By Alice G. Walton
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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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The Ebola situation in West Africa is
clearly not good. The death toll is rising, and people continue to become
infected. Global efforts to contain the outbreak and care for patients are
ramping up somewhat, as help from other nations, finally, steps in.
In the last couple of days, however,
Ebola-related fears, at least in the U.S. and Europe, seem also to have risen
significantly. Planes have been delayed; healthcare workers in Spain have walked out; airplane cleaners at New York’s
La Guardia Airport have gone on strike; and the among many fear-inducing
headlines, some have advertised CDC director Thomas Frieden’s likening Ebola to
the next AIDS. What’s more, many Americans apparently believe that grounding flights from
West Africa is prudent.
But the reality is that for people in
America and other places outside of West Africa, the risk is still quite low.
Caution is important, obviously, and airports and hospitals are taking measures
to screen people and protect the public. The real issue is a different
one: Our fear of Ebola has become many times worse than the problem.
“The ultimate risk to America is
very, very, very small,” says Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, K. T. Li Professor
of International Health and Health Policy Harvard School of Public Health and
Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
“I understand the fear. It’s a
deadly disease. That Mr. Duncan died in a Dallas hospital made it that much
more dramatic. Even though it doesn’t spread easily, not remotely as easily as
the flu, it’s scary. But to me the real issue is that the growth of the disease
continues in West Africa—it’s worse today than it was last week. To the extent
that it doesn’t get stamped out, it will continue to pose risk to the rest of
the world. But aside from the horrendous tragedy in West Africa, we’ll continue
to see Ebola patients just once in a while here in the U.S.”
He adds that our energies are largely
misdirected: “In an ideal world, you’d see—instead of fear—a resolve to stamp
it out of West Africa.”
But we’re mainly just in the fear
stage. The reality is that the U.S. won’t see any big outbreaks. “We’ll see
ongoing cases like one in Dallas from time to time. ERs are on high alert.
Worst-case scenario, we’ll get a dozen or two Ebola cases—not thousands. We
have the infrastructure to deal with it.”
The obvious question is whether
hospitals in the U.S. are prepared. “They’re all on high alert,” says Jha. “If
you walk in tonight, and say, ‘I was in Liberia last week and have symptoms,’
they would immediately isolate and assess. If you’re positive, you go into the
isolation ward. You would probably get an experimental treatment. I don’t quite
understand what happened in Dallas. My sense is if you got sick tonight, that
within 24-48 hours, you’d be given experimental drugs, or get transfusions from
someone who’s had the virus.”
As far as reducing the likelihood of
more cases coming into the U.S., restricting flights from West Africa will
likely only worsen the situation. Frieden himself released a statement yesterday laying out exactly why
banning flights would be misguided and, in the end, counterproductive.
“Importantly,” he writes, “isolating countries won’t keep Ebola contained and
away from American shores.
Paradoxically, it will increase the risk that Ebola
will spread in those countries and to other countries, and that we will have
more patients who develop Ebola in the U.S.”
Jha agrees. “Banning flights is a
really good idea if you don’t actually think about it! It would mean you’d also
have to ban all flights coming through Europe. It’s completely ridiculous, and
there’s zero advantage. The bottom line is you can’t isolate a country, a
continent. Anything that makes it harder to fight infection in West Africa
makes Americans worse off. For sake of the U.S. public, there’s absolutely no
value.”
To this end, Brussels Airlines has said
it will not limit service to Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia. As the airline’s
vice president Geert Sciot told TIME: “It is our humanitarian duty to operate there. Without
our flights it would become almost impossible for medical staff to reach the
country.” New York’s JFK Airport has just begun a separate screening process for
people coming in to the U.S. from the countries with highest Ebola incidence,
and other airports will follow suit.
The outbreak in West Africa is
obviously critical and will take time to manage. But here in the U.S., panicking
at every headline is not the answer. Since that’s easier said than done,
though, perhaps the media should use a little discretion when covering Ebola.
“The problem is that every time
someone has fever and has been in Africa, the media are reporting it,” says
Jha. “People are getting excellent assessment care here; that’s actually good.
I’d rather have a thousand false positives than to miss one real case. The
problem is the media: Every fever patient becomes a message of, “Oh my God,
suspected Ebola case!’ The narrative in the media then becomes, ‘This Is
Everywhere!’” And that’s, unfortunately, what the majority of the headlines
reflect.
Jha points out that even when possible
Ebola cases are mentioned in the press, putting them in context is critical—that
is, underlining that real risk is still quite low, and that much of the hoopla
about each suspected case is for the sake of erring on the side of caution.
Another reason to keep our wits about
us: “We’re coming into flu season,” says Jha. “Is every flu patient going to be
a possible Ebola case? If so, it’s going to be a nightmare. At some point we’ll
reach saturation. But right now, we just need to take a deep breath.”
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me @alicewalton or find me on Facebook.
Source: http://www.forbes.com
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