Ebola is giving Americans a crash course in fear.
Yet, they're incredibly less likely to get the disease than to get sick worrying about it.
First, the reality check: More Americans have married Kim Kardashian — three — than contracted Ebola in the U.S. The two Dallas nurses who came down with Ebola were infected while treating a Liberian man, who became infected in West Africa. The New York doctor who has tested positive for Ebola had been treating people in West Africa.
Still, schools have been closed, people shunned and members of Congress have demanded travel bans and other dramatic action — even though health officials keep stressing that the disease is only spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, and the risk to Americans is extremely low.
That's because Ebola pushes every fear button in our instincts, making us react more emotionally than rationally, experts say.
"The worry that people are being subjected to as a result of the hysteria around this is probably doing more damage than the actual disease," said E. Alison Holman, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studied the health effects of populations worried after watching coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing and Iraq war. "Frankly flu is more serious." Full story...
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Yet, they're incredibly less likely to get the disease than to get sick worrying about it.
First, the reality check: More Americans have married Kim Kardashian — three — than contracted Ebola in the U.S. The two Dallas nurses who came down with Ebola were infected while treating a Liberian man, who became infected in West Africa. The New York doctor who has tested positive for Ebola had been treating people in West Africa.
Still, schools have been closed, people shunned and members of Congress have demanded travel bans and other dramatic action — even though health officials keep stressing that the disease is only spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, and the risk to Americans is extremely low.
That's because Ebola pushes every fear button in our instincts, making us react more emotionally than rationally, experts say.
"The worry that people are being subjected to as a result of the hysteria around this is probably doing more damage than the actual disease," said E. Alison Holman, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studied the health effects of populations worried after watching coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing and Iraq war. "Frankly flu is more serious." Full story...
Related posts:
- ‘They said I have Ebola’: Angry bus passengers attack Guinean woman in Rome...
- 'I am a Liberian, not a virus': West Africans hit back against Ebola stigma...
- ‘CIA should be probed for Ebola’s origin in Zaire’
- The politicians are scaring you again...
- Ron Paul: Ebola panic is much more dangerous than the disease itself...
- Nursing staff in Spain resign from their posts to avoid treating Ebola cases...
- Ebola patient escapes medical centre, spreads panic in Monrovia
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