Editorial: Ebola is Not a Joke

Ebola hazmat suit on sale as Halloween costume.

As Western Africa mourns the tormented ends of citizens from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, Americans are buying full-body protective gear to wear as Halloween costumes. As humans just across the Atlantic grapple with a full-scale epidemic, Western news media is dramatizing the impacts of singular cases. Our gross intolerance to the terrifying and dreadful deaths of many by Ebola just continents away exemplifies a flaw in the way this country views current events and popular culture.

Mass hysteria is bad. But mass paranoia is even worse. The media’s pop-culturization of Ebola has not only taken focus away from pertinent issues, but has enflamed the people of America to a climactic dread.

The Harbinger believes that the focus on the few cases of Ebola in the US should shift toward the thousands of deaths in Western Africa. Not only is the public politicizing the issue, news networks everywhere have run amuck with misinformation and under-substantiated facts.

Ebola information flier handed out in New York.

While this is the most serious outbreak of the virus, it has happened before. Since its first emergence in Zaire during the late 70’s, Ebola has been cropping across the globe in accidental laboratory contaminations, including places like the Philippines, Russia and even the US. While no humans contracted the disease during the phases, it should be known that the virus isn’t a new issue just now being splashed across American television sets and Twitter feeds.

In fact the current outbreak began back in February. According to The Guardian, Sierra Leone has been reporting 20 deaths per day, making the current outbreak’s death rate at 4,500 total around the globe. These deaths should weigh heavily on the shoulders of every US citizen. It is easy to make Ebola a running joke, a current events punchline, or political slander but Americans should realize that this is both not a joke nor a reason to panic.

Instead of letting the media run rampant with frenzied reports and extremist doctors and a villainization of the Center For Disease Control, there should be a general level of respect for the virus and understanding of its seriousness. It appears that attitudes are at two polarities: one of mockery and one of panic. A balance needs to be found to distinguish a healthier and less reactionary attitude as a matter of not only respect for those who have passed but also to keep extremism at bay.