People keep posting this stupid meme on Facebook. I get what it is saying that the media always has something out there that will kill us. However, it is not fair to lump all of these things together. And some of these things are just results/causes of others (fake news leads us into the migrant caravan).
I want to talk about the diseases for a minute. H1N1 (or swine flu) killed 200,000 people. Acting like it was just some kind of overblown news story is idiotic. The other diseases? They did not kill tons of people and do you know why? Because of the systems we had in place.
The CDC was funded and prepared for outbreaks. They had people in foreign countries to help lead the way in case there was an outbreak. People trusted the news and more importantly, they trusted doctors/scientists/public officials who were telling them about the dangers and how to stop the spread.
When people heard about H1N1, they did not think this was some plot by Obama to pass healthcare (okay, some fringe people probably did, but those people were in the minority–they were not the president of the United States and his staff).
Think about this for a second. We live in a time when people question whether or not vaccines are helpful. There is undisputed evidence about vaccines and yet there are still parents out there who choose not to vaccinate their kids because they did a Google search and watched a YouTube video. Hell, there are people who think the Earth is flat!
When you add all of this together: an administration that is not ready (they cut funding to all the departments that deal with these things) and does not have proper experts leading the charge (Mike Pence thinks prayer will save us, cool!) + a public that believes scientists are out to deceive them and distrusts the media, sprinkle in our messed up healthcare system (people not being able to afford taking time off to get tested or treated) and all of that equates to a population that is ripe for a pandemic.
I know people are saying things like “it has a 98% survival rate, so no need to panic.” That is correct, but it does not hurt to take precautions. WASH YOUR HANDS! Avoid contact with people if possible (hey, maybe shaking hands is a bad idea). Also, just for a second, imagine that 1% of the population ends up infected. That would be about four million people. Now, if 2% of those people die…80,000 people. But hey, at least the other 98% survived, hahahaha. Tell that to someone who loses a loved one. Be that asshole who says that to them.
We need to demand that Congress put pressure on the Trump administration to take the proper actions. This is not a Democrat/Republican issue, this is a human problem and we all need to work together to fight it.
