The Ebola virus (e. coli) has claimed the lives of over 60,000 West Africans, and experts say it’s only a matter of time before this tricky disease spreads to one of the good countries. The Obama administration has already imported two Americans stricken with Ebola and has plans to bring hundreds more into the country. If you don’t want to get Ebola and die, or if you currently have Ebola and are dying, here’s what you need to know.
1. Take Precautions
The best treatment for Ebola is not getting it in the first place. Major risk factors for contracting Ebola include having regular contact with an infected person, keeping mysterious vials and tinctures in your home, being born on an even-numbered month, and breeding. If you find yourself at risk of infection or are caring for one who is infected, follow these steps to ward off the disease:
– Start washing vegetables and fruit before you eat them. Also, be sure to cook meat instead of consuming it raw.
– Everyone in your family needs to start vaping electronic cigarettes. The vapor that we mammals enjoy creates an inhospitable environment for the Ebola virus.
– Do not interact with any strange viruses. Avoid street interactions with well-dressed strangers inviting you to participate in a game of skill or chance.
– Keep all jungle excursions/adventures to a minimum.
– Under no circumstances should you write a fan sequel to a popular film if you do not own the intellectual property rights to the franchise.
2. Know The Symptoms
The first sign of Ebola is a general feeling of being tired right after you wake up in the morning. The disease can also cause you to be anxious or stressed, particularly about money or co-workers. The Gold Standard of Ebola diagnosis is detecting if you have a nightmare where you die. This is caused by your body’s immune system trying to warn you of the viral threat. The only way to be certain of such a nightmare is by writing down your dreams right after you wake up and loudly describing them to everyone you meet throughout the day. This is why the Centers for Disease Control recommends that everyone keep a medical-grade dream journal, which can be bought at any Spencer’s. Sorry Indians, but dreamcatchers are only 30% as effective at diagnosing Ebola.
3. Plan Your Treatment
Doctors and hospital workers refuse to treat people with Ebola out of fear that they too will catch the infection — and who could blame them? Fortunately, it’s not hard to set up a hospital room using everyday objects lying around your house. Start by placing two full-sized beds in the room separated by a shower curtain. Always dress them with white linen sheets, although cream or off-white will do in a pinch. Get a TV tray to use for meals and a bucket for you to crap in. For a washbasin, use tupperware and a garden hose. Hang a flat screen TV high on the ceiling where it’s difficult to view.
You will also need to pressgang friends and family members to play doctor. Young children are often enthusiastic to play the doctor, and while this is cute, you absolutely need a male adult for this role. Children are more suited to clean the crap bucket. The doctor must wear a white lab coat (make this out of curtains or tablecloth — be creative!) with a stethoscope (headphones connected to an oven knob or pog) and clipboard (placemat and rubber bands). The doctor’s responsibility to come in once a day, look at your chart (cat with a line drawn on it) and frown, then tell you you’re going to die. Nurses and nurse’s aides should be equipped with simple pastel uniforms, Crocs, and needles or nails for regular bloodletting. To monitor your heart rate, loop this video on a laptop:
4. Contemplate Your Mortality
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You are presently going to die, like all of your ancestors have and your progeny one day will. On a cosmological scale, your achievements, if any, have been meaningless and will be undone by the inexorable march of entropy. Touch upon your essential nature as a collection of atomic particles that have been organized into a being capable of reflection. Ask yourself if sentience presupposes life after death, as if the mere act of Being were too great to be limited by the physical restraint of a fragile human body. If this were indeed the case, then what of the liminality between Homo sapiens and their evolutionary ancestors? At what point is a creature imbued with a sentience that, divinely perhaps, makes one’s soul immortal? Consider the animals you have killed believing them to be incapable of your higher order of thought and wonder if an entity even higher still would treat you kindly. Remember that the Ebola virus does not have the biological structure necessary for what you recognize to be complex thought, yet is nevertheless a distant cousin of humanity, bonded with you solely by the strange illumination of matter we call Life. Is it your obligation to treat the Ebola virus with love merely because it is a living creature, not inert matter? Are you obligated, then, to give your body to the virus, to sacrifice yourself passively on its behalf? Somewhere along this line of thought you should find peace. If you don’t, try again, perhaps with the assistance of a professor of philosophy or theology at your local community college.
5. You’re Cured!
Congratulations! It was really touch-and-go for a while, and we didn’t think you’d pull through, but in the end, you were just made of tougher stuff. Treat yourself to a modest celebration and continue with your life. And be sure to sound off in the comments section below with your own best Ebolahacks.
Thanks to Dr. Arie Rumantir, Rev. Cary McEntloch, and Prof. Richard Wu of Alpert Medical School of Brown University for contributing to this article.
