Freaked out by news of Ebola outbreak!!

[missymarmite]

I don't know why but this has me really scared. Am contemplating going into hiding with family until it all blows over!

"Really? You thought this was worth reviving, given all the other threads about Ebola?"

None of the other threads are from April.

I was very glad to see this one again, precisely because there have been so many other threads (from different points in the outbreaks).

The poster who revived the thread is not the OP.

The poster who revived the thread is not the OP.

I noticed that, thanks.

It's ridiculous but entirely in line with that the Government does in order to be seen to be doing something about foreigners. Especially in light of the UKIP win in Clacton.

The Government announced that they'd be doing checks of some sort at ports and Gatwick and Heathrow immediately announced that they didn't know what they'd had no instructions and they didn't know what the Government were talking about.

I believe flights from affected areas have been grounded by their own governments but are we going to test everyone who comes in from another route?

And how are we going to do that? I believe the principal symptom is a raised temperature. Fuck me, that's going to be a big queue at A&E, isn't it?

People fromthe likes of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who'd you'd think would know what they were talking about, said it was pointless. When asked whether a person infected with Ebola would enter Britain, the spokesman said it was 'inevitable'.

I imagine he said something else about the superior health facilities in Britain, but he wasn't quoted because it didn't fit the scare story.

Here's the link. Warning: it's the Daily Mail. You might be freaked by the Mail or freaked in general.

Well, I'll admit to being very upset about Ebola last night. I foolishly read the BBC news website before I went to bed. I don't think they were scaremongering, I just think it is very, very scary.

I spent ages imagining what I would do if one or both of my boys got infected. Sure as anything, I wouldn't send them off to die in isolation, I would be with them, and get infected myself if necessary.

Those people in west Africa...families like us, who love their children like us...

We have one of the best health care systems in the world, we are very lucky. And worrying won't change anything. But of course we wouldn't be human if we didn't worry.

greenbananas I have the same thoughts too. I can't imagine my (or any) child going through that alone in a hospital bed. I would be with her no question. Or what if me and DP get infected and DD doesn't? We have no family here, I don't know what would happen. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Hopefully it can be brought under control in Africa. I have made a donation to MSF, a small thing maybe but I feel like I've at least helped a little towards fighting this epidemic.

I must admit I find it odd that people are so worried about Ebola. Even in west Africa it's only killed about 4,000 people which, if you compare it with deaths from other diseases, isn't all that many. I don't mean to sound complacent, but I just don't think there's going to be a massive epidemic in Britain.

If I was given to worrying about diseases, the thing I would worry about most is the increase of antibiotic-resistant infections. One day antibiotics will stop working altogether and then we'll all have good reason to freak out.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/09/ebola-highly-contagious-virus-myths-outbreak-epidemic
Comforting.

There is now a whole topic just for mainly inane talk about ebola, so why not take it there?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it takes a special kind of arse-wittery to see reports of scores of people dying horribly in poverty thousands of miles away and think first and foremost about themselves and the infintisimally tiny chance of ever catching it or anything like it themselves.

But sure, go to into hiding. Where you'd go I don't know though, since you about as far and as safe from ebola as you could possibly be.

www.facebook.com/iamtonystiles/photos/a.182339075119185.43566.153011051385321/857040800982339/?type=1&theater

Grocklebox, have you read the last few posts? I do think your tone is a bit unnecessary!

What upset me most last night, reading the news websites, was a picture of a dad and his two sons waiting by the side of the road for treatment. He was cradling a toddler about the age of my ds2. His older boy, about the age of my ds1, was lying a couple of feet away in the grass, turned away from them both, not being cuddled and clearly dying. The children looked sicker than the dad, but he was no doubt also very sick, perhaps too poorly to cuddle them both at once. How were those three feeling?

Yes, I am worried about this coming to Britain, and to the rest of the world. As I said before, these families love their children, just like us. I find it hard in every way to imagine what they are going through. They can't stop the spread of the disease, because they don't have the infrastructure, not even clean water to wash in, and because they won't sacrifice their last kiss with their dying children.

If this disease came to Britain, I would be like them. By the time we got infected, no doubt the health service would be already overwhelmed, so I would die with my children and the authorities would have to facilitate my house afterwards if they could.

I shouldn't be typing this, I will scare people who do not need to be scared... but don't judge anyone for imagining what these families are going through, and what might happen if this virus really did come to Britain.

It probably will be nothing like as bad in Britain as I am imagining... but it is already that bad for the families who are going through it!!!!

Yes, Tulip, I read the Hot Zone when I was ten, it really stayed with me! Ebola remained the Big Bad for me after thos book!

("facilitate" was supposed to read "fumigate" - but no doubt you knew what I meant)

Its that bad because they live in poverty with healthcare that doesn't even deserve the name. You don't. You are more likely to be struck by lightning and then blown up by a bomb than get ebola.

You should be feeling bad for those people suffering on the news. But instead of turning into feeling bad for yourself, give some money to help them. Very few of the people obsessing will do that.

When the news about ebola was first out and I was newly pregnant my DH announced that he'd put together a plan. At the first case of ebola his parents will be phoned to collect us and we'll go and live with them in their house (which is quite remote) and we'll have to stock up on food there so we don't have to leave the house. I didn't realise he was being serious.

We feel very bad for those people. Truly. This is an awful way to die.
But empathy means also that you apply the "what if ?" scénario to yourself. And you freak out. Because dying of hemoragic fever and litteraly rotting Inside is scarier than getting a bolt of lightning or dieing of the flu. Even if the end result is the same.
It's an invisible enemy that is highly unlikely to reach us, but multiple reports have shown we are not completely untoucheable. Was that poor spanish nurse an example of that?

So stop ridiculizing people's fear and preaching against our stupid westerners sensibility. People are afraid because something awful could come their way, and they just want to be reassured.

grockleboxes post is extremely necessary greenbananas

The chances are that as a woman in the UK you will die in your late 70s to 80s or early 90s. That will probably be of heart or lung disease or cancer, which is a disease of old age, and will get all of us, if we're lucky enough to live that long.

I'm guessing that you look both ways when you cross the road, that is.

The idea that any of us from the West, except for the odd person who tries to help people in an outbreak zone or gets bitten by a Black Mamba, would die of anything as exotic as Ebola is ridiculous, if it wasn't insulting.

Perfectly put OfaFrenchMind.

Sneering at people's fears is not a great way of educating those people.

Look, I KNOW the fears I had in the small hours of this morning are irrational - but there is a risk. And an I wrong to try imagining how those families are feeling?

My ds1 is more likely to die of anaphylactic shock than anything else - he has allergies. I spend my life trying to keep him safe! I am likely to get dementia at a fairly young age. This is not the point.

I understand why the op is/was worrying. I am not belittling her fears.

There's no point getting upset about things we can't change, and in Britain we are in a better positron than most when it comes to things like Ebola.

I saw a bloke on the news the other day who said that if it was the western world that was suffering this kind of outbreak, there would be very different response. Saying "oh well, it's only Africa" is pretty crap, isn't it?

I suffer health anxiety so horrible, spreading viruses do wonders for my mental health :) I sympathise fully OP My DH says I am ridiculous....

It is ghastly though. For months, I have been wondering why no one has taken the WHO's warnings seriously. All so avoidable.

I hope a vaccine can be sorted out ASAP as I fear that is the only way it can be fully controlled in Africa. It feels like no one has cared until it has hit the wealthier countries :(

True Bowlers, but those people are also capable of educating themselves too. Yes there have been some ridiculous scare stories in the media but we're also not short calm, sensible and well reasoned pieces.

I don't disagree with anything that grockle wrote.

I do disagree with grockle. I have no idea why people aren't allowed to worry about themselves or their family.

I'm not going to read the whole thread, it is utterly pointless and unproductive to do so. for those suffering health anxiety out there.

But why has this thread not been moved to the Ebola topic? Can anyone tell me? would be most grateful.

It's an old thread Mintyy, is it possible it's escaped mnhqs notice?

If you're quick you can catch the end of Titanic on Film Four+1

Good grief, we are now likening the unimaginable and very current suffering of families in west Africa to a film on tv.

Oh dear...

I'm a bit ambivalent about there being a special Ebola topic on mumsnet. I've just had a look at it. Yes, it kind of makes sense, but it also seems like it's not okay to talk about Ebola on the most popular boards. It seems we are relegating discussions about this into a special compartment, which is a bit like saying that thinking about what's happening in west Africa is a specialist thing, and not something the average person on aibu needs to concern herself about.

Grocklebox, having empathy for people includes picturing yourself in their situation. It's entirely natural. It's spectacularly arrogant to presume that a developed country could never suffer from such an epidemic. West Africa is only a plane journey away and with the modeling predicting a possible 1.4 million infected by the end of January it's inevitable that more cases are going to start appearing worldwide.