The article can be divided into two main parts, one of which is the whole story behind the Infection of Doctor Craig Spencer, the other being significantly shorter and about the situation of Ebola in the US in general.
Marc Santora begins with the main point of the article, namely that doctor Spencer has been diagnosed with Ebola after treating the disease in Liberia himself and that government officials have been doing everything humanly possible to determine if there is a possibility that the disease has already spread further.
He also states the “crowded metropolis” had been preparing for this case for months by studying how other cities had handled similar situations. He then continues by telling us how the infection was noticed and under what conditions Ebola can spread.
Also, he mentions where possible transmissions could have occurred and who was quarantined excluding Dr. Spencer himself. Transmission is still unlikely due to the fact that Ebola is transmitted via bodily fluids.
Marc Santora then goes even further into detail, saying that the government believes that it is improbable that people who were in contact with Craig Spencer have Ebola that originates from him. He then adds that the necessary precautions were taken and that Mr Spencer did everything correctly after his return from Liberia.
Finally the author puts the first case of Ebola in New York in a bigger context by giving different facts about Ebola and saying that earlier mistakes can be avoided and the risk is minimal.
What we have to say about this:
Since the outbreak of the very deadly Ebola Virus in western Africa, many people have been concerned about how the disease could spread. The case discussed in the article is not the first case of Ebola in the United States, however it is the first in a major metropolitan area. The first case was a man travelling from Liberia who fell ill in the States and transmitted the virus to two of the nurses who were treating him in Dallas, Texas. Due to this sequence of events the world closely followed how the United States medical infrastructure would handle the first case in a major city like New York and how they would stop it spreading in such a densely populated area. As mentioned in the article, the patient from New York was an aid worker who returned from Guinea.
This raises an interesting question about how aid workers in general should be treated after returning from areas where they could have possibly contracted Ebola. The safest and most secure way to ensure that returning aid workers couldn’t spread the Ebola Virus if they had caught it would be to quarantine them for about three weeks. Since it takes a maximum of 21 days for someone infected with Ebola to start showing symptoms, three weeks would be long enough to ensure the virus couldn’t be spread. However, subjecting returning aid workers to a rather long quarantine upon return to the United States might not be the best idea. A mandatory quarantine could actually deter people from signing up to go and provide desperately needed help in countries where the virus is still spreading. It could also mean that the health workers that do contract Ebola won’t receive the same level of medical care, if they for example had to spend their three weeks quarantine somewhere overseas. Another possible unintended side-effect of a quarantine could be that certain returning aid workers would simply lie about what they were doing in Western Africa. If people did this, the authorities would have more difficulty monitoring potential sources for an outbreak.
To our knowledge, there hasn’t been a case of an aid worker returning to Switzerland carrying the Ebola Virus. This doesn’t mean that the Swiss authorities shouldn’t be considering what they would do if this situation arose. Someone travelling from West Africa with Ebola will still remain a possibility for the near future.
One could also ask the question whether anyone should be allowed to travel in to or out of regions affected by a very dangerous disease. Some countries have considered or even implemented bans for flights to the affected regions. When it comes to this issue there is probably a slight difference in mentality between Swiss and American people. When you compare the media coverage of the two countries it seems that people in the United States are more fearful of an outbreak than the Swiss. The wide-spread media coverage of the patients being treated in America has probably led to Americans greatly overestimating the danger of this outbreak. This is not the first time that the US media have blown an issue out of proportion. It seems that Americans are more easily influenced by their media in general. Here in Switzerland things like Ebola don’t get the same kind of sensationalist news coverage as they do in America. This might be the reason that the Swiss seem calmer and more reasonable when faced with a crisis like the Ebola Virus. However, considering Switzerland’s rather conservative foreign policy in general, we could imagine that if things got really bad and Ebola was wide-spread across the world, Switzerland might be one of the first countries to restrict travel to affected areas.
We think that all of this illustrates a difference in culture between the two countries. Namely that Americans rely more heavily on media coverage for their information. This is probably not a good thing considering that media, especially in America, can be very misleading. In America it seems that news agencies seem more focused on being first than being right. This pressure to report things as fast as possible leads facts being widely reported without any context. We don’t really see it in this article but you could definitely tell certain news outlets were more focused on spreading the news that a potentially deadly disease had reached America than providing a context, for instance by explaining how unlikely it is for someone who hasn’t been to western Africa recently to catch it. We are of the opinion that this way of reporting the news is damaging and only spreads panic and that it is something that we shouldn’t make a part of our culture. (M.C ,M.H)
No comments:
Post a Comment