So….you are watching TV………………and they tell you on the news that several people at the nearest hospital to you are suspected of having contracted Ebola.  None of them are from Liberia.  All of them are from your own community.  What do you do?  What can you do?

Do you go about your business content in the knowledge that ‘the professionals’ have it well in hand? (If you think that, please take the time to read up on the Texas hospital’s efforts-to-date with handling Ebola and the subsequent actions of the CDC).

Or do you go about your business but take extraordinary precautions like face-masks and Chlorine spray bottles? (considerably more effective than relying on ‘our professionals’ but even more subject to Murphy’s rules).

Or do you immediately go to the local SuperMart and load up on food and crap so as to be able to ‘ride out’ a 30 day quarantine?  Do you suggest that all family members stay home for a while (and to Hell with school and work!).  Do you cancel social gatherings?

I don’t know either.  I have no idea.  At what point does fear of – or worse – evidence of catastrophic threat make you alter your life?  We have not really thought this one out, either.  But some folks have and they posted You-tubes about various forms of End-of-Days.

Hard to believe people actually film themselves being so stupid.  I have been that stupid many times but didn’t have the foresight to set up a camera first so maybe that makes me stupider?

Last night – while Sal was quilting – she suggested that we watch some You-tubes because ‘we haven’t watched many of them and we should at least see what they have to offer.’ The first titles we saw listed on the right hand side menu were all about DOOMSDAY PREPPING.  Somehow that seemed apt for the times.  Even seemed somewhat apt for us. We laughed at ourselves.  And turned one on.

That first YT called Doomsday Preppers was pretty ridiculous.  Two guys were featured. One was focused on making an assault ATV and tire dis-ablers so that he could catch bad guys on his property and, presumably, blow them away with his more-than-adequate arsenal.  His feature should have been titled Mad Max Wannabe. What a nut!

But the other guy was even stupider.  He figured that he and his family may have to run and hide and, for reasons unfathomable to me, his front door was not likely to work when he really needed it to so he built an underground tunnel from his bedroom to where his ‘bug-out’ vehicle was parked.  Not counting the incredible expense (better put elsewhere), it actually delayed him and his family from getting to the escape vehicle. Parking it in the front driveway would have been much better.

That YT video was just funny and entertaining in a stupid kind of way.

It was the next You-Tube that kinda shocked me.  It was a ‘sponsored’ excerpt presumably from the National Geographic Channel and it portrayed what would likely happen to a family in LA when a killer disease ravaged the country.  And it was (in my opinion) somewhat (at times) more realistic.  Well, more so than the first two at least.

We actually now HAVE a killer disease to apply this scenario to, anyway.

The biggest point made in the NATGEO excerpt: most people would stay home and watch it all unfold on TV (the story line posited several weeks of watching TV for the subjects being filmed) until forced to take some action at which point it would be way, way too late.

What shocked me equally as much was that so many people were presumably thinking this way that the so-called ‘entertainment’ industry would invest in such a bizarre ‘DOOMSDAY’ show production.  Just how many paranoid preppers are there out there, anyway?

I know, I know, it is not the accuracy of the content so much as the sheer ‘goofiness’ of the characters involved that probably prompted the industry to do shows like these. Like all so-called reality shows, it is the unreality of the characters (and how they think) that makes them interesting.

Having said that, it is not just a little weird and coincidental that we now have the specter of Ebola to consider while watching such nonsense.  For me, it is the juxtaposition of the goofy with reality and timing that prompted this blog.

Could the nut-bars be right? (NOT the guys with tunnels and arsenals).  I mean…..think about it……Ebola came to Texas and the nurses attending the patient that died contracted the disease.  That’s scary in itself.  But, worse than that, the hospital mishandled just about everything they could and the Center for Disease Control even cleared one of the nurses for travel to Cleveland on the basis that ‘she was properly outfitted’ during the time of her shifts.

Makes some sense, I suppose……unless you are wrong or she made a mistake…….then such a ‘protocol’ just made the problem exponentially worse.

Doesn’t seem like an abundance of caution was the operating policy.

I guess what I am saying is this: Murphy rules.  In all things.  And Murphy rules absolutely and quickly with pandemics.  If something CAN go wrong, it WILL go wrong.

And it has.

So, ‘……they tell you that several people at the nearest hospital to you are suspected of having contracted Ebola.  None of them are from Liberia.  All are from your own community. What do you do?  What can you do?’

Suggestion: do not watch it unfold on TV.

Perspective: We first heard about the Liberian Ebola patient in Texas on or about September 30.  I wrote about it on October 5th.  It is now October 16th. Approximately two weeks and a bit since this disease became publicly known two new cases have been found and one of them had done some traveling within N. America.  By airplane.  With airports.  In just two weeks Murphy has proved his mettle.  Please, my friends….I am not suggesting anything…….except: watch this one closely.  And don’t just watch for too long.

“Dave!  Are you suggesting we all head for the hills?”  

Of course not.  In fact, I am heading for the city myself (ready to turn around at a moments notice, however).  I am just saying; ‘think about it.  Watch it.  And don’t be caught flat-footed if the unthinkable happens because the unthinkable only happens when you don’t think’.

DISCLAIMER:  WORDPRESS does not endorse the opinions of the author.  Nor does his wife or friends.  They think the author is a nut.  The author isn’t sure, either.  The jury is still out.