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[miauw62]

Ebola IS pretty bad, but it's certainly not the world-ending epidemic some people make it out to be.

* miauw62 points to ebolastone thread.

[Bauglir]

COMING INTO CONTACT WITH ANYONE WHO HAS IT MEANS YOU ARE ALMOST DEFINITELY GOING TO CATCH IT.

That's not actually true. You're reasonably likely if you take no precautions (and the victim is symptomatic), and if your contact with that person is regular and extended then of course you've got lots of chances and that adds up to "almost definitely" when you compound all of them, but unless you live in a city that's got a known patient in it, or are a medical professional or airport employee in a city with an international airport, your odds of encountering somebody with it are miniscule to begin with.

Seriously, worry about the flu more, it kills more Americans each year than Ebola's killed worldwide in its entire history.

[timferius]

COMING INTO CONTACT WITH ANYONE WHO HAS IT MEANS YOU ARE ALMOST DEFINITELY GOING TO CATCH IT.

That's not actually true. You're reasonably likely if you take no precautions (and the victim is symptomatic), and if your contact with that person is regular and extended then of course you've got lots of chances and that adds up to "almost definitely" when you compound all of them, but unless you live in a city that's got a known patient in it, or are a medical professional or airport employee in a city with an international airport, your odds of encountering somebody with it are miniscule to begin with.

Seriously, worry about the flu more, it kills more Americans each year than Ebola's killed worldwide in its entire history.

Can I get some numbers on last years number of mortalities for flu? Just actually curious, but cdc only seems to report on the mortality rate, not the actual number. I have 5454 total reported Ebola fatalities since I think 1979 though.

[IronTomato]

I didn't know any of this. I was going off of what the local news has been saying.

Fucking news. Making me look like an idjit.

[Spehss _]

I didn't know any of this. I was going off of what the local news has been saying.

Fucking news. Making me look like an idjit.

The news is good at that. Also I recall hearing Ebola is only primarily super contagious if you're actually touching excretion from the infected. So, like, don't go around touching other people's mucus, drool, blood, or other bodily fluids and you should probs be fine.

Not touching random stranger's bodily fluids should already be a good rule to live by though.

[Tiruin]

I didn't know any of this. I was going off of what the local news has been saying.

Fucking news. Making me look like an idjit.

/me hands over an ebook regarding Medicine. Or at least microbiology. :3
But yeah...if you go by the media then...you're going to get superficial information--just enough to know what's going on but not the exacts of it unless it is in detail within the news.

...And even then, it helps a lot to research thoroughly what you value within such news.

[timferius]

Also, if you're super concerned and work with the public (as I told my wife) just hand sanitize like crazy and you'll be good.

[IronTomato]

I didn't know any of this. I was going off of what the local news has been saying.

Fucking news. Making me look like an idjit.

/me hands over an ebook regarding Medicine. Or at least microbiology. :3
But yeah...if you go by the media then...you're going to get superficial information--just enough to know what's going on but not the exacts of it unless it is in detail within the news.

...And even then, it helps a lot to research thoroughly what you value within such news.

Yeah, that probably would have been a smarter thing to do.

Sorry everyone.  ._.

[mastahcheese]

Modern medicine.

It's crazy what it can do.

[Tiruin]

Modern medicine.

It's crazy what it can do.

Information dissemination actually. 
It's (sometimes) crazy what 'knowing some' is more dangerous than knowing nothing/everything when pertaining to medical matters.
...Especially regarding life and health.

[mastahcheese]

Yeah, that's a good point.
If someone was sick, and I had medicine with me, I sure wouldn't trust myself to know if it's the right one.
That's someone else's job.

[BlackFlyme]

Dogs have started chewing just about everything they can reach. They did it before as well, but they grew out of it, and now they're doing it again.

They ripped apart a box of candies that were sitting on the table. They broke a metal flashlight. They took my wallet off of my desk, and shredded that. Lost the money that was inside and I may need to replace a few of my cards.

[Jopax]

Tonedeaf assholes singing shitty songs at the tops of their voices. Doubly so when there's more than one group and the noise becomes an even worse mix of multiple shitty songs. And it gets even worse when the girls start signing in the majority, their screeching voice scratching away my sanity one layer at a time.

Hopefully the rainstorm starts soon and scares the bastards back into their rooms before I go to sleep, another night of sleeplessness because of these bastards is not something I want to have.

[Bauglir]

Not touching random stranger's bodily fluids should already be a good rule to live by though.

Yeah, your two significant risks with people you're not fucking/vampirizing are mucus (sneezing or coughing at you), and sweat (if you hold their hand or whatever). And even then, the residue's got to get in contact with one of your own mucus membranes, IIRC. At least that's what's typical with diseases communicable by fluids. Teach proper sneeze/cough procedure (into the sleeve of a shirt, if you haven't got tissues or something handy - not the hand) and avoid direct physical contact, plus frequent and thorough hand-washing and you should be good to go.

This is very different if you're in the healthcare profession. Especially with nurses, who're constantly dealing with bodily fluids. Seriously, I could never do that job. I just can't handle literal shit, and even vomit and mucus unnerve me. Anyway, point being, you've got a much higher risk there, but 99% of us are gonna be fine.

CDC says that the number of yearly flu deaths ranges from "a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people", by the way. Technically, it's possible that the median is lower than Ebola's lifetime count, given that vague data, but I'm inclined to believe otherwise. They do link their source directly, if you're more interested than I am. Anyway, people just don't care because it's less spectacular and exotic.

EDIT: And, IronTomato, don't worry about it. Modern media is built on inspiring fear and worry - it's the end result of a straightforward arms race. People just won't tune in unless the world is ending, anymore. Skepticism of it is a skill that takes a lot of time and exposure to build up, especially because you can't just disregard the media entirely if you want information on things. All your response means is that they're doing their job "properly".

[Worldmaster27]

For reference, my school was unprepared for this year's Latin I course, so they moved the course over to a separate online program. There are these discussion assignments we have to do sometimes, which is basically make a public post about [topics] and reply to someone.

There are these two guys who sit a few seats away from me. They're usually pretty obnoxious, but today was really bad. For one, they wouldn't shut up and kept playing rather offensive things on their phones.

And second, the main rage: One of them copied my discussion thing word for word without adding or changing anything. The other at least put effort into his plagiarism by adding a few new things and changing other bits around.

I also rage at them for pretty much ignoring our teacher supervisor and blaming their everything on some kid who was sitting across the room.

We(my friend and I) were also pretty sure this guy and maybe his friend were high, considering their behavior and that when one of the school's cops came by to drop something off they immediately shut up and didn't do anything for the five minutes that he was talking to our teacher supervisor.