Ebola is an unlikely candidate to cause widespread epidemics. Ebola outbreaks in humans begin with direct contact with an infected…