Along University Ave., in San Diego neighborhood North Park, two billboards that typically market local drug dispensaries warn about syphilis and gonorrhea. There are two! A block apart, straddling Louisiana and Texas streets.
Take my advice: Stop smoking pot and sleeping around. That’s how you reduce—or eliminate among faithful spouses—the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Advertising that changed from cannabis shops to STDs—drugs and sex—there is a connection.
The world is at war. Ebola is the enemy. Not Islamic State. Not Russia, Israel, Palestine, the United States, or any other nation or peoples you would like to insert here. No country—pardon the word choice—is immune to Ebola. The disease doesn’t care about cultural, political, racial, or religious differences that divide people. The disease indiscriminately attacks everyone.
Ebola should unite us—a global community rallying against a common enemy. But the disease can, already does, divide us. Fear, not infection, is Ebola’s great weapon of mass destruction. In parts of West Africa, farmers abandon crops for fear of infection; yesterday, I heard a BBC radio report claiming as many as 40 percent of farms in some countries. Fear. Fear of infection will divide us unless we unite first.