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When will Ebolaphobia become a hate crime?

by Fjordman

I have been following the stories about the Ebola virus for some time. I am unsure what to make of it, since I am not a medical health professional or a virologist. The single most worrisome thing I have read about the nasty Ebola virus in recent months is the claim that the number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling approximately every three weeks. This is just an estimate. We do not actually know the full number of people infected with Ebola in Africa. However, let us assume for the sake of argument that this number is correct.

Since many people do not understand basic mathematics, they do not understand the principle of exponential growth. Several thousand people have already died of Ebola during this outbreak. If you start out with 500 people infected with the deadly virus, this will have grown to 1000 people in three weeks. After another three weeks, this will have doubled again to 2000, and then to 4000. Three weeks after that, you have 8000 people infected with Ebola. Then you have 16 thousand, 32 thousand, 64 thousand, 128 thousand, 256 thousand, 512 thousand and then 1024 thousand.

If you assume that the number of infected doubles every three weeks, that number could in principle go from 500 people infected with Ebola to more than one million in the space of 33 weeks, less than eight months. Some scientists do in fact suggest that we could face one million Ebola cases by early 2015. This will not necessarily happen in real life. Yet the fact that this is even theoretically possible should cause some concern. Merely 25% of this number would mean that we might have to deal with a quarter of a million Ebola cases at some point in 2015.

Will it really become that bad? Not necessarily. As my friend Ned May pointed out, diseases sometimes grow less deadly as they spread. There is no more powerful and faster evolutionary pressure than a deadly disease. Even the deadly flu virus that between 1918 and 1920 killed more people than the First World War eventually grew less lethal. That being said, even the Spanish flu did not kill up to 70% of those infected, as Ebola does. Fortunately, Ebola does not spread as easily as the flu does. Otherwise, it could have been the new Black Death. Moreover, the Spanish flu only grew less deadly after it had already killed tens of millions of people.

So far, with the exception of a few health workers in Europe and North America, Ebola largely remains confined to West Africa. However, that could change. Some observers caution that panic about Ebola is spreading faster than the virus itself. Sub-Saharan Africans are also a resilient bunch of people. If most Europeans or Asians had been living under the hygienic conditions that many people do in Africa, they would have been dropping dead like flies, even in the absence of Ebola. Especially if they ate fruit bats.

Maybe the Ebola threat is hyped; maybe not. However, even if it is hyped, the Ebola virus exists. The threat is real even if it is occasionally exaggerated. What worries me is how slow Western authorities are in dealing with this potential threat. They have so far issued some screenings of questionable efficiency at certain airports and some limited travel restrictions. Even this they seem to do reluctantly and only after popular pressure.

The doctrines of anti-racism, tolerance and diversity seem to mutate and spread to every section of Western societies. Perhaps this mental virus is what should concern us the most. If we still had a healthy society with a functioning immune system, we could be dealing more rationally with the viruses that confront us. Both physical viruses such as Ebola and ideological viruses represented by the Jihadist doctrines of the Islamic State (ISIS). The number one priority would have been to quarantine those affected and restrict travel from those regions and countries where these diseases are most widespread. That is simply common sense. Sadly, Western ruling elites in this age seem to be devoid of common sense. Their First and Only Commandment is: Diversity and open borders über alles.

On November 5 2009, Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, murdered 13 people and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood in Texas. Mr. Hasan, as a devout Muslim, has openly bragged about his Jihadist beliefs and the specifically Islamic motivations for his massacre. Despite this, the United States Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies classified the shootings as an act of workplace violence. The mass murder must not be linked to Islam, because that would be Islamophobia.

After the Fort Hood massacre, General George Casey, the Army’s top officer in the USA, was in November 2009 mainly concerned that diversity could become a casualty of the incident. “I’m concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” Casey told CNN. Asked on NBC whether Muslim soldiers are conflicted in fighting wars in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Casey said: “I think that’s something that we have to look at on an individual basis. But I think we as an Army have to be broad enough to bring in people from all walks of life.” The bottom line is the military benefits from diversity, he said. “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said. President Barack Hussein Obama also mentioned military diversity in his radio address which was focused on Fort Hood.

To Western elites, Multicultural “diversity” is more important than life itself — literally.

Abby Haglage is a reporter at The Daily Beast, a major American news and opinion website with millions of readers. She wrote an article about the apparently horrible thought that people from West Africa might face certain restrictions on traveling to Western countries when a deadly and escalating epidemic of one of the world’s nastiest viruses is plaguing West Africa. Haglage dubbed this “Ebola racism.”

If Political Correctness had existed in the fourteenth century, would European cities have been chastised for their “plague racism” for restricting access to people from areas affected by the Black Death?

When Western writers can use the term “Ebola racism” without irony, how long is it before Ebolaphobia becomes a hate crime?

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