“We tape the show at 7 O’clock, so by the time you’re seeing this, you’re probably dead.” Thus began Stephen Colbert‘s segment about the ridiculous scaremongering by the Western media reporting the ‘threat’ posed by the Ebola virus to those of us living outside of West Africa.
Even though there has never been a single reported case of transmission or death arising from the Ebola virus in the United States, the UK or Western Europe news editors across all media have flooded the news cycle with terrifying and wholly unrealistic reports, ‘projections’ and ‘analyses’ in order to ensure that we keep our fear-goggles firmly pinned to our faces.
The cases you may have seen reported in our ‘trustworthy’ media in recent days are either totally misleading reports of people with other illnesses or they have been about victims who were in Western Africa when they contracted the virus and who have now been medivaced back to their country of origin for treatment.
There are outbreaks of the Ebola virus every few years in Africa – although this one appears to be a little more virulent than those that have been seen in the past – and its victims are a tragedy for all those concerned. Even so, most of what you have read and seen in the British and US media about a potential Ebola pandemic in the last week has been, to paraphrase Colbert, yanked from news editors’ asses. The reports have been crafted specifically to keep you scared and to keep you consuming and, more specifically, buying news.
So, if you have been worried by what you have seen don’t be. If it was not for the recent media hysteria there would probably not even have been any tests undertaken for Ebola in the US and UK and in the chart above those countries would be grey instead of pink. I am not a journalist but given the abject failure of journalistic integrity of those who profess to be, I think it would be sensible to break some important news to the (hopefully) few of you that may have been worried by the sensational headlines that have been thrust upon us recently and it is this:
Unless you have travelled to Western Africa, are close to someone who has or you intend to visit there soon, there is almost zero possibility that you will contract the Ebola virus.
So relax….and enjoy the video….
Due to copyright restrictions in order to watch the clip you need to type or copy and paste the password: imincorrigible
Unmodified Video © Channel 4 News / ITN / Channel 5 /Comedy Central
…..and in the words of Douglas Adams…
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