There are many diseases one can get, but few are as terrifying as the Ebola virus, which is fatal for most people. While mostly in Africa, a case has now been identified in Sweden, brought by a man who traveled to the nation according to a report:
Medical tests have shown a patient being treated in isolation at a Swedish hospital for suspected Ebola is not infected with the virus.
Local authorities confirmed the results on Friday after a man was admitted to a hospital in Enkoping before being transferred to nearby Uppsala University Hospital, where the emergency clinic has been closed.
Staff who have been in contact with the patient – a young man who had been in Burundi for around three weeks – at both hospitals were also being looked after, the regional authority said earlier.
The man had shown symptoms of haemorrhagic fever and was vomiting blood when he was admitted to hospital.
Officials had stressed that the disease may not be Ebola and that it was “only a matter of suspicion”.
Symptoms of Ebola – including fever and stomach pain – may take three weeks to appear after contact with the deadly virus, which has killed hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent months.
Of 585 people reported to have been infected there in the last six months, 356 have died.
Sky News reported in November on how doctors were becoming overwhelmed by the number of cases in Congo, which borders Burundi to the east.
The epidemic is only surpassed by the outbreak that crippled western Africa between 2013 and 2016, during which more than 28,000 cases were confirmed.
Ebola is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected. (source, source)
Ebola already is a dangerous and terrible thing, as the disease is a virtually guaranteed death sentence. However, it is less important, objectively speaking, if this person has Ebola or not than it is the perception that he has Ebola.
Ask yourself a simple question: why would the Swedish government allow the news to emerge that somebody went to a place where a lot of people have come from that many in Sweden understandable do not like- Africa -because of the ensuing engineered chaos since 2015, and announce that such a person brought back a heinous disease that has the potential for a mass epidemic?
Usually, governments try to keep that kind of information under wraps because it could lead to social chaos, and one can understand why. Indeed, nobody wants to be around somebody who has a life-threatening disease.
I do not want to say this disease is not a threat, or that there are not potentially life-threatening consequences. However, it is highly curious that said disease would be reported and not at least denied or suppressed in the name of keeping public order at a time of such social tension.
If anything, it is a great way to continue to stir up nationalist sentiments, for consider that if the Swedish people are already angry for reasons of the actions of the migrants, which have then in turn lead to festering resentment based on race, now they can say that these same people “who have already destroyed our Swedish way of life” are “infecting our country and children with incurable diseases.”
It is a rallying cry for nationalism and public anger.
Notice too, and I intentionally waited to point this out, which is that one does not know fully if this was a foreign national or a full-blooded Swede in the national and ethnic sense. While it is likely and will most likely be assumed to be the former, it could be the latter. This illustrates exactly the issue of perspective, because while such information is necessary and good to know, if it is not known, assumptions can be made and as a result conclusions drawn that may be based on simple anger and prejudice rather than objective fact.
Again, as noted above, it is not to say that Burundi does not have Ebola, or that people should not worry about the virus. It is to say that facts can be manipulated and deliberately withheld to give an impression that is not true or greatly varies from the one assumed by most people for any reason.
This can be added to the records of history for the future as yet another “reason”- real or manufactured -given to the public in order to stir them to violence, and when the public does reach that point finally, and it is very close, upon it will be a threshhold that cannot be retreated over.
Comments are closed.