It really is sad on a number of levels that the Zombie Community is constantly besmirched by comparisons to various ailments and disorders affecting Living people by those sad individuals, especially online, who are always looking for the imminent downfall of civilization from Undead uprising:

A weird disease spreading in Africa has health officials baffled—and the symptoms may sound a little too familiar to fans of George Romero’s work, or of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Called nodding disease, the zombie-like disorder has spread to more than 3,000 children in Northern Uganda, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are scrambling to figure it out.

Nodding disease is a cryptic and horrible ailment of unknown origin that causes developmental retardation, mental illness, some bizarre behaviors and, eventually, often death.

Which should pose a problem for Zombie-haters, since by definition the one thing Zombiism doesn’t do is permanently kill you.

Well, it would if they were paying attention and not out for cheap sensationalism, anyway.

As for the ‘outbreak’ part (and the apocalyptic subtext of the Blastr article), Nodding disease has spread further than previously documented, but on the other hand, it’s been around since the 60s at a minimum. Hardly a great substitute for Solanum from ‘World War Z’.

No, this is just another case of ‘here’s something I’m afraid of, let’s say it’s Zombie-like for page views and exploit the story of a real world tragedy to bash Zombies’.

For shame, Blastr.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism, Mainstream Media

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, April 2nd, 2012 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.