Shouts From Down Under

The colour saturated plague, before E and after E.

My concern and worry could become haemorrhagic about the current state of world events. Wars, poverty, inequality, racism, persecution and all those other juicy media scavenged causes effect everyone, but there's a major kablooey that is pushing its bleeding nose in front of the others, in a sneaking, thrusting attempt to win the race of the decimation of humanity as we know it in 2014. Make that 2015. That's how long a conservative estimate is to contain the latest outbreak of...

Hola to EBOLA!

4032 VICTIMS TO DATE. Plus 1 in the USA.

A whopping 40% of these victims have happened in the last few days / weeks. There are isolated outbreaks, yes isolated, with professional medics not only worried, but realising that this is turning into a global terror that makes ISIS look like Santa and his elves.

20 MILLION people in Nigeria are a prime nesting box for this hen of underestimated contagion, laying its deadly eggs of virus on unsuspecting carriers who don't even scratch their heads in puzzlement as they travel to who knows where. The honest ones, as we hear in the news, tell the hospital at their destination where they've been, knowing full well that at the slightest sniffle their lives will go on hold for at least a few weeks, and if lucky enough to fight off an actual Ebola infection, they then have to wait a further 7 weeks after being cleared of Ebola, and still have to wear a condom if involved in sexual activities for a further time.

What happens then, many must secretly speculate, or in my case, blah it out in a blog entry, if ISIS or some other loopy, selfish crowd of maniacs, who've basically never learnt to obey their parents, or accept any responsibility for their pathetic fake zealousness- what happens if they use some of those brains to team up with Ebola?

The symptoms in an infected person are not always evident, and only then seem like a common cold, with confusing comparison to other less deadly diseases. This similarity means for the teams on the forefront battle to contain the spread will have a much more difficult time trying to diagnose.
From a few weeks ago when 100's were turning up at treatment posts (that are grossly under-equipped and under-staffed) now they predict there will be 1000's coming. What happens when people realise there is no help there, and instead turn to other centres in built up areas?

What happens- lets face reality- when people realise there are much better facilities, and much more media attention, more concern and sympathy in developed countries? Won't those who are able, wont they flock overseas?

Will people start leaving the threatened countries in droves, like a huge wave of war refugees? This crowd will become a displaced person time bomb containing the seeds of a very real scenario of doom, wherever they land. Like locusts that swoop down on a farmer's crop, they will descend into airports across the planet, where, with no symptoms, the lack of staff plus inadequate quarantine systems, or attitudes, in place, there will be no opposition, or option, but to let them through.

I feel there must be a lot we aren't being told about this. When silence happens, you can't help but worry. Is it a silence of fear? Is it the deafening silence of 90% mortality? Is there no-one left to shout a warning?

Maybe the hassle of mere story editing isn't such a bad thing after all. I think I'll go hide my head in a good spelling / punctuation / grammar session like an Ostrich. Like a lot of people, maybe I can find solace and comfort in the fact that our country is girt by sea, and must be far enough away for any virus to become evident, surely, in jet liner passengers by the time it gets here.

Wait! There's whoever cleaned up after the infected guy vomited on the pavement, in America, and the 18 people he came into contact with. There's that suspected Ebola infected nurse in Queensland. And some other guy. And someone in Spain. Oh, but they tested negative. So. No problem.

Does anybody else feel guilty when they see the conditions those West African people are living in, with their tin huts, dirt floors, and oh-so-obvious poverty.
Every charity group seems to want to pay their CEO's most of the donations, and who can be sure if donating will even fix the problem long term?
Ebola will eventually be contained, (but even this is disputed) but poverty? That's a disease caused not by famine or drought these days, but by greed and grasping politicians and public.

Depressing this is, but the consolation is the fighting human spirit. To fight, we must write! That's how understanding comes, that's how we can communicate our empathy to those poor victims, or at least those who survive. We want to tell them that we do care, that we aren't just sitting back in our comfortable first world lives with no thought for others like them. We want to put across how inadequate we feel, how we really aren't doing anything to help, other than speak and write about them and the dreaded dragon of Ebola. We can only wield words like knights of old, trying to fight something impossible to extinguish.

We try to garner forgiveness, build relationships, form bridges of human hands, reaching out across the ocean, our fingertips stretching towards them with good intentions. If we throw our hands, fling our arms towards them hard enough, then maybe some love will be lifted on the Roaring 40's winds, and land in the laps of the leaders or their lackeys.

As long as we don't get some bodily fluids blown back in our face by those same winds. Because any exchange of that sort of love will be a deadly price to pay. Do we distance ourselves or die?

Will we be the generation, and our children, who remember what it was like Before Ebola, and After Ebola? Will it become that bad? Will it be like the Black Plague or Spanish 'Flu?
Who will survive to write it up in history USB sticks or BluRay storage systems in the future? Perhaps some of that historical recording will be carried by NASA or a Russian rocket, or the Chinese maybe, by their staff in stasis, to Mars, or some other place, where future generations will read this blog entry, and laugh.

That guy. He thought love and equality and other "touchy feely" softness could repair the scourge of poverty, when Ebola was ready to ravage even those encapsulated in their rubber suits with breathing apparatus.

That guy who was called...

Sparky