Ebola: Killer Virus, or Extreme Overreaction? By Trent Hagar

In the most recent weeks, the ebola virus, which has been largely targeted by the media, has spread to the United States. About a week and a half ago, a man flew in from Liberia, the epicenter of the outbreak, to see his family in Dallas, Texas. This man had unknowingly contracted the virus, and has since spread it to his family. Since this incident, many people have been completely overreacting, especially over social media, over the severity and contagiousness of the disease. However, many do not know that this disease has been having outbreaks all over Africa since the 1970's. The most recent of these outbreaks were in 2010 and 2011, in Uganda and the Republic Of Congo. The main difference between these two outbreaks is that the media has grabbed ahold of the 2014 outbreak and turned it into a global epidemic. Another important yet not as neglected factor is the contagiousness of the disease. This disease can only be contracted through contact with the bodily fluid of whomever is sick, i.e; saliva, blood, or fecal matter. This factor plays largely into why this disease has so heavily impacted countries with low standards of sanitation. In this case, those attending to the sick in countries suck as Liberia will get the blood of their patients on them and have literally no way of washing it off, whereas patients that have been flown back to America after contracting the illness have had much less of a chance of passing the virus on.