Ebola-mania has been spreading far faster than the virus itself, but one Mississippian is doing his best to fight it.
Fox News’ Shepard Smith, a native of Holly Springs, offered the most accurate, honest analysis of Ebola I’ve heard from any media commentators.
“Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the fear-provoking words online. The people who say and write hysterical things are being very irresponsible,” Smith told his viewers last week.
Fear and fear mongering over Ebola have been all too common since 42-year-old Eric Duncan was hospitalized with the disease in Dallas on Sept. 28. Two healthcare workers who treated Duncan were later diagnosed with Ebola. Duncan has since died.
That, as Smith pointed out, is far from an outbreak.
“There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America. Not one person in the general population in the United States,” Smith reiterated.
Apparently parents in a New Jersey middle school never got the message.
Two students from Rwanda attending middle school in Maple Shade, N.J. — 146 miles from a hospital in Maryland where an Ebola patient is being treated — were placed in “voluntary quarantine” for 21 days after parents of other students complained.
Rwanda, by the way, is about 3,000 miles away from the epicenter of the world’s Ebola crisis in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
For the most part, Mississippians used the sound honest judgment Smith displayed remained calm, but we had our panicky moment.
In Hazelhurst, the Ebola rumor mill began churning when parents found out that middle school principal Lee Wannik had returned from Zambia where he attended his brother’s funeral. Zambia is even farther away from Liberia than Rwanda.
Seems like we need to be worried more about students failing geography than catching Ebola.
Don’t get me wrong. Ebola is very frightening. The horror stories, however, are almost exclusively contained to Liberia and Sierra Leone. There, thousands of people have died from the virus, and thousands more are at risk of being infected because of poor conditions in hospitals and clinics.
As Americans, we can send aid and make a difference, but we only seemed to be worried about Ebola when the threat of it is at our back door.
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Josh Edwards is a reporter and can be reached by email at josh.edwards@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.