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Suzanimal
12-15-2014, 05:56 PM
2014 Lie of the Year: Exaggerations about Ebola


Thomas Eric Duncan left Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 19, for Dallas. Eleven days later, doctors diagnosed Duncan with Ebola.

Eight days after that, he was dead.

Duncan’s case is just one of two Ebola-related fatalities in the United States, and since Duncan traveled to Dallas, more Americans -- at least nine, and likely many more -- have died from the flu.

Yet fear of the disease stretched to every corner of America this fall, stoked by exaggerated claims from politicians and pundits. They said Ebola was easy to catch, that illegal immigrants may be carrying the virus across the southern border, that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy.

The claims -- all wrong -- distorted the debate about a serious public health issue. Together, they earn our Lie of the Year for 2014.

PolitiFact editors choose the Lie of the Year, in part, based on how broadly a myth or falsehood infiltrates conventional thinking. In 2013, it was the promise made by President Barack Obama and other Democrats that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." While no singular line about Ebola matched last year’s empty rhetoric about health care, the statements together produced a dangerous and incorrect narrative.

PolitiFact and PunditFact rated 16 separate claims about Ebola as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire on our Truth-O-Meter in 2014. Ten of those claims came in October, as Duncan’s case came to the fore and as voters went to the polls to select a new Congress.

Fox News analyst George Will claimed Ebola could be spread into the general population through a sneeze or a cough, saying the conventional wisdom that Ebola spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids was wrong.

"The problem is the original assumption, said with great certitude if not certainty, was that you need to have direct contact, meaning with bodily fluids from someone, because it’s not airborne," Will said. "There are doctors who are saying that in a sneeze or some cough, some of the airborne particles can be infectious." False.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., described Ebola as "incredibly contagious," "very transmissible" and "easy to catch." Mostly False.

Internet conspirators claimed President Obama intended to detain people who had signs of illness. Pants on Fire. Bloggers also said the outbreak was started in a bioweapons lab funded by George Soros and Bill Gates. Pants on Fire.

A Georgia congressman claimed there were reports of people carrying diseases including Ebola across the southern border. Pants on Fire. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Americans were told the country would be Ebola-free. False.

When combined, the claims edged the nation toward panic. Governors fought Washington over the federal response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stumbled to explain details about transmission of the virus and its own prevention measures. American universities turned away people from Africa, whether they were near the outbreak or not.

"Americans spent March through July thinking that the outbreak was no threat at all, then from August to October, it was the apocalypse," said Stephen Gire, a researcher who has been to West Africa and is studying the Ebola genome at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "And now in December, a year after the first case of Ebola infected a young Guinean, Americans are complaining that it was all ‘overhyped.’

"During this whole year, people in West Africa have been dying of Ebola at an increasing rate. We as Americans are so far removed from the reality of what is really going on."

...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/dec/15/2014-lie-year-exaggerations-about-ebola/

James Madison
12-15-2014, 07:44 PM
Fox News analyst George Will claimed Ebola could be spread into the general population through a sneeze or a cough, saying the conventional wisdom that Ebola spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids was wrong.

"The problem is the original assumption, said with great certitude if not certainty, was that you need to have direct contact, meaning with bodily fluids from someone, because it’s not airborne," Will said. "There are doctors who are saying that in a sneeze or some cough, some of the airborne particles can be infectious." False.

Actually, that statement is 100% correct.

Ebola virus is shed in the saliva, which can be propelled into the air by a cough or a sneeze. Contact with infected saliva on the mucous membranes of the nose or eye could potentially spread the disease, provided the distance between the infecter and infectee was <1m.

kpitcher
12-15-2014, 09:02 PM
The CDC was cleaning the sidewalk of an ebola patient where they threw up. Seems like if it's in vomit it'd be in anything he hacked up from coughing or sneezing.

https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2014/10/13/102082757-457128778-%5B1%5D.530x298.jpg?v=1413211163

Also live ebola is detectable in men's sperm months after they recover. Some poor mother may have killed her child from breastfeeding after recovering.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/how-long-ebola-sperm

I know the flu kills more per season than ebola has. Still scary stuff

Valli6
12-16-2014, 09:28 PM
"Americans spent March through July thinking that the outbreak was no threat at all, then from August to October, it was the apocalypse," said Stephen Gire.."
BS! No one thought it was an apocalypse! We just didn't want those who had been exposed to it, to have such a frivolous attitude that they'd go out on the town while there was some possibility they'd been infected. You don't prevent an epidemic by waiting for it to start before acknowledging the problem.

HOLLYWOOD
12-16-2014, 09:47 PM
Almost all the MDs/Emergency room docs I spoke with are not in fear of Ebola... their fear comes with SARS and MERS which are EXTREMELY contagious.

Antischism
12-17-2014, 02:57 AM
BS! No one thought it was an apocalypse! We just didn't want those who had been exposed to it, to have such a frivolous attitude that they'd go out on the town while there was some possibility they'd been infected. You don't prevent an epidemic by waiting for it to start before acknowledging the problem.

It's a hyperbolic statement, sure, but you can't deny that the media was selling fear and a lot of politicians were using that fear as a means to gain an upper hand politically, preying on the fears being pushed on the public. It doesn't help that certain segments were going wild about it being a form of population control deliberately allowed into the U.S. to kill off parts of the population or as a means to introduce martial law. Even more humorous is some of these people were pushing for forced quarantines on individuals who showed no symptoms, in the same breath.

TheCount
12-17-2014, 07:15 AM
BS! No one thought it was an apocalypse! We just didn't want those who had been exposed to it, to have such a frivolous attitude that they'd go out on the town while there was some possibility they'd been infected. You don't prevent an epidemic by waiting for it to start before acknowledging the problem.

When people who live in areas with exactly 0 infected people are buying expensive full-face 3M masks, they clearly think it's an apocalypse.

Spikender
12-17-2014, 07:20 AM
When people who live in areas with exactly 0 infected people are buying expensive full-face 3M masks, they clearly think it's an apocalypse.

I thought they bought them because they were stylish.

TheCount
12-17-2014, 07:31 AM
I thought they bought them because they were stylish.

They bought them to add to their Y2K prep prep stockpile, post-Obama election preps, Obama re-election preps, Fukushima preps, and their Nibiru/ISON impact stockpile.

Spikender
12-17-2014, 07:46 AM
They bought them to add to their Y2K prep prep stockpile, post-Obama election preps, Obama re-election preps, Fukushima preps, and their Nibiru/ISON impact stockpile.

It ain't cheap lookin' swag for the apocalypse.

enhanced_deficit
12-17-2014, 07:58 AM
Most Americans see Obama as Dishonest, Untrustworthy (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?433586-Majority-of-Americans-now-believe-Obama-is-quot-dishonest-and-untrustworthy)