Life as we knew it

page 297

"My family has it," I said. "Don't you have any kind of medicine? There must be something." Linda shook her head. "It's the flu, hon," she said. "It just runs its course. Only thing is no one has the strength left to fight it off."
"It's a bad strain," Maggie said. "Like in 1918. The kind that would kill you anyway."
"But my family," I said. "What should I do for them?"
"Make them comfortable," Maggie said. "And don't bring them here when they die. We're not taking any more bodies."
...
"Honey, listen to us," Maggie said. "It doesn't matter... But whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And it'll happen fast."


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In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there has recently been an Ebola outbreak. Out of the 52 reported cases,  35 cases have been scientifically confirmed. The death rates are rising at an exponential amount, and although the authorities are doing as much as they can in order to try to control the spread of the disease and stop the amount of deaths, the disease is so contagious that this is near impossible. Not only is it incredibly contagious, but since the conditions of the people living in the town are not as "modernized" as those in the United States, it is even easier for the people of Congo to contract the disease. Also, this disease is able to mutate itself quite quickly, which makes people harder to become immune to the disease as once they develop some form of immunity to one strain, another one may be in effect.

I connected the passage from Life As We Knew It to this passage of this epidemic because the passage discusses the flu that is going through the town that seems to be killing everyone that it infects. In the selected passage, the nurses are telling Miranda converses with the nurses of the condition of her family and asks what should be done in order to help them survive. The nurses tell her that not much can be done in relation to the actual curing of the disease, however she could give them aspirin and alcohol rubs in order to diminish the side effects of the disease, which is exactly what is being done for the Ebola victims.

In both of these instances, the victims are being treated the same way; diminishing the symptoms, removing the victims from the "healthy" people, and making the victims as comfortable as possible.