Ebola panic goes viral
There's no epidemic in the U.S., but you wouldn't know that from your TV or elected officials. Here's a guide to what you need to know.
IT'S GOING VIRAL.
Ebola? No . . . at least not here in the United States, where the deadly virus has not spread among the general population. Although Ebola has been - and remains - a major, lethal public-health crisis in West Africa, cases in the U.S. have been limited to the death of a man who contracted the illness in Liberia before returning to Dallas, and now the infection of two hospital workers who treated him.
What is going viral, however, is fear itself - what Franklin Roosevelt might have called "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." Panic over a potential - yet still unrealized, and highly unlikely - pandemic helped cause a brief, death-defying drop in the Dow Jones industrial average yesterday and forced President Obama to cancel a campaign trip to meet with his Cabinet over what has become a political crisis, if not yet a public-health crisis.
"I want people to understand that the dangers of you contracting Ebola, the dangers of a serious outbreak in this country, are extraordinary low, but we are taking this very seriously at the highest levels of government," said Obama, walking a political high-wire. The president's mission - yesterday, and in the days to come - will be to convince wary Americans that the government is on top of Ebola, while squelching further panic; he stressed yesterday that he's shaken hands with and hugged doctors and nurses who treated patients with the virus.
But what do you need to know? Here's a Daily News primer:
Q: How crazy is the Ebola panic getting?
A: Officials are tripping over themselves to get tough on the virus. Frontier Airlines repeatedly cleaned and decontaminated an Airbus A320 jet upon which the second infected Dallas nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, flew back from Cleveland recently - but then canceled that jet's most recent flight, anyway. At Kent State University in eastern Ohio, where three of the nurse's relatives are employed, officials ordered them to stay away from the campus for 21 days, while a Texas community college is rejecting applicants from any African nations that have had Ebola cases.
In Louisiana, top officials have tried to block the totally contamination-free ashes of the belongings of deceased patient Thomas Eric Duncan from a landfill that already accepts some of the most toxic chemicals known to humankind.
Q: But isn't there an Ebola epidemic in the United States?
A: Absolutely not. As noted up top, cases here have been limited to Duncan, a Liberian in his early 40s who contracted the virus in his home country but was stricken while visiting family in Dallas; and the two nurses from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, who are getting treatment and are in stable condition. Officials say there likely will be other U.S. cases but remain confident that aggressive action will prevent a much wider outbreak.
Q: How is Ebola transmitted?
A: Mainly through contact with body fluids - blood, vomit, feces, urine, saliva. It could be transmitted if fluids have soiled an object - contaminated bed linens, for example - and that object then touched a person's open skin or mucous membrane, i.e., eyes, ears, nose or throat; or possibly if a cut or mucous membrane is coughed or sneezed upon.
Q: How is Ebola not transmitted?
A: Ebola is not transmitted through air, water, or, in general, food.
Q: What if I flew on a plane with an Ebola patient, as did the passengers on that recent flight from Cleveland to Dallas?
A: Because Ebola is not transmitted by air, the World Health Organization says the risk of infection on a flight is extremely low.
Q: How does Ebola stack up against other risks?
A: Experts note that many TV viewers obsessed with Ebola fear won't get a flu shot, even though the flu killed 30,000 Americans last year. More than 12,000 Americans died last year from gun violence, yet many of the same members of Congress who've been mouthing off about Ebola don't consider guns to be a serious public-health problem.
Q: So why is there little else but Ebola news on my TV 24 hours a day?
A: Call it a perfect storm. Cable news networks, especially MSNBC and CNN, have been losing viewers since the 2012 election and find the only way to boost ratings is to elevate an event as "BREAKING NEWS," while conservative-leaning Fox News relishes stories that project any air of chaos while Obama is in the White House. Meanwhile, members of the least effective Congress in modern history now face re-election and are desperate to change the subject, leading to statements like New Hampshire Senate candidate Scott Brown's bizarre claim that people with Ebola are able to "walk across" America's "porous" border.
Unfortunately, America's long-term prognosis is for a lot more bloviation, paranoia and rank hypocrisy until Nov. 4.
Blog: ph.ly/Attytood.com