Why Are You In Such A Huff? All I Said Was “We Should Think About Quarantining Africa”

AIDS, Ebola, Obama, Thanks AfricaDoes this signi bother you ? Does it piss you off ? Does it make you so stark raving mad that you just want to call your elected official and ream them out over the phone for permitting such injustice in our fair land ? Does it make you want to hop in your car and drive over to this insensitive, ignorant, backwards hick’s house so you can take a sledgehammer to this disgraceful image of intolerance ?

Does it make you stop thinking ?

Considering how simple, even polite,ii this sign is, your reaction is completely disproportional to the conversation nucleated by this sign. Well, I should say, the conversation that could be nucleated by this sign. If you weren’t in such a fucking huff, that is.

It’s really quite a shame that we can’t open this dialogue, that we can’t discuss the nature and origin of both the helpful and the hurtful, that some topics of conversation are so politically incorrect and so “already solved”iii that even broaching the subject is tantamount to rape.

So yes, HIV made the leap to humans via African bushmen,iv yes, Ebola made the leap to humans via still more African bushmen, and yes, Obama is the worst President in the history of the United Statesv and his dad is from Africa. So everything on that sign is true – all three of these things have their origins in that troubled continent – that continent that has accomplished less than any other save Antarctica in the past 2,000 years. Basically since Cleopatra bore the children of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, Africa has failed to produce anything other than viruses both physical and mental.

If my studies of public health procedure have taught me anything, it’s that quarantines are perfectly sensible responses to contagious outbreaks, which is essentially what we have on our hands with Africa today. So what’s to stop the rest of the world from quarantining the whole damn continent ? It can’t possibly be some obtuse standard of “morality” or “fairness.”vi Whatever minor cost or inconvenience that’d flow from such a travel restriction could in no way be less unfair, disgusting, or terrorising than Obama’s executively ordered drone strikes on Pakistani, Yemeni, and Somali civilians, which are themselves essentially equivalent to, if not immeasurably more cowardly than, the gruesome tribal warfare that characterises much of the “less civilised world.” I mean, if travel restrictions on Kim Dotcom can be justified on absolutely no grounds whatsoever, confinement of one of the world’s legitimate sources of death and anguish seems entirely reasonable.

The benefit of a quarantined Africa would be comparably immense as the transmission of some of the deadliest diseases on the planet would be significantly mitigated. Even if the AIDS cat is out of the bag, the Ebola cat only has a paw out and it’s not too late to cinch the strings before the rest of him appears.vii And God help us if their “AIDS cures” start catching on.viii Let the Chinese risk life and limb while they ravage the land of its natural resources.

A quarantine of Africa wouldn’t be burdensome to implement and it would put to test some hypotheses about disease transmission, international consensus, political expediency, and if “the other six continents” have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

All I’m saying is: Think about it.

___ ___ ___

  1. via Twitter
  2. It could just as well say “Fuck You Africa” but it doesn’t.
  3. The classic example being “global warming.” No! I mean “climate change!” No! Not that either! I mean “the inherent unpredictability of complex systems!”
  4. With the proposed mechanisms ranging from unsanitary butchering practises to unsanitary sexual practises.
  5. Maybe “it’s not his fault” because the whole USG was already a clusterfuck when he got there and has been in steady decline for two generations, but history doesn’t really care about that. Not really.
  6. Liberal white guilt, however, comes to mind as a likely cause. “We’re so sorry for slavery, please to give us your infucktions!”
  7. More civilised countries like Morocco are already cancelling sporting events for fear of attracting West African tourists who might spread Ebola.
  8. The variety of mental diseases sprouting forth from the fertile plains of Africa is neatly reflected in the uproarious belief that fucking babies can cure AIDS. Seriously now. And you thought leeches were crazy. At least leeches have some use cases. Fucking babies, not so much.