“Hyping The Threat”: Fear And Anxiety Are Bigger Threats Than Ebola
During the summer, I got hooked on a TNT drama called The Last Ship, an apocalyptic thriller about a global pandemic that wipes out most of the human population. As it happens, the telltale signs of this killer plague bear a striking resemblance to the symptoms of the Ebola virus.
Indeed, Hollywood has been inspired by Ebola for decades, almost since the virus was first identified in 1976. But in those fictional crises, including that portrayed in the 1995 film Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, the virus has changed — either through mutation or human intervention — to become airborne, like smallpox and tuberculosis. If you are a screenwriter, you need that element of quick and easy contamination to sustain edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Characters in The Last Ship, for example, enter unfamiliar territory fully clad in protective gear for fear of suddenly sharing space with an infected person. They dare not breathe the same air if they expect to survive.
Real-world Ebola, however, isn’t that easy to catch, according to experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has caused a devastating pandemic in West Africa, where the medical infrastructure is poor to non-existent, but it won’t come close to that here, they say.
Still, judging from the news media, lots of my professional colleagues have seen Last Ship and Outbreak. They’re in full panic mode, hyping the threat and speculating about the possibility of a global pandemic that swamps the Western world as it has West Africa. That hysteria has only increased since Thomas Eric Duncan died last week in a Dallas hospital, becoming the first Ebola fatality in the United States.
As Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told The New York Times, “… at the moment, we have a much larger outbreak of anxiety than we have of Ebola.”
That’s partly due to the madness of partisan politics, where critics of President Obama look for any reason, rational or not, to blast him. Fox Not-News has had a steady stream of commentators blaming the president for Ebola patients in the United States, as if he’s the mad scientist of a Hollywood thriller.
But the 24-hour news cycle also demands hysteria, whether from liberal commentators or conservatives. Fear is one of the most powerful of human emotions, and it drives eyeballs to the TV screen and clicks online. If there is no genuine crisis, a manufactured one will have to do.
It’s also true, psychologists point out, that human beings have difficulty assessing risks. Many Americans, they note, have a fear of flying and would rather drive a long distance because they believe it’s less dangerous to do so. But numbers show that commercial aviation is much safer than doing battle with your fellow road warriors.
In 2012, the last year for which statistics were available, 33,561 people died in motor vehicles in the United States. The number killed in commercial airline accidents that same year? Zero.
If humans better understood risk, we’d focus more on the refusal of some Americans to have their children vaccinated against highly contagious childhood diseases. There is little risk from inoculations, but a grave risk in allowing an illness such as measles or whooping cough to get out of control.
Meanwhile, Ebola is indeed wreaking havoc. Just ask Sama King, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Sierra Leone, one of the countries that have been hardest hit. After 30 years in her adopted country, much of that in Atlanta, she was thinking of returning to the place of her birth. But she has had to put that off to become an activist and fundraiser instead.
“We are grateful for what the international community has done, but it needs to do more. If (international agencies) had intervened earlier, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” she said.
King has worked to increase awareness of the pandemic and to raise money for food and protective gear. She is now focusing on the many orphans left behind in Sierra Leone, children who have nowhere to go, whose relatives may be afraid to keep them because of the stigma associated with Ebola.
Now that’s a genuine crisis.
By: Cynthia Tucker, Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia; The National Memo, October 11, 2014
“America The Whiny”: Everyone Blames Everyone For An Ebola Disaster That Has Yet To Occur
Is there absolutely nothing left in this country that we can take on as a nation without someone heading for the nearest cable TV news studio or on-line publication to lay the blame for our latest problem on the President, the government, racism or some other convenient entity?
Yes, we know there were mistakes made at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who sent Thomas Eric Duncan home upon his initial visit where he complained of symptoms that turned out to be the earliest stages of an Ebola infection.
The result for Mr. Duncan was tragic. But with just one human having passed away in the United States as a result of the Ebola virus, does the situation truly merit the whining and blaming that is now very much underway?
Sadly, the public dialogue, in this instance, began with cries of racism alleged by Mr. Duncan’s nephew—allegations quickly adopted by others despite there being no proof that racism played a role in any way whatsoever.
It is certainly true that an error was made when Mr. Duncan was sent home with a 103 fever, despite having informed the receiving desk at the ER that he had come to Dallas from Africa. It is also just as true that hospital error is estimated to cause some 210,000 deaths per year in this country, involving victims of all races.
Still, we know that blood tests were performed on Mr. Duncan in the emergency room on the day of Duncan’s first arrival. We know that he was not simply given an aspirin and a prescription for antibiotics and sent on his way without a full exam and a blood panel in order to hold down the price tag to the hospital or in response to his not mattering because of skin color.
I’ve shown up at an ER with a high fever and feeling quite badly. I was given an exam by the attending physician who also took a blood panel. After six hours, most of which was spent waiting to see the Doc, I was sent home with an antibiotic, told to drink lots of liquid so I would not become dehydrated and told to stay down for a few days.
Never was it contemplated that I be admitted to the hospital for what appeared to be a bad case of the flu.
Unfortunately, because the receiving desk at the hospital did not communicate to the physicians that Duncan had recently arrived from Africa, despite having been given this information, his blood tests did not include an Ebola test and he was treated just as I was when presenting with similar symptoms.
Next, contrary to what many have claimed, Mr. Duncan was given the experimental anti-viral drug, brincidofovir, shortly after his ultimate admission to the hospital. Tragically, his case was, by then, too far along for the drug to have a positive impact.
Finally, in answer to the complaint that Duncan was not prescribed a blood transfusion from one of the Americans who has survived the disease, in the hopes that the antibodies in the donor’s blood would be of assistance, this allegation turns out to be untrue. Unfortunately, the donor blood type did not match Mr. Duncan’s type, taking the possibility of such a transfusion off the table.
Accordingly, for someone to assert that racism or lack of health insurance was at work here, one would have to determine that racism or health insurance played a role in the communication failure that kept the treating physician(s) from considering Ebola as a possibility.
I don’t know about you but that seems like quite a stretch to me.
Aside from the actual evidence that would argue against a racial bias in this instance when it comes to the best possible treatment, there is a strong, compelling and virtually irrefutable logic to the argument that Thomas Duncan was not treated differently because of either race or a lack of health insurance.
One can reasonably assume that most everyone who was working at Texas Health Presbyterian on the day Mr. Duncan first appeared complaining of his symptoms lives in the Dallas area—meaning that each of them, and their families, would find themselves at ground zero for the spread of Ebola due to the presence of Duncan in their area.
What’s more, as I suspect that everyone from the clerks and nurses at the receiving desk to all remaining health professionals at the hospital were quite aware that Ebola does not only spread among the same race as the initial victim, it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever to take less of an interest in one individual presenting with Ebola who might be black than it would someone who is white—unless Ebola did not cross their minds as a possible diagnosis. And if that is the case, we should all be able to agree, based on the population of West Africa, that a white person coming into the ER with the same symptoms would be even less likely to capture the medical staff’s imagination and point it towards a possible case of Ebola.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, October 13, 2014
“The Right’s Scary Ebola Lesson”: How Anti-Government Mania Is Harming America
If not for serial budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health, we would probably have an Ebola vaccine and we would certainly have better treatment, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins tells the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein. This comes on the heels of reporting that the Centers for Disease Control’s prevention budget has been cut by half since 2006, and new revelations about how botched protocols at the Dallas hospital that turned away Thomas Eric Duncan and then failed to treat him effectively also led to the infection of one of Duncan’s caregivers.
Yet most of the media coverage of the politics of Ebola to date has centered on whether President Obama has adequately and/or honestly dealt with the disease. “I remain concerned that we don’t see sufficient seriousness on the part of the federal government about protecting the American public,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters. Cruz is probably the wrong guy to talk about seriousness: his government shutdown forced the NIH to delay clinical trials and made the CDC cut back on disease outbreak detection programs this time last year.
I find myself wondering: When, if ever, will the political debate over Ebola center on the way the right-wing libertarian approach to government has made us less safe?
My fans at Newsbusters and other right-wing sites were outraged last week when I raised questions about whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry shared some responsibility for the nation’s Ebola crisis with President Obama, since the outbreak occurred in his state on his watch. Now that a second person has been infected there, I think the question is even more relevant.
The GOP approach to public health was crystallized at the 2012 debate where Rep. Ron Paul – another Texas politician — said it wasn’t the government’s responsibility to take care of a hypothetical young man who showed up in the emergency room very sick after he decided not to buy insurance. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul said, deriding “this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody …”
“Are you saying that society should just let him die?” moderator Wolf Blitzer asked. And the crowd roared “Yeah!” (For his part Paul answered no, but said hospitals should treat such cases as charity and not be compelled to do so.) Lest you think either Paul or that Florida audience represented a minority sentiment in the GOP, recall that none of his rivals, not even Mitt Romneycare, challenged Paul’s approach at the debate.
But now we know what happens when hospitals fail to adequately care for uninsured people who turn up in the ER: They can die, which is awful, but they may also spread disease and death to many other people. It’s pragmatism, not socialism, that commits governments to a public health agenda.
That agenda, however, has been disowned by the modern GOP. Sarah Kliff got lots of attention for her Vox piece starkly depicting how the Centers for Disease Control’s prevention budget has been cut by more than half since 2006. The chart she used actually came from a piece in Scientific American last week, which I hadn’t seen before. It’s must-reading: it dispassionately explained the way we’ve underfunded and degraded our public health infrastructure. And again, it made me think about the Republican policies that have hampered our ability to fight this crisis.
Isn’t there a fair way to say that cutting 45,700 public health workers at the state and local level, largely under GOP governors, was irresponsible? As was slashing the CDC’s prevention budget by half since 2006, or cutting the Affordable Care Act’s prevention budget by a billion? Sen. John McCain wants an “Ebola czar,” but the Senate is blocking confirmation of the Surgeon General. Isn’t it fair to ask whether the constant denigration of government, and the resulting defunding, now makes it harder to handle what everyone agrees are core government functions?
It seems relevant to me that Texas is 33rd in public health funding. It’s clear now that not just the hospital but state and local authorities responded inadequately to Duncan’s illness. His family and friends were quarantined, but left to fend for themselves; county public health officials didn’t even provide clean bedding. “The individuals, it’s up to them … to care for the household,” Erikka Neroes of Dallas County health and human services told the Guardian a week after Duncan had been admitted to the hospital. “Dallas County has not been involved in a disinfection process.”
When the disinfection process began, belatedly, there’s evidence that was botched as well. The Guardian found a team of contractors with no protective clothing simply power-washing the front porch, for instance, when it should have been scrubbed with bleach. A baby stroller sat nearby.
As the great science writer David Dobbs concluded last week: “So the richest country on earth has no team to contain the first appearance of one of the most deadly viruses we’ve ever known.”
I’ve found myself wondering if Ebola is unquestionably a plus for Republicans three weeks before the midterm, as everyone (including me) has assumed. Certainly Republicans think it is; that’s why vulnerable Senate candidates, from Thom Tillis in North Carolina to Scott Brown in New Hampshire, are fear-mongering about it.
But if Democrats are the party of government, and thus seen as culpable by voters when government does wrong, aren’t government-hating, budget-slashing Republicans politically vulnerable when we need government to do something right, and the cuts they’ve pushed have compromised its ability to do so? Or does IOKIYAR mean the media just shrugs when the GOP fear-mongers, but would punish any Democrat respond in kind?
Blogger Kevin Drum likes to complain about a Democratic “Hack Gap” – the fact that liberal pundits are too willing to criticize Democratic leaders, while GOP pundits more often line up behind theirs. I don’t agree with Drum – in the end, Chris Matthews and I didn’t cost the president his re-election in 2012 – but it’s an interesting debate. Personally I think Democrats have a “Brilliant and Ruthless Campaign Operative Gap,” when it comes to shamelessly exploiting the other side’s political weakness.
The GOP’s anti-government crusade has hampered our ability to face the Ebola challenge. In an election year, there’s nothing wrong with Democrats saying that clearly. Campaigns should be cutting ads right now spotlighting the way Republican budget cuts have devastated the public health infrastructure we need to fight diseases like Ebola. Here’s one such ad from the Agenda Project.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, October 13, 2014
“Ebola Doesn’t Abide By Borders”: Ensuring Our Public Health System Is Adequately Funded And Allowed To Do Its Job Is Key
The U.S. should not implement travel restrictions on countries impacted by the Ebola crisis and here is why. The Ebola outbreak has reminded the world what public health officials have known for centuries: Infectious disease does not respect geographical borders.
There was a time when we travelled the globe in ships and across land. In those days travel took months and diseases died out or were easy to contain using quarantine measures and broad travel restrictions.
We now live in a global society during a time when the variables we are trying to compute are numerous and complex. The vast number of people traveling around the world, the speed of travel, the large number of conveyances and the presence of multiple ports of entry into our country argues for a focused, well-tested and science-based approach to reducing the risk of exposure to this highly lethal infectious disease.
I’ve just returned from South Africa with a connection through Amsterdam, Netherlands. While this is far from West Africa, I saw a system of health and customs officials on high alert looking for ill passengers, passenger screenings using temperature monitors at airports and health advisories in airports to inform passengers how to protect themselves. What I saw, in fact, was a responsive, competent public health approach at work.
Preventing travel from affected countries is an inadequate measure. Not only do we need to ensure rapid passage of people in and out of the area for response purposes, but we also need to ensure the continued flow of supplies desperately needed to address the outbreak at its source, which is the best way to break the chain of infection. With the number of people passing through airports all over the world, identifying those who could have come into contact with people from affected countries is an impossible task. Multiply this by the number of connecting flights through European or other international hubs and it becomes even harder.
While we are appropriately worried about Ebola, enterovirus-68 has sickened more than 628 people in 44 states and the District of Columbia, a severe coronavirus – the Middle East respiratory syndrome – is circulating in the Middle East and chikungunya virus has entered our country. We have many significant biological threats, and they are all managed best through proven public health measures.
I have yet to hear calls to quarantine our borders between states while these serious diseases are already here because such a measure, of course, would be ineffective. Sound disease surveillance, case finding, monitoring and treatment is the appropriate approach. Ebola, although highly lethal, can be managed using these proven methods. We know its epidemiology, its biology and how to defeat it.
A strong, well-developed and adequately funded public health system is the key to containing Ebola and all of these other infectious threats. Unfortunately, ongoing budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies continue to put a strain on resources. Policymakers who want to be part of the solution need only to support ensuring our public health system is adequately funded and allowed to do its job.
Yes, we should screen travelers, but restricting travel is not the solution. A focused, robust and science-based public health response is.
By: Georges Benjamin, M.D., Executive Director, American Public Health Association; Publisher, Control of Communicable Diseases Manuel; Debate Club, U. S. News and World Report, October 10, 2014
“For GOP, Scaring Voters Is Good For Business”: Ebola Scare-Mongerer Rand Paul Wants You To Think You’re Going To Die
Although Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil, has now died of the disease, American public health officials remain confident in our nation’s ability to prevent a widespread epidemic. “The bottom line here is we know how to stop it,” CDC director Tom Frieden told NBC News this weekend. “It’s not going to spread widely in the U.S., for two basic reasons. We can do infection control in hospitals, and we can do public health interventions that can stop it in its tracks.”
His wasn’t the only voice that sought to reassure. “I know there’s a lot of reason to be concerned. It is a serious problem, but in my lifetime, when we have been frightened by this so-called coming epidemic—most of it has never materialized,” said Mr. Paul. Ron Paul, that is, Rand’s dad. “I think sometimes overreaction can become very dangerous as well,” said the elder Paul. Indeed.
Sir, please call your son and tell him that.
Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky, recently told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham that Ebola “could get beyond our control” and speculated: “Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?”
Saying “it’s a real mistake to underplay the danger of a worldwide pandemic,” Paul, doing his level best to overplay the danger, told Glenn Beck: “I think I said this the last time I was on your show a couple weeks ago, I said that I’m concerned that political correctness has caused us to underplay the threat of Ebola.” Er, um, because the people dying of Ebola in West Africa are black? I’m confused… Anyway, I thought the reason not to let panic spread was because, you know, panic is bad and we should have a rational and informed public rather than an irrationally fearful one. But speaking of informed…
“It’s an incredibly transmissible disease that everyone is downplaying, saying it’s hard to catch,” Rand said to Beck. “Well, we have physicians and health workers who are catching it who are completely gloved down and taking every precaution and they’re still getting it. So, yes, I’m very concerned about this.” Rand Paul, mind you, is a doctor and should know better than to spread skepticism or downright misinformation about public health issues. But instead, he is using Ebola to not only attack President Obama (as are other Republicans, natch) but to push his extremist anti-government agenda that goes beyond healthy skepticism to tin-foil hat conspiracy land
Though here it’s worth noting Rand’s hypocrisy—the health workers who are contracting Ebola don’t have adequate protective gear, something the United States might be able to help with if we would actually fund public health and foreign aid instead of slashing it. Meanwhile, Rand Paul actually wants to end all U.S. foreign aid. Think of how much worse Ebola would be in West Africa without America’s help.
Paul isn’t alone in panic-mongering. Other Republicans have joined in, including Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, who mysteriously also blamed “political correctness” for why the United States is sending troops to help in West Africa, troops Gohmert asserts will “get Ebola that they can bring back.
And the former head of the Republican Party in South Carolina recently tweeted that anyone in the United States who has Ebola should be euthanized immediately, adding a lynch mob dimension to the panic.
Why? Partly, it’s the “any excuse to criticize anything on Obama’s watch” mindset. But also just as the news media plays to or even inflames such fears to drive ratings, Republicans stoke fear to drive votes. Simply put, when voters fear for their safety, they vote more Republican. Scaring voters, whether about ISIS or Ebola, is good for the GOP.
As fear about ISIS grew among Americans, so did support for Republican leadership on foreign policy. An October 6 poll found that just 11 percent of Americans are “very worried” they will be exposed to Ebola. If Republican panic hyping continues, aided and abetted by media coverage, look for that number to rise—along with the electoral outlook for Republicans next month
And meanwhile, look for Rand Paul to carve out his own corner of this advantage by stoking anti-government sentiment as well—the same October 6 poll found that 42 percent of independent voters are not confident in government’s ability to handle any Ebola outbreak. As that number grows, so does the potential voting block for a anti-government libertarian Rand Paul presidency.
“Could we have a worldwide pandemic?” Rand Paul asked in another interview. “The Spanish flu in 1918 killed 21 million people, the plague in the 14th century killed 25 million people; I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Actually, Rand Paul, despite every reasonable and responsible fact to the contrary, you not only implying a mass pandemic might happen but clearly encouraging the American people to panic.
Your own dad said that’s dangerous. Take his advice.
By: Sally Kohn, The Daily Beast, October 12, 2014
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