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Hate is like a disease; it can spread in ways that are not of intense order.

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[The following statements – which I have written in the following, final paragraph – pertain to the following five sentences (occurring here at the beginning within bold quote marks) which are excerpts from a recent news article, about Ebola, written by David Willman:  “Public health officials have voiced similar assurances, saying Ebola is spread only through physical contact with a symptomatic individual or their bodily fluids. “Ebola is not transmitted by the air. It is not an airborne infection,” said Dr. Edward Goodman of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the Liberian patient remains in critical condition.  Yet some scientists who have long studied Ebola say such assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose. It is an Ebola outbreak like none seen before, jumping from the bush to urban areas, giving the virus more opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts.“

The attached photograph is of a female Common Whitetail Dragonfly resting with a Green Bottle Fly.  The Dragonfly could easily eat and devour the Fly (which they do in nature often).  Being familiar with insects, because of my intense interest in animals and close-up photography, I realize certain aspects of what they are capable of.  One of my concerns is that, in the countries currently facing epidemics due to the Ebola virus, there are ways that non-airborne diseases can be transmitted easily through the air… and that is through the mechanism by which common flies (such as houseflies) eat and travel.  Such flies do not eat their food whole; they regurgitate digestive juices onto food to dissolve it and then slurp the contents up.  Flies use their proboscis and labellum (sponge-pad-like-mouth-parts) to repetitively sample and slop juicy substances around.  Common flies tend to (and this happens dozens of times a minute) repetitively sample and re-sample things, liquefying them, spitting them back out, and spreading them.  Needless to say, they fly from person to person (even from face to face) carrying germs and liquid debris on their mouth parts and feet-pads, and victims of Ebola tend to vomit a lot and have a lot of diarrhea.  Enough said!  Just as fleas had a big part in the Bubonic plague, flies may, I strongly suspect, significantly contribute to the spreading of the Ebola virus.  (I diligently sent an email to the White House regarding this.  I have not yet – to no shock to me – received a response.)  In countries where housing and hospital spaces are minimal, placing Ebola victims in areas where flies have direct access to them (without making attempts to eradicate the flies) may be a very precarious situation indeed.  Spraying with pesticides is needed in areas with Ebola… and such pesticides should be dispersed in large quantities.  Anyway, I’m all for having more dragonflies and less flies!]

Face to face… Photo by Thomas Peace 2014