Ebola
hysteria

August 14, 2014 -- (an open letter) -- I'm disappointed, Laurie Garrett! As a Pulitzer prizewinning journalist and one I have heard and respected on NPR (and a fellow UCSC alumna, too) you appear now to resort to crass sensationalism.

In an article entitled You Are Not Nearly Scared Enough About Ebola in Foreign Policy's online magazine, you write things like, "Wake up, fools." That is inflammatory language and does not befit serious journalism. Worse, you appear to conflate (surely on purpose; you are too smart not to know the difference) the severity with the communicability of a disease.

Even Fox News takes a more reasoned approach to this topic (Gutfield: Stop the Ebola Hysteria).

Here's what the experts say about Ebola: While it's true that the majority of those who catch Ebola die, it's also true that it's hard to catch. The period during which the disease is communicable is while the patient is actively symptomatic and postmortem (the big problem with funerary rites). These are not times during which the patient is likely to travel or even get out of bed. It doesn't have a long, silent incubation like, say, AIDS; recent evidence shows it to be three weeks. It's not airborne. It's communicated only by direct contact with body fluids.

Reading your article carefully, I see that it doesn't actually contradict these facts. However, its tone is sensationalist or worse. Is your intent to frighten? I am surprised to see you stoop so, and the same for Foreign Policy, though evidently its mission is to "question commonplace views" (see Wikipedia) and, I guess, provoke debate. But this is irresponsible.

Please cool the rhetoric. Stick to the facts. The crisis is real but creating panic does no one any good.

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