14 DAY TRIAL // For this week's editorial, I've decided that I want to be downright malicious. Not I-will-lash-out-at-you-for-pure-entertainment malicious, but a you-totally-have-it-coming sort of approach.
Not to beat about the bush, what sparked my (rightful, I might add) anger earlier this week was the news that, while on a plane, some guy decided to shout at the top of his lungs that he had Ebola when in fact he only had the flu.
Passengers and crew alike freaked out, and health officials were forced to keep everybody on board until it was confirmed that the self-proclaimed Ebola patient was in fact a run-off-the-mill flu victim.
Apparently, the only reason why this man told fellow travelers and crew members that he had Ebola was that he was looking to have some fun. That's right, it was all a big, fat joke to him.
Unfortunately but not at all surprisingly, the rest of the people on the plane all failed to see what was so funny. As did the folks who got to hear about this incident from media outlets.
First off, here are the cold, hard facts
The incident occurred this past Wednesday, October 8. At the time he told the world that he had Ebola, the man, whose identity is still a mystery, was on a US Airways flight traveling from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Punta Cana, a municipality in the Dominican Republic.
Shortly after the plane took off, the would-be Ebola patient started coughing and sneezing. After spending quite a while spreading the content of his lungs, throat, and nose around, he suddenly told people that he was infected with the deadly virus.
Following his announcement, crew members alerted authorities at the Punta Cana International Airport. Almost immediately after the plane landed, health officials wearing protective suits boarded it, took the man in their custody, and escorted him to a local medical center.
The other 255 passengers, together with the crew members, were asked to remain on board until everything was sorted out. It took about two hours for doctors to determine that the man didn't have Ebola, during which time his flight companions were stuck inside the aircraft.
Information shared with the public by staff at the Punta Cana International Airport says the man could not possibly have Ebola simply because he had never traveled to Africa and had never come into contact with an Ebola patient.
Talking to the press, Alberto Smith, airport director of operations, explained that the man's announcement was only meant as a joke, and that the passenger told people that he had Ebola simply because he was looking to get their attention.
There is nothing funny about Ebola, folks
Admittedly, it was in early August that I ran an editorial saying that the Ebola virus was a rather cool little fellow. And, yes, one of my readers was courteous enough to draw my attention to the fact that I was absolutely, positively, and undoubtedly sick. Sick as in mentally deranged, that is.
I stick to my opinion. The Ebola virus is a mindboggling organism and well worthy of our respect. For Pete's sake, we've landed people on the moon, sent spacecraft to Mars, mapped the seafloor, and used all sorts of machinery to document the human body's anatomy and physiology in stunning detail.
Yet here we are, being killed by the thousands by some virus that we can't even see with the naked eye but that can ransack the cells and organs in our body like a bull on speed would a china shop. Yes, the Ebola virus is, from this standpoint, admirable. But there is no way it could ever be funny.
Since the first Ebola cases were documented in Guinea back in December 2013 until this past October 8 (that's right, I'm talking last Wednesday), a total of 4,033 people were killed by this virus and a whopping 8,399 cases of folks affected by this disease were recorded in seven countries.
And it's not just West Africa that's hurting. Just days ago, the deadly virus claimed its first victim in the US and a nurse in Spain was announced to have become the first person in the world ever to contract Ebola outside the countries where the epidemic is ongoing.
Not to bore you with figures, my point is that hundreds of people have died and are still dying because of a disease scientists don't yet understand well enough to treat. If it's true what they say that it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt (and I believe it is), then we're well beyond being able to make jokes about Ebola.
In fact, we were never in a position to turn this disease into a punch-line. What that man did on the US Airways flight wasn't just wrong, it was disrespectful to the folks who are actually now fighting this virus trying to survive and it went against everything that it supposed to be moral in us humans.
Sure, maybe he didn't mean any harm and failed to realize that he would scare the bejeezus out of people and waste doctors' and authorities' time. Still, I have to say that, from where I stand, if he really was simply looking to get folk's attention, he could have just started cracking jokes or impersonating some world-famous celebrity.