'The Isis of biological agents?': CNN is asking the stupid Ebola questions
On US rolling news, Ebola has to be the something of something.
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Your support makes all the difference.Zombies… Akon in a bubble… the Ebola outbreak has been riddled with misinformation, and though the situation is very serious, rolling news stations like CNN and Fox News aren't helping by trying to contextualise the pandemic with comparisons to other disasters.
Is Ebola the MH370 of diseases? The Isis of infections? The Voldermort of viruses? These are the types of questions being blasted across the bottom of the screen in capital letters during discussion segments this week, most of the time drowning the interviewee expert's answer that "No, no it isn't."
"Does that mean that it is that deadly, that dangerous or just that it needs to be treated with the same kind of strategy?" CNN's Ashleigh Banfield asked yesterday.
The chances are if a highly effective Ebola treatment is discovered it won't be by relentlessly bombing the virus, making stern public addresses or winning over the hearts and minds of endothelial cells.
Putting Ebola and IS into the same bracket doesn't help the sufferers either, making them seem somehow evil by juxtaposition.
Over on Fox News the coverage wasn't any less sensational, with host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asking: "Why are we still letting people into the country who could have possibly been exposed? Why not just shut down the flights and secure the borders?
"That really doesn't make any sense," a medical doctor curtly responded.
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