Yes, Ebola is here. In Dallas,
some parents are keeping their children home from school, the Dallas Morning
News reported, and some nonprofits told the newspaper that some of their
volunteers are refusing to enter the neighborhood where the patient, Thomas Eric
Duncan, first showed symptoms. On Meet the Press this past weekend, Joe
Scarborough made his case for mass Ebola panic, saying, “If you think the
Atlantic Ocean is going to stop it from coming over here, you’re kidding
yourself.” And on a recent Fox & Friends, Elisabeth Hasselbeck demanded to know
why she should worry more about flu than Ebola, countering infectious-disease
specialist Dr. Dalilah Restrepo’s calm but thorough answer with a simple “But
it’s here.” In a way, what we’re seeing here is hypochondria manifested on a
mass scale, said Catherine F. Belling, an associate professor at Northwestern
University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who has written a book on
hypochondria.
