When you Google Ebola, the first things you see will be the same lies you see shared on Facebook. Anyone can create a fake webpage; that is the evil of the Internet. 

But if you press the news tab, then suddenly you will find out Ebola is not that serious.

While Ebola is very deadly with a 70 to 90 percent fatality rate in Africa, this rate drops to 50 percent in the United States and Europe. 

Yes, it is still scary that Ebola is here, but the chances of an epidemic are minor. 

In West Africa, they do not have the technology that we do, and they do not follow the same procedures as we do. This is why American and European specialists are sent there to help. 

The main reason for the spread there is due to doctors examining patients and not wearing gloves, then going to another patient and repeating the process. 

In America, doctors wear gloves 24/7 and will even change them after examining separate parts of the body. We also have entire suits designed to keep diseases from being spread or infections occurring. 

Western cultures are leading in medical technology, so let’s trust that technology.

Another thing is that African families are much closer than American families. 

They will risk their lives to help their ill relative, and that isn’t something we wouldn’t do often here. 

We are quick to put someone in quarantine in fear of ourselves being infected, but Africans show the least selfishness; they fear the death of a loved one more than their own deaths.

Ebola is not as contagious as people think, especially when compared to illnesses like HIV. A person with HIV could possibly infect twice as many people as a person with Ebola, yet people will put on condoms and go about their happy ways. 

You can come in direct contact with an Ebola-infected person’s bodily fluids and unless it enters an open cut, your mouth, nose, ears or other body openings, you are okay. 

Seriously, they can vomit on your feet and if there are no open wounds, just wash them off and move on. 

Social media brings more anxiety to the issue than light. Anything can be manipulated to spread anxiety. 

Ebola, swine flu and even the plague all have been manipulated to do this. There is more anxiety about Ebola than there are cases. 

People fear the government when they should fear the people. 

The people are the ones who bring the panic, but we can stop this. 

First, stop trusting social media. Your friend’s status may not even be legitimate, more or less an article they share from some website no one has even heard of. 

Honestly, have you even seen these sites until now? You probably never have in your life.

 These websites are created to give someone a very sick pleasure. 

Humans are extremely impressionable, but we don’t have to be. We don’t have to give these sociopaths the joy of corrupting our minds and knowledge.

The main thing everyone needs to do is become educated on world affairs. Education is the key to remaining calm. 

Some sites I would recommend are CNN and the World Health Organization website. Be very weary of .com websites; the best ones for research are .org or .net. 

Either government or federal organizations create these and while most news sites are .com, make sure it is an actual news channel. 

Check things on the page. Most false pages will have emblems on them or things that are just odd to have on a news page. 

Seriously, if the website you visit has a huge smiley face, it is not legitimate.

Always be cautious of information. Facts will correlate with other facts; if one site out of 20 says there is Ebola in Monroe, it is highly likely that it is false. Websites will also correlate with the news, and you will hear any new information there first.

Lastly, trust your government. 

No, we are not informed of everything, but not everything is life-threatening to every human. 

It is often forgot that our Constitution was created for the people by the people to restrict the government. 

The government did not create Ebola to kill us all simply because they cannot. 

Without the people there is no America and Congress is very aware of this.

Everyone needs to calm down and breathe. 

Ebola will not be the death of the world or Americans. There are many diseases much worse and here we are, still living and prospering. 

We are intellectual species and need to begin acting like one. 

Religion can be spoken about freely, yet we tread softly when publically mentioning it.

But, the hardest idea to grasp is that having the right to spread religious awareness is certainly not the same as pushing beliefs on others. 

While people reserve the right to practice religious freedom and to speak without restraint about any faith they choose, forcing others to listen isn’t freedom of speech; it’s harassment.  

There are over 127 major religions and seven billion people on earth with seven billion different views of God. Some love Him, some fear Him, some question His existence and some are still searching for Him.

Some will decide that God plays no role in the trials and tribulations of life, while others will find faith the moment they see their newborn child take the first breath of being. 

Whether we discover where we spiritually belong in a pew on Sunday morning or on a lonely drive with no destination, the journey to finding or forgetting God is what determines our views. We can’t be told what and who to believe in, or to even believe in anything at all.

What we learn, who we meet and the challenges we face are what we remember when we stand before Him, not the church members that knock on our front doors, or the people that stand in the quad condemning us all to hell.

And if the church goer at your front door changes your perspective, let them. Be baptized in one church, change your mind, and be baptized in another. Let what you learned in biology class make you question evolution and the powers above. 

Learning from life experiences and questioning God’s ways isn’t sin; it’s human. It’s human to change emotionally, mentally, and spiritually when physical surroundings change. It’s human to simply be curious and indecisive.

Faith only exists because there are people that believe strongly enough in it to make it a reality and a way of life. Without doubters and differences, the strength of religion would never have anything to be measured against. 

Because of that, religion without true belief is weak. 

Never practice out of habit, don’t follow just because your parents or friends do, and don’t ever think one religion is superior to another. In a time that seems to have the explanation for everything in a test tube or on a database, people believing in any God at all is a miracle in itself.