By no means am I suggesting that current Ebola outbreak is something that’s not worthy of major cable news coverage. Ebola is a frightening, terrible and unpredictable decease which has claimed the life of about 5000 West Africans in this year alone. In fact, most people who are infected during the early periodof the outbreak are no longer in this world. It’s an extremely dangerous decease that killed about 95 out of 100 people with serious symptoms. And, more than 13000 people are believed to be infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. However, it seemed to be contained in that small area of the world. Other West Africans countries such as Nigeria, Senegal, CR Congo and Mali have had some cases, but they are able to control it without letting it to spread further and now declared Ebola free. Yet, Americans are frightening and panicking about the so-called Ebola.
What really is Ebola? Where does it come from? According to World Health Organization (WHO), Ebola, formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is an infectious and generally fatal disease marked by high fever and severe internal bleeding, spread through contact with infected body fluids by a filovirus(Ebolavirus). When Ebola virus was firstly discovered in 1976 in Zaire, now known as The Republic of Congo, by Peter Piot who is currently director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, it was thought that the virus was originated from gorilla because the outbreak was started from people who became infected after they ate gorilla’s meat. However, scientists now believe that bats are the natural bearer for the virus and humans catch it from eating foods that are touched, left specimen on by bats, and coming in contact with surface covered with infected bats, then touching their eyes or mouths (The New York Times. Ebola Facts). And, according to Doctors Without Borders, the current outbreak seems to have started in a village near Guéckédou, Guinea, where bat hunting is common.
How does the decease progress and how contagious it is? According to Center for decease control and prevention (C.D.C), symptoms usually begin in about eight to 10 days after exposure to the virus, but can appear as late as 21 days after exposure. At first, it’s similar with flu because it begins with headache, fever, body aches and pains. Sometimes, there is also a rash and diarrhea and vomiting follow later on. (The New York Times, Ebola Facts). In most cases, the virus causes the victim to hemorrhage inside his body that later makes him to vomit blood and pass it in urine. However, bleeding isn’t usually what killed people. Rather, it’s the leaking of blood vessel with fluid which caused blood pressure to plummet so low that the heart, kidneys, liver and other organs begin to fail.
Ebola isn’t an airborne decease and it's not as contagious as many people assumed. Officials have emphasized many times that there is no risk of transmission from people who have been exposed to the virus but are not yet showing symptoms. According to C.D.C, it’s spread through direct contact with bodily fluid such as saliva, blood and sweat. C.D.C specialists in Emory Hospital of Georgia also found out that although the virus can survive just a few hours on dry surfaces like countertops and doorknobs, it can survive for several days in collection of bodily fluid. As long as you aren't touching someone who's having symptom, you don't have to be concerned about contracting it.
Americans' media didn't talk much about Ebola when it first surfaced in West Africa in the first quarter of this year and claimedseveral lives, but they began to scream about it only after a Liberian man named Eric Duncan was admitted to the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital with the symptom. What's very disappointing isn't that they started to cover it too late, instead the way they frame the story is outrageously inept with the actual scenario. They exploit the story to serve their own interests to the maximum point by making it looks like much more worrisome and prevalent than it actually is, hence appeals to their audiences' nervous system. Fox News, for instance, went on to suggest that Ebola virus may be evolved with circumstances and environmental conditions and going to be airborne soon. Moreover, the media coverage of the outbreak, in general, is mostly focus on cases inside the States where only two nurses contracted it from Ebola infected Liberian man Mr Duncan. To my knowledge, they both have recovered after getting treatment. Just for comparison, while Ebola has killed two people in American's soil (both of them caught it in West Africa), 25 people have died from lightning strikes in this year.
Globally, it's not as contagious as what mass media want us to believe either. Since the outbreak began in March, Doctors Without Borders, the largest providers of healthcare workers to the affected region, have dispatched about 700 doctors and medical assistants, and only three of them have contracted the virus so far. Why it’s spreading extremely fast among West Africans is because of the natives not only lack health education and infrastructure to accommodate all the patients properly, but also they have this traditional of taking good care of family members while they are sick that include touching their sick body. However, the epidemic is only in three tiny West Africans countries, not in the US. Yet, national and international cable news channels decided not to portray much of these facts to calm the public down, they rather kept engaging on how contagious and deadly the decease is. Fortunately, there are some cable news such as Fareed Zakira segment of CNN and Democracy Now that took moderate stand and delivered insightful information on the virus, but they are just too few to turn the tides of anxiety of the public. Since media utilized tremendous amount of times, talents and resources on terrifying their audiences, the reaction from the public over the outbreak is, to say the least, pathetic.
As sociologist Joseph Healey stated “we make snap judgments about people and things based on the most obvious characteristics without taking time to think about fine points, and the classifications we make affect our behavior toward others”. That’s absolutely true for the Americans on this Ebola outbreak. A Washington Post poll, published on October 19, 2014, shows that fully 43 percent of Americans say they’re worried that they or someone in their immediate family is going to get the disease, a number that was eleven points lower when the Pew Research Center asked the question just a week ago. Thirty-one percent say they’re very concerned that there will be a “widespread Ebola epidemic” in the U.S., and another 34 percent are somewhat concerned (Paul Waldman, The Washington Post). In fear of the fictionalized epidemic which has no legitimacy in the US, 67 percent of the Post poll respondents supported restrictions on travel to and from the affected countries.
Thee ffects of the media's inappropriately coverage on Ebola story is extremely destructive in manifold for society. In October, worried parents pressured a Maine school district to put a teacher on three weeks of administrative leave simply because she'd stayed at a hotel 10 miles from Texas Health Presbyterian hospital. In Mississippi, students were absent from class because their principal had recently visited Zambia, which is many thousands of miles away from the West African Ebola outbreak. Even Syracuse University canceled their invitation of The Washington Post's Michel du Cille from an academic workshop because he'd been to Liberia to cover the Ebola story, even though he had repeatedly said that he'd no direct contact with any infected individual.
Politicians aren’t helping the situation either. Rather, they saw it as an opportunity to launch attack on Obama and his administration. Some opposition lawmakers even attempted so hard to make it look like the failure of the administration and began calling for travel restrictions. But experts say that could make the situation worse, by preventing the movement of supplies and personnel needed to contain the outbreak in West Africa. However, the public sentiments became so fierce that the President could no longer tolerate it and appointed Ron Klain for his Ebola Czar who will help manage and control the overall federal government response efforts of the outbreak. And that’s a bad deal for tax payers because there’s no need of Ebola Czar to be paid for, since C.D.C has been working tirelessly and effectively to prevent it from spreading and confident that they could manage it.
If we take a careful analytical look at how media cover the Ebola outbreak, it’s terribly misleading and irresponsible. In order to gain more viewers, they purposely frame the story to appeal to our fear prone nervous system because fear means more viewers for them. Although the real victims are West Africans where a severe outbreak is taking place, they put their focal lens on Americans who are rich, mostly white and Christian. By doing so, they convinced us that we are insecure and have to become more protective. They also directed our attention away from where the real problem is. We became to think that we should do more to protect ourselves and considered imposing travel ban is justifiable. That’s exactly the negative result of undutiful collective actions of media where they used illegitimated fears and insecurity to serve their interests. So, if you are feeling somewhat uneasy lately, you might have been watching cable news too much.
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