I don’t have anything to add because it’s all so depressing. It’s true that Ignorance is the true the enemy. How the hell did we ever make it out of the caves?
Back then, the stupid died. Now we elect them.
Yes, there’s a difference, but this isn’t ignorance. Ignorance would be not knowing there’s such a thing as an infectious disease. Being told that there is such a thing and dismissing it as a hoax makes you simply stupid.
No it does not, it is a sneering Western arrogant ignorance to say such a thing, by someone who has no understanding of the situation of Liberia. You present more gross ignorance than these poor people, for it has less excuse.
I have pity for these people who have never had access to any education and have lived through the dictatorship of Taylor. The criminal Taylor destroyed society and now there is little in the Liberia to build confidence in informations provided and a mass of population under the age 45 who have never had any chance of education.
Regrettably, whether it’s stupidity or ignorance or some combination of the two, most likely 2/3 of those looting dirty bedsheets and mattresses are going to die. I’m not sure either stupidity or ignorance should be a capital offense but in this case it might be. That’s tragic.
To repeat something from the OP: according to the BBC report, a “senior police officer” did say “This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life”.
My understanding of Ebola as recently gathered is that it is strictly water-born, and must be passed directly by way of fluids. The mattresses and bedding may not present any more of a threat than a Liberian’s daily environment.
I know this because I am educated and Western, and inoculated against such superstitious fears. But if for some reason an Ebola patient’s mattress were to land of the street in front of my house, I would set that fucker on fire in one minute flat!
I’m pretty sure that bloody bedding is a problem.
Right. Keep in mind, these are the same clowns that think that wizards are shrinking their penises, so expecting a rational or intelligent response isn’t exactly a smart bet.
Then again, if you don’t have the educational foundation to tell that Western science is not a hoax, isn’t that still ignorance…?
“Sick people make people sick” isn’t exactly rocket science. There’s an entire chapter of the Bible devoted to the importance of quarantine and disposing of contaminated fabrics in the case of plague. That’s the level of understanding that they are failing to demonstrate here.
I dunno man, shots of crowds show people wearing fairly decent clothing(I don’t see people in rags or potato sacks) and a local police officer who presumably is not upper class also calls it stupid. I also am under the impression that internet cafes are common in African cities, so anyone could confirm that foreign governments like the USA and the UK are taking ebola seriously. Could you really believe that foreign superpowers are complicit in a hoax?
Alas, such items really are a transmission hazard. Ebola is a easier to spread and more resilient outside the host than a virus such as HIV, though nowhere near as infectious as influenza.
Very small droplets can contain a sufficient viral load to spread the infection. And Ebola can infect through intact mucous membranes. And Ebola can stay active several days outside a host.
Suppose someone put a a little water on one of these looted blood soaked mattresses or sheets in an effort to hand scrub it to clean it up to use. That person then touches his/her mouth or nose like most of us do multiple times every hour. That’s enough for transmission.
I’ve got friends in the Peace Corps over there that have had to pull out. If I send that joke over to them do you think they’ll get it?
I don’t know.
How smart are the people you hang out with?
You know…why doesn’t the local government just roll with the witchcraft thing? Put out media or PSAs saying there is witchcraft afoot and bewitched blood from someone who has been cursed can spread the curse to others?
EDIT:Assuming this is remotely plausible under local beliefs, I’m sure someone with a greater understanding of local beliefs could come up with some way to fit ebola into that framework. Hell try to remove some of the stigma of going to a hospital, as much as possible avoid things that look like hospital gear. Hire a couple of local pastors or spiritualists that are popular to spread the message of this infectious witchcraft and to come in for free spiritual healing, they seem money hungry anyway I am sure they would go for it.
I do know*. *The clothing is the cheap recycled clothing the missionaries import.
You presume wrong. To be a chief of police is middle upper class in Liberia. It is a fixed job with a salary, an elite position.
He is right it is stupid, stupid from the ignorance that a horrible civil war and the destruction of all schooling helped create.
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Encore the westerner presumptions speaking blindly in arrogance and its own ignorance. Common in African cities? Of course the african continent is one country and place.
The majority of the population of these slums are illiterate. The slum itself has no electricity to its houses, no sewage systems - it is itself an open sewer. How do you think illiterate persons without electricity, persons that are without a regular emloyment and have to struggle to pay for the basics, they are going to the luxury of the internet cafe you have heard is common in the continent of africa because there are no differences between Lusaka and Abidjan and the slum of monrovia which has power for how many hours in a day?
My point about the clothing of crowds was just that blood soaked sheets being worth looting didn’t seem to make sense.
I’ve seen a documentary on Liberia that is almost jaw dropping(on VICE) but was roundly criticized as showing the absolute poorest area of the country and being misleading. With others saying there are far more developed and stable areas that are barely below first world standard. I’m guessing the truth is somewhere in between and feel like real info is whitewashed for sensationalism in both directions, and I never claimed to have visited Liberia or the continent of Africa. So all I have to go on are documentaries or blog posts like this:
http://gautamganguli.com/africa/2010/11/internet-access-in-liberia/
That isn’t meant to claim I’m saying internet access is cheap or easy, just that it does exist and at least some people do have access.
There are public health campaigns designed to work with traditional healers (go to the healer for your cold, he’ll refer you to the hospital if it’s TB), but it takes a lot of thought and training. Witchcraft beliefs are internally consistent and based on observable phenomenon (obviously with some attribution error), so you can’t just make stuff out of whole cloth and expect it to work.
It’s like of you tried to convince American astrology fans of something. You couldn’t just say "Oh, mercury is in retro-retrograder
Sorry, baby hit “send”. But basically you’d have to work through the right knowledge brokers.