Ebola: ‘Shut the F- up’?

8/5/2014

American media coverage of virus turns downright bizarre

Worried about the spread of Ebola in the United States? A Boston Globe-owned website has some advice for you: shut the f— up!

Unlike here, the tweet embedded in the middle of a Boston.com story about increasing fear of the virus doesn’t use the dashes. And its inclusion is no accident: the flow chart graphic is central to their coverage.

It’s just one of several stories underscoring the relatively bizarre approach our media is taking to Ebola’s spread. Number one: anyone worried about it is a paranoid, delusional freak and two, let’s use this as a new way to bash America!

If Boston.com was looking to calm concerned readers, it could’ve done so without the vulgar insults. Take a look:

Unlike bird flu or other illnesses that really could cause a global pandemic, Ebola is not an airborne illness.

Nature Magazine explains it this way:

“Though the strain of Ebola in the current outbreak appears to kill 56% of the people it infects, to become infected in the first place, a person’s mucous membranes, or an area of broken skin, must come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, such as blood, urine, saliva, semen or stools, or materials contaminated with these fluids such as soiled clothing or bed linen.

By contrast, respiratory pathogens such as those that cause the common cold or flu are coughed and sneezed into the air and can be contracted just by breathing or touching contaminated surfaces, such as door knobs. A pandemic flu virus can spread around the world in days or weeks and may be unstoppable whereas Ebola only causes sporadic localized outbreaks that can usually be stamped out.”

Great then, but why this?

The short version

Still worried? Maybe this flow chart will help ease your troubled mind:

And during today’s program, Rush Limbaugh pointed to similarly bizarre coverage found in a number of places, including CNN:

RUSH: Yeah, you gotta love this. Have you all noticed all of the mockery there has been in the media over the weekend about any fears anybody might have about Ebola in the United States? All we have here is a disease for which there’s no cure. It’s fatal to 50 to 90% of the people that get it. And people expressing concern about it being within our borders are being made fun of. They’re being mocked as fearmongers, and it’s not just one story. There have been all kinds of stories of snide comments over the weekend in the Drive-By Media that essentially mock all of you rubes, all of you people in America who are nervous about the spread of Ebola in the United States.

You know, I have to tell you, I especially love it when they trot out somebody from the Centers for Disease Control to tell us, “Don’t worry, not a thing to worry about.” They’ve got it all under control. That’s the same Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that we found out last month had forgotten they were storing viable, living anthrax in old cardboard boxes in a storage room for decades. That just slipped their mind down there.

[...]

RUSH: Where did this come from? Who knew? And wait ’til the rest of the world hears about the fact that we’ve got it and that we took it to Liberia but only used it on a sick American and didn’t share it with sick Liberians. Wait ’til Obama finds out about that. Folks, there is gonna be hell to pay. When Obama finds out we’ve got this super-secret thing that does something magical to Ebola and we took it to Liberia and used it on an American, and then brought him and the serum home and we didn’t share it? This is exactly what has been wrong with this country that Obama’s been trying to fix. Unfair that we should have something like this. Where did this come from?

Well, let’s stay with CNN’s New Day, and the hostette, Kate Bolduan, speaking with the NIH Director of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci. This guy came to fame, worldwide fame in the AIDS epidemic back in the eighties. Kate Bolduan said, “Now, some of Sanjay Gupta’s reporting suggested that representatives from NIH contacted these organizations to try to get in touch with these patients to offer this treatment. What more can you tell us about this serum?”

FAUCI: The NIH is not offering the treatment up. The original research on that has been supported by the NIH, but the actual procurement and ownership of the antibody is not NIH. It’s from a company who was able to get a very, very few doses that are around to get some of those doses to the patients involved, to the doctor and to Nancy. So that’s the role of the NIH, was in the original research, but we don’t own those antibodies.

RUSH: The private sector! Oh, man, is Obama gonna be ticked. So a company in the private sector came up with this magical serum, but there isn’t much of it. There was only enough to take to Liberia for two patients. Americans. Now, granted, they were doing the work of the Lord. They were over there helping other Ebola victims. That’s how they contracted the disease. But nevertheless we take the serum over there. There’s not much of it. We don’t share it. We haven’t shared the formula, just typical American selfishness and greed. No wonder we brought these two back. We got a magical serum.

Just why is it so important to the media that Ebola fears be quashed in America? Perhaps to allow Obama to enjoy his Martha’s Vineyard holiday without having to deal with it?

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