A platform for cranks
by digby
Yes, I'm talking about George Will and Fox News:
As of this writing, the number of patients diagnosed with Ebola in the United States can be counted on one hand, and the number who have died on one finger. The dozens of people who were in close contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was the index case in this country, have had their quarantine lifted, not having contracted the illness despite breathing the same air as he had. There is no evidence that airborne Ebola exists anywhere outside of fear-mongering headlines. Yet despite this, Will was happy to insinuate otherwise on a network that gets upward of 2 millions viewers every day.
Later in the same segment, Will went on to say “We’re getting used to people declaring scientific debates closed over and settled. They rarely are.” But there is no “debate” in this case. There is no indication that Ebola is spreading through the air, and no controversy within the infectious-disease community about it doing so. Will’s reckless implications to the contrary, in order for there to be a scientific debate there has to be some kind of disagreement about the evidence at hand, not merely the idle speculation of a pundit using up his airtime.
This kind of irresponsible running of the mouth is precisely how medical conspiracies start. Someone with the air of authority is given a platform with which they undermine the integrity of people who have dedicated their lives to public health, and their idiotic or downright dangerous ideas take hold and spread.
It's always possible that Ebola could mutate into something it currently is not. But there's no evidence of that happening and Will's reckless bow-tied fearmongering just interferes with the epidemiologists' ability to contain the virus that does exist. They absolutely must be able to trace contacts and that requires delivering calm and deliberate information to the public.
He used to be sensible on the subject of science. (You'll recall that he's also a famous climate change denier.) Why he once even declared that evolution is "a fact." It's hard to know what's happened to Will lately but perhaps it's something in the water at Fox News. He's become much more of a crackpot since he joined them. And that's saying something.
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