Atlanta: The sensation caused by a man traipsing through Atlanta’s airport wearing a bio-containment suit this week showed how closely attuned Americans are to the Ebola epidemic – and how little they seem to know about it.
The spectacle at Hartsfield-Jackson on Thursday – the man, a doctor, had “CDC is lying” written on the back of his suit – added to the toxic stew of anxiety and bad information that has given the US a national case of nerves.
“People who get on a plane now, if they are sitting next to someone who starts to sneeze or cough, will start to think twice,” said Gary Small, a psychiatry professor who has studied mass hysteria for decades. “And with every escalation of this story, it is going to create more anxiety. A big responsibility falls on the media to put out accurate information.”
Those worries have become particularly acute now that the nation’s first case of Ebola has been confirmed in Texas. And it hasn’t helped that nearly every step of the patient’s travel to Dallas overcame the safeguards that the government has said are in place – airport screening in Liberia, hospitals in America ready to swing into action if they sense a potential case of infection.
One website lists “the five biggest lies about Ebola pushed by the government”, and charges that the Obama administration is demonising “preppers” – survivalists preparing for Ebola to hit the US. “This is how nations are brought to their knees: strip away all self-reliance, then follow it up with a sweeping national catastrophe,” said NaturalNews.com. It cites the doctor’s statements at Hartsfield-Jackson as one of “10 pieces of evidence that prove the US government is actively encouraging an Ebola outbreak in America”.
The Food and Drug Administration has sent out at least three letters to companies selling essential oils that they claim cure Ebola.
But is the alarm warranted, considering the tiny number of Americans who have come in contact with the disease, coupled with the strong response from the CDC and American hospitals?
Cyril Ibe teaches journalism and digital media at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, and points at social media for fuelling fear and feeding into the unease and hysteria. Like Ebola itself, the video of Dr Mobley at Hartsfield-Jackson went viral.
“We’ve always known that what social media does is empower us to be communicators. That is the good part,” Professor Ibe said. “On the downside, they make us communicate in rash, unresearched ways. People react to what is out there instead of doing the job of a trained journalist – getting all the facts.”
Dr Mobley grew up in Atlanta, went to school at the University of Georgia and got his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia.
“The No. 1 thing I accomplished is that I can sleep now,” he said on Friday. “I prayed hard yesterday that I could vindicate my conscience and get the message out that mankind is in danger.”
Linda Vaini, who has lived next door to Dr Mobley in Springfield, Missouri, for 11 years, said her neighbour occasionally talks to her about Ebola while she is walking her dogs. She said he came home Thursday night and told her to catch him on television.
“When I saw him I laughed and said, ‘What a nutcase to walk around the airport in that outfit.’ That was a real attention-getter,” Ms Vaini said. “But he knows what he is talking about. He is not a radical nutcase. But if he just walked in there and said he was a doctor and Ebola was dangerous, nobody would have paid attention. So he had to make this ridiculous play and it worked.”
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution