Maria Rovito
Managing Editor
It’s that time of year again: the leaves are falling off the trees, the days are getting shorter, and Starbucks is selling their delicious pumpkin spice lattes. Along with all this is the constant reminder to carry hand sanitizer at all times, in case the treacherous common cold flies your way.
A new illness has created even more hysteria during this year’s cold and flu season: the deadly and dangerous Ebola virus from West Africa.
The media has been spreading the fear of the virus like wildfire. As The Post noted in a front-page story about the global health disaster: “This is both a biological plague and a psychological one, and fear can spread even faster than the virus.”
On television, Dr. Oz pronounced that the epidemic could alter the world “as much as any plague in history.” The doomsday potential is “a question that keeps experts up at night,” Dr. Oz said, adding: “It should keep you up as well.”
But should it?
The only way to actually get the Ebola virus is to come into direct contact with the bodily fluids of a person who is infected with the virus and already symptomatic. Ebola doesn’t travel through the air.
A person in Washington, D.C., can’t catch Ebola from an Ebola-infected person in Dallas without going there and coming into direct contact with the patient’s bodily fluids.
Despite this fact, Americans are still acting as if they’re half-a-breath away from contracting the illness. David Kaplan of the American Counseling Association stated, “Hysterical media coverage can lead us to develop a cognitive bias that things occur more frequently than they actually do.”
This is not stating that Ebola isn’t a disastrous illness. In the West African regions at the center of the epidemic, Ebola’s spread has crippled the already fragile health-care systems of the hardest-hit countries, on top of the 3,400 people who have already passed from the virus.
The reason Ebola has spread so quickly through countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea is because people here are malnourished, with ill shelter, and most importantly, no access to adequate healthcare.
Still, many Americans believe that they could catch the illness any second. A Harvard poll conducted in August stated that four in ten adults were concerned about the possibility of a large-scale outbreak of the disease in America. The poll also showed that nearly 70 percent of Americans incorrectly believe the virus spreads “easily,” and a third of Americans believe (incorrectly) that there is an effective treatment for Ebola.
Ultimately, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll become infected with Ebola. The virus does not travel through air, and unless a person with the illness comes into direct contact with you, you most likely will not catch it.
Still afraid that Ebola is coming to your front door? I have two ideas for you: turn off the TV and shut down the Internet.
