Fearing ghouls, goblins and Ebola
It’s that time of the year again.
Halloween is on its way, and we all know that’s when ghouls and goblins walk the earth.
I’m ready. I’ve built a nice, comfortable ghost-free zone under my bed.
I’m not prepared, though, for shielding myself from a brand new threat that can easily attack me under my bed or anywhere else – Ebola.
The 24 hour news networks have tried to convince me that the Ebola virus is poised to leap from the shadows and kill me dead, because one man who had it traveled to the United States from Liberia.
So, I might be able to keep things “that go bump in the night” at arm’s length,” it’s Ebola that has the ability to sneak through my defenses – and even under my bed.
Within hours of the news that one man, Thomas Eric Duncan, had been diagnosed with Ebola in Texas, there became non-stop coverage of it on MSNBC, CNN and, of course, Fox News.
“We are not equipped to handle this. And at the time when we should be preparing, the president was dancing in Martha’s Vineyard and assuring us this would never happen,” said Fox News’ Andrea Tantaros.
Tantaros obviously was abiding by the Fox News edict that if anything, anywhere bad happens, it has to be President Obama’s fault.
Aside from the strained political logic Tantaros injected into the matter, she went further.
“In these countries they do not believe in traditional medical care. So someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor who practices Santeria – we’re hoping they come to a hospital in the U.S. They might not,” she breathlessly claimed.
Witch doctors? Do they belong to Witch Doctors Without Borders? Right in the middle of a serious discussion about a serious health issue, Tantaros inserted voodoo. That drew a mighty strong rebuke from the PBS science correspondent Miles O’Brien.
“We could digress into what motivated that and perhaps the racial component of all this, the arrogance, the first world versus third world statements and implications of just that. It’s offensive on several levels and it reflects, frankly, a level of ignorance which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse,” O’Brien later said on CNN.
This is not to downplay the importance of a deadly and mysterious disease that has no known cure.
But the level of fear mongering about it has become disproportionate to its actual dangers.
The United Nations health agency reported that just over 7,000 cases of Ebola had been confirmed as of late September.
Less than half of those people who have been infected (3,338) had actually died from the disease.
Contrast that to the 4,000 Americans (alone) who die each year from the flu, and the 122,000 people who die each year around the world from measles, and the heightened rhetoric about the threat of Ebola seems misplaced.
Besides, health officials in this country have been clear that Ebola can be easily contained with appropriate measures.
Yet, there are still calls to have all flights from West Africa to this country halted.
Or, as the ex-director of the Republican Party of South Carolina, Todd Kincannon, puts it, “The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate humane execution and sanitization of the whole area. That will save lives.”
He’s the same Republican who recently said, “Here’s why I’m not racist: African Americans = Great people. African Africans = Savages with AIDS and Ebola. Barack Obama is in category #2.”
Rick Wiles, an ultra-conservative talk show host seems to know why Ebola exists. According to him, “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion.”
So says the man who once theorized that President Obama is the Antichrist because a fly once landed on him, “and there’s always the photos you see everywhere with the flies landing on his face.”
I think Ebola was sent here to rid the world of stupidity. If so, I think Rick Wiles should hide under his bed.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net