This Is Why You Don't Joke About Having Ebola on an Airplane

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Well, here’s a situation that was completely avoidable.

A hazmat team was required to remove a man from a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic this week, after the man sneezed and apparently said, “I have Ebola. You’re all screwed.”

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Probably not the comedy bit to bust out aboard a plane — an air-tight cesspool of germs — especially not while the world’s Ebola alarm is at an all time high, even being mocked in an SNL skit. C’mon, we all saw Contagion. (If you didn’t, it’s that movie where Gwyneth Paltrow becomes patient zero then gets her head cut open.)

Another passenger notified one of the flight attendants, who then alerted the captain, who followed the airline’s protocol for cases such as this. "It's going to look worse than it is," a flight attendant says in the video. "I've done this for 36 years, I think the man that has said this is an idiot, and I'll say that straight out.”

As the man, whose name has not been released, is removed form the plane, you can hear him say, “I was just kidding! I ain’t from Africa, sh*t!”


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According to NPR, he was inspected by health officials, who say that he tested negative for Ebola. So, even though we thought this went without saying, add Ebola jokes to your list of plane rules: No bomb threats, no liquids over three ounces, no saying you have a lethal, contagious virus. K?

While the world deals with a real-life Contagion scenario, watch Matt Damon talk about making the 2011 film below: