Ebola isn’t leading American newspapers and newscasts much these days. Dr. Albert Wu thinks that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Ebola isn’t leading American newspapers and newscasts much these days. Dr. Albert Wu thinks that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If he was cynical, says the professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, he would suggest that it’s because the elections are over, and politicians no longer are inflaming hysteria over Ebola for their own purposes. “But I’m not feeling that cynical today.”
Maybe it’s the lack of new Ebola cases in the U.S. Maybe Americans have been distracted by other stories, like the midterm elections. But Wu and others say there are signs that Americans have retreated from widespread panic and have reached a kind of equilibrium when it comes to the disease that is ravaging parts of West Africa.
“It may not be on the front page in news, but I think it’s actually in the fabric now of the United States,” says Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA, the North Carolina-based Christian mission group that has been at the heart of the Ebola story since the outbreak started earlier this year.
When Johnson went to the doctor this week, among the questions he was asked was whether he had traveled internationally within the past 21 days — the incubation period for Ebola. Whether the disease is on page one or page three doesn’t matter, he says.
“That’s never been asked before in the United States,” says Johnson, whose organization brought hospital volunteer Nancy Writebol and Dr. Rick Sacra back to this country for treatment after they were infected in Liberia. “That’s why I’m saying it’s woven into our fabric now.”