fear

• When you're done, read my friend Ruhi's response to this post here!

Ebola. It seems to be a word that is being used almost as much as "like" these days. The fear of getting the disease is almost paralyzing for some, where others joke about it constantly.

A photo of a man protesting flights from affected countries in order to quell spreading of the disease.
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*Let me also preface this post with the fact that I am absolutely not an expert of any sort and am going off of information from various articles on the web, and from my own personal experience*

The actual disease of Ebola is something to be feared in my opinion. With a survival rate of around 30% and the fact that it ravages your body for two weeks making your internals organs essentially bleed out. It's not exactly a pleasant experience, so I understand the fear that some people have.

One thing I do not understand however, is the constant joking about the disease. I feel like this joking may be a way to cope with the fear, no matter how small or large that fear is, in the back of our mind. It has come to the point where "Ebola!" seems to be the punch line of every joke. This shouldn't be a joke, it should be viewed seriously, although perhaps not with the intense terror that some are currently afflicted with.

I feel like this current outbreak is sort of a humbling experience. The US, or at least many people in the US, like to believe that we have complete control over everything that effects our country and that, come a global issue such as this one, we will be 100% protected because, 'Hey! We're the United States of America!' It's a bit of a control complex if you think about it. When something like Ebola comes upon us [the US], we're often taken by surprise that such a horrible disease could be carried to the States.

Although the US is currently taking steps to prevent the spread of the disease such as equipping the Pentagon with a deployable medical response team, or setting up check-points in major airports through out the country, I feel like there is more that could be done, or that should have been done sooner. But similar to the fact that you simply cannot incarcerate every criminal, we cannot catch every case of Ebola that enters the country before the victim is even suffering symptoms because it's simply impossible.

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I could go on and on about this for weeks probably, but I'll spare you from that for now.

A great resource for quick info on topics such as Ebola is "The Skimm" available here.
I hope everyone has a safe and healthy weekend!
Jordan

welcome

Welcome to this blog and thank you for visiting!

My name is Jordan and I'm a 17 Senior in high school living in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I've created this blog as part of an English assignment, but I've been blogging independently about fashion and my life in general for the past 2.5 years.

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This blog is a place for me to develop my writing skills, as well as address current issues. The thought behind the title "Mood" is the idea that when you walk into a room, you can usually feel the mood of it. This idea isn't just limited to a room or how you feel, but you can also talk about the mood of a country's economy or the mood of the National Football League for example. I plan on addressing both of these topics throughout this year. I'm sure my opinion will sneak its way into some posts as well. For another class, we've been assigned a country to keep tabs on throughout the year and I've been assigned Vietnam, so I'm also going to try to incorporate that into some posts.

Some topics I plan on addressing other than those mentioned above are:

• The Stigma of Depression
• Ebola
• The Middle East
• Poetry
• The College Application Process
• The Materialism of Holidays

These are just things that are rolling around in my head right now, who knows where we'll be in June!

I hope that this I can keep this blog on track and not only address topics that are current, but are also interesting for you. Although this blog may cover a variety of topics, I hope to keep everything connected with the idea of mood and also use this "lens" to delve deeper into aspects of topics that I may not have noticed otherwise.

I hope you enjoy this journey (was that too cheesy? I think yes) with me.
Be sure to follow this blog either by RSS feeds like feedly, or by clicking the button on the right to follow me on Bloglovin'!

Until next time,
Jordan