I had the pleasure to hang out with two 14 year olds yesterday, my granddaughter and her best friend who happens to be African American. They started out about how we need to help the poor people in Africa but we ended up talking about how scared they are that this could come here and they would end up dead. So the schools are doing their best to brainwash the kids but common sense eventually kicks in. They totally understand quarantine. They wanted to know how the person eventually dies from ebola. I told them all I knew and did assure them that since they are healthy and live in a prosperous suburb with good health care that they were probably okay. They filled in the other half of the equation which is that the people in Africa have had parasites and such all their lives and live in pretty awful conditions. I was waiting for them to blame the US but they didn’t. Interesting conversation. Evidently amount this age group, ebola has the same status as cooties did in the 50s and 60s. Except its fatal.
Kids these days are a lot more pragmatic and a lot more realistic. They’re almost cynical and I think that in this time and age, they’re just as they need to be to survive and admittedly, succeed in this very difficult world.