Expert: Local Ebola Panic Completely Unwarranted
By Molly Daly
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Ebola panic is showing no signs of abating. With the onset of flu season, hospital emergency rooms are bracing for patients mistaking the symptoms of influenza for Ebola.
One noted expert -- on his way to Geneva for a World Health Organization conference on Ebola -- spoke with KYW Newsradio about how real the threat might be here.
Just two members of the 70 person Texas medical team who cared for Thomas Duncan -- the Liberian man who died of Ebola -- have been infected. His loved ones show no sign of infection, having passed the disease's 21-day maximum incubation period.
There's no doubt Ebola is deadly, but NYU bio-ethicist Art Caplan says panic over it in this area is completely unwarranted:
"Ebola -- a big molecule, very hard to travel. You don't get it unless you get somebody's bodily fluids on you and into an open wound or your eye or your mouth. Very difficult to catch, very very difficult to see anybody getting it except a family member of someone with it or maybe a health care worker."
Caplan says the media frenzy isn't serving the public interest, nor are politicians using Ebola as a club to beat the opposition:
"When politicians start talking about immigrants bringing the disease in, or terrorists using the disease, that's fear mongering and that's not responsible."
What is responsible, says Caplan, is taking precautions against a very real threat:
"Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you should worry more about getting a flu shot. The flu is more likely to kill you than anything Ebola's gonna do."
