As President Barack Obama on Saturday urged
against “hysteria or fear” over Ebola, US media
had reports of communities taking seemingly
overzealous measures against the disease.
A teacher from Maine was placed on three-weeks
paid leave because she’d traveled to Texas for a
conference — where she’d stayed in a hotel 10
miles (16 kilometers) from the hospital in which
the first case of the virus was diagnosed in the
United States.
A Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer was
uninvited from speaking at a journalism school,
because he’d gone to Ebola hotspot Liberia, even
though he’d been back 21 days and was showing
no symptoms.
And a group of Mississippi parents pulled their
kids from school because the principal recently
traveled to Africa — though he’d been to a
completely different part of the continent from
where the Ebola epidemic is wreaking havoc.
In each case, parents or officials involved say
they were acting out of an abundance of caution.
In the Maine case, Matt Dexter, who has a child
at Strong Elementary School in the coastal city of
Portland, told the Portland Press Herald that
many parents were concerned the school had sent
a teacher to Dallas without telling parents.
“I’m really tired of people telling everyone, on the
news, starting at the national level, ‘zero risk, low
risk,'” Dexter told the newspaper.
“The bottom line is that there is risk.”
Two nurses in Dallas caught Ebola after caring
for a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who
died October 8 after becoming the first case
diagnosed in the United States.
In New York state, Syracuse University rescinded
its invitation to three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning
photojournalist Michel du Cille of The Washington
Post, because he had been working in Liberia.
Du Cille, who had been scheduled to offer expert
critiques as part of a journalism program, had
already been back 21 days, which health officials
say is the outer limit for the disease’s incubation,
and was symptom-free.
“I am disappointed in the level of journalism at
Syracuse, and I am angry that they missed a
great teaching opportunity,” he told News
Photographer magazine.
“Instead they have decided to jump in with the
mass hysteria.”
The journalism school said it acted after a
student voiced unease.
“While I don’t want to contribute to the fears
about the disease, I believed we needed to
exercise due caution,” dean Lorraine Branham said
in a statement.
In Hazlehurst, Mississippi, some parents pulled
their children from a middle school because the
principal had traveled to Zambia to attend his
brother’s funeral.
Zambia is in southern Africa, far from the Ebola
crisis in West Africa.
In his weekly address to the nation on Saturday,
Obama cautioned against over-reacting to Ebola.
“This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to
hysteria or fear — because that only makes it
harder to get people the accurate information
they need,” the president said.
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