Sparky the Wonder Penguin (earing Inuit-style snowblindness goggles to ward off buu$hitblindness) engages in colloquy with a Dumbo who spouts Faux News craapola about the Ebola threat. Spark remains silent to the final panel and then asks the Dumbo if he has gotten a flu shot yet. As of 3/31/2014, there have been 21 deaths (listing influenza as the cause of death on the death certificate) in Austin, TX during the 2013-2014 flu season (January-February). How many people have died from an Ebola infection in Texas in 2014? Answer: 1 adult male in Dallas. The deceased, recently come from Liberia, was misdiagnosed by an ER nurse in a Dallas hospital. The man returned to in that same hospital and died a few days later; two nurses who treated him were infected because of hospital and staff inexperience with Ebola treatment protocols. All this hysteria over 1 victim and 2 nurses, who were treated and cleared of Ebola infection within two weeks at two different hospitals specializing in treating infectious exotic diseases. However, 21 influenza-deaths in Austin went virtually unnoticed everyone, including the Dumbo-politicos demanding draconian intervention during the Ebola "crisis." The influenza virus is just as opportunistic (and dangerous) as the Ebola virus. So, going back to Sparky the Wonder Penguin and the Dumbo Ebola-fighter, the Dumbo's reply to the flu shot question was typical: "No, it's such a hassle." If only Ebola would strike Dumbos/Morons exclusively, this blogger would take his chances amid piles of Dumbo/Moron bodies. If this is a (fair & balanced) public health fantasy, so be it.
[x This Modern World]
Risk Assessment
By Tom Tomorrow
[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning.]
Copyright © 2014 Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2014 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves
