As a career hypochondriac, all this talk of Ebola has really gotten to me. When it comes to contagious disease, I am like an addict who is terrified to be too far away from his drugs, which in my case is a squeegee bottle of hand sanitizer. In all those movies where most of the world’s population gets wiped out by a rogue government-created virus, I would NOT be one of the survivors trying to start a new civilization, because I would be dead. If there were a zombie apocalypse, I would get bitten.
Because the crew of a ship lives together, it is no stretch to say that disease can reach epidemic proportions pretty quickly if the Sailors aren’t careful. They can be Petri dishes for colds, the flu, or any number of people-to-people contagions.
I have been on several ships who semi-affectionately name their own perpetual ailments such things as [ship name]crud or [ship name]funk, as if giving the virus a name will appease it.
I mean, we have enough ways to get sick in the Navy. We can get seasick.
We can get airsick.
Even if we aren’t attached to a ship or squadron, we still have plenty of ways to attract germs.
I feel like I am playing Twister in the middle of a minefield. It is like playing tag, except you don’t know who is “it.”
So I’m worried in a general, hand-waving way. But I’ll start to really sweat it when we no longer need to do this:
When that happens, the zombies are right around the corner.
