ABOVE: Watch an explanation of “Fearbola” on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
TORONTO — There’s nothing funny about Ebola, a disease that has claimed the lives of thousands of people in Africa and threatens millions more.
But the panic over Ebola in North America is pretty funny — at least to a few TV comedians.
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and David Letterman of Late Show have both made light of the media reaction to Ebola.
On Thursday’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, an actor pretending to be an expert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warned viewers about an illness “unique to the United States that everyone should be really concerned about.”
It’s called “Fearbola” and it’s defined as “the irrational fear of catching Ebola.”
The Late Night sketch described Fearbola as a “hear-borne virus” because “all you have to do to catch it is hear about it.”
The faux expert warned: “If you dive under your desk every time you hear a sneeze, you might have Fearbola. If you are so afraid of Liberians you refuse to return your overdue books, you might have Fearbola. If you think Africans should stay in Africa, you might be a redneck — and you might have Fearbola.”
Last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live featured a parody trailer for a movie called The Fault in our Stars 2: The Ebola in Our Everything. Watch it here.
In it, Taran Killam’s character panics and avoids all contact with Sarah Silverman’s Ebola-stricken character — even donning a hazmat suit before going to bed with her.
SNL has also poked fun at Ebola in two consecutive Weekend Update segments.
“According to officials at the CDC, the first case of Ebola in the U.S. has been diagnosed in Texas,” said co-anchor Michael Che. “And according to WebMD, you already have it.”
Che later said: “Texas governor Rick Perry said that the first man in the U.S. diagnosed with Ebola had contact with several school-age children. You know who I feel bad for? Texas school teachers. It’s hard enough going to school teaching kids that God created the world in, like, 1942 and the first two people were John Wayne and Barbara Bush, but now you’ve got to deal with six-foot country boys coughing up a monkey disease.
“And also, who goes to Texas and Africa? There’s never a reason to do that unless you’re a missionary or Hakeem Olajuwon.”
On The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert has made several jokes about Ebola.
“Two American health workers who contracted the disease while treating patients in Africa have been evacuated to Emory University for emergency medical care,” he said. “To add to the horror, Emory is in Atlanta so they probably had to fly Delta.”
READ MORE: Full coverage of Ebola
In one of his Late Night monologues, Seth Meyers told viewers that a man detained in New York for having Ebola-like symptoms tested negative for the disease.
“That’s the good news. The bad news, there’s another disease with Ebola-like symptoms,” said Meyers. “Good news, you don’t have Ebola. Bad news, you have all the stuff that comes with Ebola but you don’t have as good of a story.”
So why are Ebola jokes fair game?
One could refer to the adage that laughter is the best medicine.
“It is possible that when we are overwhelmed by tragic events, when we reach deep misery, and our suffering is so dire, we feel completely helpless, unable to change the realities surrounding us,” wrote Gil Greengross in a 2012 Psychology Today blog.
“In these situations, humour is a useful tool as a defense mechanism. We are so overpowered by pain, unable to contain it or process it at the present time, that we seek relief.”
Greengross also cited a study at the University of Colorado at Boulder that found factors such as how closely a tragedy hits home and how severe it is influence whether people are able to joke about it.
Indeed, despite the alarmist media coverage on U.S. news networks, North Americans are not likely to get Ebola.
Outside of Africa, there have been only 14 confirmed cases of Ebola this year and all but two of the victims were aid workers or medical personnel who worked in the affected regions.
Of six confirmed cases in the U.S. — a nation of nearly 320 million people — only one person has died.
There have been no cases of Ebola in Canada.
BELOW: Watch the trailer for the movie Outbreak.
Ebola is also very difficult to catch.
Many people remember the 1995 movie Outbreak, in which an infected monkey brings an Ebola-like contagion to the U.S., where it spreads like the flu.
But, Outbreak is a fictional movie about a non-existent virus with a made-up name.
READ MORE: 5 movies about outbreaks
The real Ebola can only be contracted through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.
(The CDC also recommends: “Do not touch bats and nonhuman primates or their blood and fluids and do not touch or eat raw meat prepared from these animals.”)
And, let’s face it, you’re probably not going to get Ebola, no matter how many misinformed millionaires say so.
Donald Trump has been tweeting almost daily about Ebola, criticizing President Barack Obama for not keeping potential victims out of the U.S. and for sending troops to Africa to combat the spread of the disease.
He also suggested on Twitter that the two infected American aid workers who were brought home to the U.S. should have been treated in Africa.
Stephen Colbert’s response?
“Yes, we should have treated these desperately ill Americans at the highest level in Liberia,” Colbert said, tongue firmly in cheek. “No civil war-era medical technology should be spared.
“The freshest leeches, the finest bite sticks.”
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