La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for October 31, 2014

Otherwise known as ebolanoia.

Actually, with only a 50% survival rate (if that), we should be feeling at least a little bit uneasy . It is really not a laughing matter…

The disease is not a laughing matter, but the hysteria is certainly mock-worthy. What’s more, the hysteria is harmful to the overall effort to battle the disease.

^But amost 0% chance of getting it. All the American doctors who have had Ebola have survived.

Speaking of scary (and preventable!) diseases, folks, seasonal flu kills thousands of people in the US every year. Even if you’re a generally healthy person, you can help prevent these deaths by getting vaccinated and not becoming a vector for the disease. It’s especially important to get the vaccine if you’re either a member of a vulnerable population or have frequent contact with them. This includes children, elders, and people with compromised immune systems.

agrestic, what are you doing, uysing common sense? You know that doesn’t help the hysteria. I remember a prediction that by now there would be a million and a half cases. I think that even came from WHO..By the way, I see that Lalo has finally put some white people in his strips! That should make everyone happy.

I didn’t say whitest people, just “white people”. Those skeletons look pretty white to me..In any case, I heard Duncan was brushed off because he didn’t have insurance. Still, the nurse, if she knew what was going on in West Africa, was just negligent.

Comparing the flu to Ebola is foolish. Flu is more contagious, but not near as fatal. It’s an apples and kiwi comparison.

“The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world’s population—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.”WikiAnd I knew a guy who died of it in 1977.

Right now we only have one person infected with ebola and one death from it. As John Fuglesang said this morning: “Ebola is Latin for ratings”. Fox is making money from a non-problem and paranoid people are violating rights and discriminating against innocent people. Calm down you idiots. Just don’t lick anyones eyeball or bathe in their blood and you’ll be fine.

Since I don’t watch cable news

Then maybe this strip isn’t aimed at you. The fact is, many, many people do watch cable news, and it is a big driver of public discourse and policy. And many local channel news shows have been Chicken Littles about this whole thing as well, but maybe you don’t watch those either.

It would be nice, if you’re going to give figures or quotes, to cite your sources. In this case, based on a Google search, I’m assuming it’s the LA Times. Looks like foreign-born folks (of which there are many Latinos) are also more likely to be concerned, and college-educated people less so than non-college educated. It would be interesting to explore exactly why Latinos have such high levels of concern (though are still largely confident in the government’s ability to deal with it).

It’s possible they’re getting ebolanoia from channels like Univision and Telemundo and CNN and Fox and the like, among other things. Notice that the strip says nothing about Fox specifically, nor did I until just now. So why do you go straight to Fox? And if many Latinos read this strip, maybe it’ll have a small effect on some folks’s anxiety. Not such a bad thing, eh?

As far as Lalo watching Fox, if he does, it’s probably a case of “know thine enemy.” Plus, why not regularly watch or read sources you disagree with? You yourself do it by regularly reading this strip.