Herald Fear-Mongers on Ebola

Shame on you, Bill Estep and Herald editors for contributing to the baseless Ebola hysteria instead of using an opportunity to educate people.

In this story on how rural hospitals in Kentucky are preparing to deal with a patient with Ebola, Estep unquestionably accepts the false premise that Ebola is easily contracted and spread.

On Friday, the Mountain Advocate newspaper in Barbourville reported that an ambulance brought a woman to the Knox County Hospital who was concerned she'd been exposed to Ebola. The hospital closed off the emergency room before determining the woman had not been exposed, the paper reported.

I suppose it's remotely possible that someone recently in West Africa showed up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, but I think it's more likely she was suffering from Faux News Overexposure syndrome and imagined that she contracted Ebola through her TV.

Estep misses a huge opportunity there to tell us whether she was actually a likely Ebola victim and to educate his readers on how Ebola actually spreads and the extreme unlikelihood of contracting it if you've never stepped foot outside the county you were born in.

Yes, there's an "About Ebola" sidebar that mentions Ebola cannot be casually contracted. Nobody reads sidebars.

The real danger of Ebola in this country is that hospitals are going to be overwhelmed and wasting money on Faux News Overexposure victims, each case exponentially increasing the hysteria that will end up costing lives far from the nearest Ebola patient.