When it comes to Ebola, it is important to not unnecessarily create a panic. However, it is even more important that citizens be armed with the proper information surrounding Ebola transmission and be apprised of the facts surrounding a potential outbreak of the deadly disease.
To that end, as the Obama Administration has worked to downplay fears of a possible outbreak, the truth is that viruses do hold the possibility of mutating and the method of transmission can change. While we are cautioned that Ebola is not spread through casual contact now, we must also be cautioned that Ebola can mutate and spread through other means.
However, the CDC has changed their website to reflect that there is “no evidence” that the Ebola Virus can spread through coughing or sneezing. On Friday, the CDC removed from their website a warning that, in rare cases, Ebola can spread through coughing and sneezing. They replaced the warning with a declaration that there is “no evidence” that the virus can be transmitted via these mediums.
The CDC has also removed a warning from a fact sheet that “droplets” from coughing and sneezing on doorknobs and hard surfaces can possibly spread the disease. “’Droplet spread happens when germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person,” the fact sheet read.
Although the removal of the warnings were likely meant to pacify an anxious population, the admission that there is “no evidence” hardly serves as a certifiable, ironclad declaration that one cannot become infected through casual contact with mucous or saliva.
Sen. Rand Paul, who is also a doctor, has called for the CDC to be extremely forthright in their candor with the American public regarding Ebola and the risks associated.
Paul has pointed to similar statements from the CDC on numerous occasions as evidence that someone could in fact catch Ebola through the air if in close range of someone who has the virus at, say, a party.
If ‘you listen to them closely, they say you have to have direct contact. But you know how they define direct contact? Being within three feet of someone,’ he said on one recent occasion.
Given that information, the Kentucky senator has characterized the CDC’s claims that the deadly disease could only be spread through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids and the virus does not travel through the air as misleading.
‘They have so wanted to downplay this that they really, I don’t think, have been very accurate in their description of the disease,’ Paul told Bloomberg News earlier this month.
Possibly in response to Paul’s claims, the CDC has now changed at least one page of it’s website to say, ‘there is no evidence indicating that Ebola virus is spread by coughing or sneezing.
‘Ebola virus is transmitted through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola; the virus is not transmitted through the air (like measles virus).
‘However, droplets (e.g., splashes or sprays) of respiratory or other secretions from a person who is sick with Ebola could be infectious, and therefore certain precautions (called standard, contact, and droplet precautions) are recommended for use in healthcare settings to prevent the transmission of Ebola virus from patients sick with Ebola to healthcare personnel and other patients or family members.’
The anxiety felt by the public about Ebola comes from a variety of factors. Aside from the obvious lethality of the dreaded virus, the public has largely lost faith in the government’s ability to handle even the smallest crisis, much less a full-blown outbreak.
Further, as public trust in the Obama Administration plummets, more and more people are unwilling to believe “facts” to emerge from the federal government. Like a boy who cried wolf too many times, President Obama has been cagey and evasive on countless issues ranging from Obamacare promises to IRS intimidation to NSA surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans. Having betrayed the public trust too many times, Obama very well may be above-board on what the CDC is doing to prevent an outbreak, but the public as a whole appears wary of the president who reveals too few truths to the people of the United States.
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