Because TV personalities are experienced in containing epidemics, they they immediately noticed that Clipboard Man was doing it wrong. (Reuters/NBC5-KXAS)
The story of “Clipboard Man” created a panicky sensation on Wednesday, and shined a light on the media’s failure to inform us about the danger Ebola actually poses to the average American.
While media obsess over the threat of Ebola (Daily Show, 10/14/14), the supposed failures of the CDC and a Dallas hospital (CNN.com, 10/16/14; New York Daily News, 10/16/14), and whether (in defiance of expert opinion) a travel ban should be imposed on Ebola-affected nations in Africa (CBS News, 10/17/14), it’s important to remember that, to date, there have been zero deaths from Ebola cases contracted in the US.
Another point that is perhaps not made clearly enough is that you can’t get Ebola by merely traveling on a plane or in a bus with someone who has it. If that were possible, there would be a far higher death toll in Africa, a continent known for its crowded public conveyances. One must have direct contact with the bodily fluids of a person sick with Ebola to contract the disease, the CDC has found. Thus the only two patients to contract Ebola in the US to date are nurses who took care of stricken Liberian Thomas Duncan at Dallas’ Presbyterian Hospital.
When one of the nurses, Amber Vinson, was being transported from Dallas to an Atlanta hospital with a special isolation facility on Wednesday, video and photos appeared showing a team in full-body Hazmat suits loading Vinson’s gurney onto the plane for Atlanta. Standing a little further from the gurney was a man in plain clothes with a clipboard (Today, 10/16/14).
The images caused a storm in social media that was joined by several national media figures. CNN‘s chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto tweeted, “Let’s hope he was holding his breath,” referring to the man with the clipboard. Fox News host Eric Bolling retweeted Sciutto, while Vaughn Sterling, a senior producer of CNN‘s Situation Room, tweeted, “One of these guys didn’t get the memo.”
It might be more accurate to say that many in our national press corps–you know, the people who are supposed to explain important things to us–didn’t get the memo. Because of this, they helped spread misinformation about how Ebola is spread, suggesting that merely being in proximity to an infected person puts one at dire risk.
The “Clipboard Man” mystery was solved on Thursday when a spokesperson for Phoenix Air, the airline that flew Amber Vinson to Atlanta, told ABC News (10/16/14) that the man was the company’s medical protocol supervisor:
Our medical professionals in the biohazard suits have limited vision and mobility, and it is the protocol supervisor’s job to watch each person carefully and give them verbal directions to ensure no close contact protocols are violated. There is absolutely no problem with this and in fact ensures an even higher level of safety for all involved.
Though the episode wasn’t hugely important in itself, it said a lot about the job our corporate media are doing in informing us about Ebola’s dangers. As the tech site The Verge put it in a headline (10/16/14), “The Media Is Doing an Awful Job Explaining Ebola, and #ClipboardMan Is Proof.”
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CORRECTION: The original version of the post misspelled Jim Sciutto’s name.
What this story shows is how easy the media “phone it in” and copy each other, and how a meme can get started regardless of its informative value.
How is it that they stormed the airwaves with stories of clipboard man and actually missed the guy hosing Duncan’s vomit off the sidewalk – no protective suits, people walking through the wash? The Ebola could have easily been spread in that instance, and I actually saw it on CNN. It was mentioned in passing once and never again as if it was insignificant. Here’s some background…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-02/workers-spray-ebola-patients%E2%80%99-vomit-sidewalk-pressure-washer-and-no-protective-cloth
I can’t explain why clipboard man became such a meme and hose guy didn’t, except that it proves how inadequate and mindless the mass media is.
The corpress have plenty to answer for regarding misinformation and the panic it fosters, but it’s imperative to always be ready to revise our understanding as new intel emerges.
The possibility of airborne transmission exists, according to the information provided by Dr. Meryl Nass
http://www.accuracy.org/release/the-cdc-and-ebola/
Of course, I’m no expert, but I’d hope folks would accord it the serious consideration it would seem to deserve.
The official explanation sounds reasonable enough, but it still does not protect the unsuited man if he happens to touch bodily fluids that may be on the outside of those hazmat suits or the gurney. And I think that was the point being made in the original Tweets.
I think that misleading information is wrong, however, if people believe you can contract the virus through close proximity, it will encourage people to keep a safe distance from strangers and lessen touching public items that’s not necessary ie door handles, bus bells etc, it will create a semi quarantine where any spread through direct contact with contained fluids, ie blood, spit, sneeze debris etc will be significantly minimised.
Borders should have been closed the minute the virus reared it’s head. There needs to be stricter protocol and for whatever reason, infected patriots should be medicated BEFORE being allowed back.
There needs to be more transparency and greater global effort. Hit it at its source now, or you won’t get a chance later.
You might want to read “Ebola Wars” by Richard Preston in the Oct 27th New Yorker before stating with such certitude that, “…you can’t get Ebola by merely traveling on a plane or in a bus with someone who has it.” The scientists who are most familiar with the disease apparently beg to differ. The article says they think it can travel a fair distance, maybe as far as a football field, in tiny droplets such as may be produced by a cough or by spray washing contaminated areas.
I realize the danger of fear-mongering, but I think it’s at least as dangerous to be overly confident in the face of contrary information, only to have your assurances debunked later. Then panic is exacerbated by broken trust. We saw this happen at the outset of the AIDS epidemic, when the medical establishment accused the popular press of sensationalism for correctly interpreting the grim implications of incoming data, and some leaders in the gay community dismissed the news as plot to suppress the gay liberation movement.
David,
It cannot be said with “certainty” that one cannot contract Ebola from a droplet while riding in a conveyance with a symptomatic person (or across a football field – although any airborne droplet would evaporate long before drifting that far). A physicist cannot say with “certainty” that the next experiment at CERN, or a particularly energetic cosmic ray interaction somewhere, won’t crate a strangelet, or a small black hole, or cause a quantum vacuum collapse, resulting in the end of Earth or even the whole the Universe (seriously). Similarly, the probability getting Ebola from someone on a bus or plane is so remote that you don’t need to worry about it.
Ebola does not cause coughing or sneezing by the way.
One need only view the sanitary conditions in the affected nations to know why there is a crisis. Why not clean those up rather than taking disingenuous half-measures such as a travel ban? Moreover, if Ebola is good enough for one or two of our brothers or sisters, why not everyone? It just never ends. The Great Wall Street Bailout train wreck, ongoing under what is delicately referred to as Quantitative Easing, has already cost, the most authoritative figure I’ve seen is $15 TRILLION, but not several hundred thousand to provide sanitation facilities for the rich countries in Africa that Western colonialism has wrecked. The military spends a trillion annually, with what return, but the creation of more enemies? This has got to stop. In the immortal words of Rachel Corrie, this has got to stop. Closed borders are contrary to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what was promulgated in the aftermath of the catastrophe known as World War 2, led largely by the United States, Article 13. What there needs to be Adam is a global community, with perfect economic equality among all: all, approaching 7 billion people now.
Not to mention the corporate media does NOT cover anti-biotic resistant germs killing 23,000 people a year – far more than Ebola
so far. This is because anti-biotics are fed to healthy animals in
factory farms, thus breeding resistance & making anti-biotics useless to us when we need them.
Absolutely wrong the hospital nurse in (Houston or Dallas) died.
You also forgot to mention the 2 persons found at the Chicago, Il, airport who are under quarantine.
Are you an Obama paid PR front?
For those who have idiot IQ and don’t know OR ASK:
What is the Ebola survival rate?
WOW, survivors carry Ebola
Rate that survivors relapse into really active Ebola in their blood for up to 7 weeks.
Percentage of reoccurrence of the disease? And how frequently?
Yo, glenfrey, neither nurse has died. Nina Pham and Amber Vinson (both of Dallas, btw) have both been declared “Ebloa free”, released from hospital, and Pham met personally with Obama on Friday, so I think she’s OK.
Unless their just Obama-bots, if you prefer to stay paranoid.
Eagleglen You are wrong prove it