Oct. 16, 2014 -- Has the fear of Ebola gone too far?
On Thursday, school districts in Texas and Ohio announced they would close schools for cleaning, because staff members and some students had been on the same plane -- though not necessarily on the same flight -- as Amber Vinson, the second nurse in Texas to catch Ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan.
The day before, airline stocks sagged amid fears that people would avoid air travel after news broke that Vinson had flown from Cleveland to Dallas with an elevated temperature the day before tests showed she had Ebola. Also, sales of bleach and hand sanitizer spiked.
What's more, a college in North Texas apparently sent a letter to at least two applicants from Nigeria denying them admission to the school because they were from a country with confirmed Ebola cases. That’s despite the fact that Nigeria has had only about 20 Ebola cases -- all connected to the same patient -- and hasn’t had a new case in 21 days, the time it takes people to come down with symptoms of the infection after they’ve been exposed. The World Health Organization may declare Nigeria’s Ebola outbreak over as early as Monday.
And after photos were published showing a man wearing his regular clothing as he took a medical charter flight to Atlanta with Vinson, social media was abuzz with concern for the guy, who was quickly dubbed “clipboard man.” Turns out he’s a medical protocol supervisor, and he was not wearing personal protective equipment, or PPE, on purpose. PPE limits what you can see, and it’s his job to keep an eye on the flight medics who were in full protective gear to make sure they were wearing it properly since they had direct contact with Vinson.
Keep the Situation in Perspective, Experts Say
So what’s going on out there? Has the worry about Ebola overtaken the facts?
Yes and no, says Jeff Duchin, MD. Duchin chairs the public health committee for the Infectious Disease Society of America.
“The world needs to be losing its mind about getting the outbreak in West Africa under control. That continues to be an unprecedented global public health emergency,” he says.
“Here, in a country where we basically do not have any risk to the general public, I think the anxiety and fear is out of proportion to the risk,” Duchin says. “There is no risk to the general public.”
“What we’re seeing here, currently, is more of an outbreak of anxiety about Ebola without an actual outbreak of Ebola,” he says.
And when people start taking actions that have negative consequences and no real benefits -- like closing schools -- officials should try to stop that from becoming a trend by getting people the information they need to calm their fears, Duchin says.
source : Has the fear of Ebola gone too far? On Thursday, school districts in Texas and Ohio announced they would close schools for cleaning, because staff members and some students had been on the same plane -- though not necessarily on the same flight -- as Amber Vinson, the second nurse in Texas to catch Ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan.
