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- Media hype over diseases detracts from health education and results in more counterproductive measures
MutationsDiseases cannot mutate and go airborne- Scientific consensus and Ebola provesSmith 14— Medial Editor(Rebecca, “Suggesting Ebola will become airborne is 'irresponsible', say experts,” The Telegraph, 03 Oct 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11138196/Suggesting-Ebola-will-become-airborne-is-irresponsible-say-experts.html). WM The UN's chief of Ebola mission Anthony Banbury said Ebola could become airborne in a 'nightmare scenario' but leading scientists have slammed his remarks saying this has never happened and suggesting it is 'irresponsible'. Mr Banbury was speaking exclusively to the Telegraph as predictions were made that Ebola could have infected 1.4m people by January. He said the longer the virus is in humans the greater the chance it could mutate. He said the virus being spread through the air was a 'nightmare scenario' but that it 'could not be ruled out'. However leading British scientists have rounded on him saying his comments are a distraction and accused him of spreading panic. Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, said: "To suggest that Ebola could become airborne is completely irresponsible. "The way the virus is spreading is consistent with what we've seen in all previous 25 outbreaks, only transmitting through blood and bodily secretions. There is no precedent for a virus changing its mode of transmission so drastically. "Other viruses such as HIV – which transmit in the same way, have passed through millions of humans, and are known to mutate more than Ebola – have not become airborne. Making such claims is an unwelcome distraction from the urgent need to scale up the international response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in West Africa." Dr Ben Neuman, Lecturer in Virology at University of Reading, said: “Ebola is found in the bloodstream, which is part of what makes it so difficult to transmit compared to other viruses. To become airborne, Ebola would need to fundamentally change the way it grows. That is very unlikely in my opinion. “Evolution can be unpredictable, but there is no good reason to expect that Ebola will become more dangerous with time. Severe diseases like Ebola often happen when a virus clashes with a brand new host for which it is poorly adapted. Recent experience with H1N1 swine flu shows that viruses are likely to mellow as they adapt to their new hosts. “There is no evidence that Ebola can spread via the air in the real world. Ebola can only be transmitted through the air under carefully controlled lab conditions. One clue that emphasises how different Ebola is from flu is how slow the virus is spreading. Compared to this Ebola outbreak, the H1N1 swine flu had already spread to an estimated 10,000 times as many people in its first ten months.” Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, added that a sense of proportion should be kept when discussing Ebola. “The chances of Ebola becoming airborne are extremely small. I am not aware of any viral infection changing its mode of transmission. It’s important we retain a sense of proportion and not exaggerate the risks for it changing and becoming airborne," he told the Telegraph. "There is already enough fear and panic surrounding this epidemic. MediaMedia hype over diseases detracts from health education and results in more counterproductive measuresBelluz 15— Health reporter (Julia, “Ebola doctor Craig Spencer says media's disease hype was deadly,” Vox, February 26, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114299/ebola-media). WM Yesterday, I was on the phone with a Liberian man who survived the world's worst Ebola epidemic. I asked him to rate his fear of the virus during the height of spread in his home city, Monrovia. When he knew little about the disease, he said, he was extremely fearful, even preemptively pulling his children out of their classes before schools across the country shutdown. But as he learned more, his fears went away. "Ebola is simple," he reasoned, calmly. "Obey the rules and you won't get infected." Then he said something interesting: "The media hype on Ebola was so much that the fear of Ebola probably killed a lot of people." He was speaking from experience: his sister-in-law, who was three months pregnant, died because no one would admit her to a hospital when she was having problems with her pregnancy. Irrational fears about the virus, he believes, caused many of the doctors and nurses to walk off the job in Monrovia, and turn otherwise healthy patients like his beloved family member away. This fear, he said, was entirely whipped up by the media who focused too much on conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and not enough on educating the public about the virus. He's not the first to observe that the overwrought reactions to this virus had damaging effects. Closer to home, Dr. Craig Spencer — who became infamous for bowling with Ebola in New York — said much the same thing in a new piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. He too blames the media (and self-serving politicians) for stirring fear and hate, unnecessarily vilifying returning humanitarians like himself despite the fact that we know from science it would have been almost impossible for him to transmit the virus: After my diagnosis, the media and politicians could have educated the public about Ebola. Instead, they spent hours retracing my steps through New York and debating whether Ebola can be transmitted through a bowling ball. Little attention was devoted to the fact that the science of disease transmission and the experience in previous Ebola outbreaks suggested that it was nearly impossible for me to have transmitted the virus before I had a fever. The media sold hype with flashy headlines — "Ebola: `The ISIS of Biological Agents?'"; "Nurses in safety gear got Ebola, why wouldn't you?"; "Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happen" — and fabricated stories about my personal life and the threat I posed to public health, abdicating their responsibility for informing public opinion and influencing public policy. We — the media and the public — need to absorb this Ebola lesson. It applies to every disease and health issue that becomes a matter of public concern. We need to emphasize reason not fear, scientific explanation not conspiracy theory, compassion not derision and hate. Peoples' lives hang in the balance. 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