Last Sunday was December 7th the day of infamy as FDR called it. He’s the guy who years before the Pearl Harbor attack had said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Which got me to thinking.
I’m already nostalgic for Ebola. Where’d it go? There were rally groups forming in Rockaway to close the bridges. A Facebook group, Stop Ebola Now, started by some guy who nobody knows, had a feverish enthusiasm, so to speak.
The group was demanding the toll booths be used for checkpoints. As part of the E-Zpass program you could just drive up and hold a thermometer to the windshield and then be let through. If you didn’t have the E-Zpass thermometer, you had to go to the cash lane and a Port Authority cop would have to feel your forehead for any signs of a fever.
Some people said they were glad Peninsula Hospital was closed because people flying in to Kennedy might consider going there if they felt a bit warm. But then Ebola became like interest in the Neponsit Home. It was here, there was interest and uproar, then it was gone.
Ebola was like bell bottoms and facial hair. Things come, they go. No laughing matter for the people who contracted it, of course, but in pure numbers ebola was a blip on the what-can-kill-you scale.
Ebola joined a long list of things we’ve been told to freak out about. This column really should have no readers because you should have all been knocked off by bird flue, Y2K, and mad cow. And if not those, poison Tylenol, swine flu, SARS., West Nile and Legionnaires’ Disease should have done the trick.
Somebody is going to tell me that Ebola is still a risk and I shouldn’t be so cavalier. And I’ll probably be the guy who catches it because I said you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning (you do) or eaten by a shark if you live in Nebraska but it’s worth pointing out that we humans are nuts. If I die in some ironic way I want to say in advance: I knew I would! (Which kinda takes the irony out of it).
Anyway, too many of us underestimate common killers (regular flu and heart disease) and overestimate the media-driven, out-of-the-blue killers. A lot of people fret more about a subway terrorist attack or a plane crash than cancer. We all want to croak in our sleep. And anything more exotic than that makes some people fret.
For all the fretters and the safety obsessed go outside and play, shake hands with strangers, eat food from street vendors, and stop worrying that your umbrella will become a lightning rod in a rainstorm.
For safety sake, get out of the house. You know most accidents happen in the home. You won’t get Ebola but you might slip in the tub. It’s only a matter before the media catches on: Deadly Tubs Attack.
No comments:
Post a Comment