Despite the news that a second American health care worker has contracted Ebola and was allowed to broad a commercial aircraft during the 21-day quarantine and the admission by CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden that an emergency team being sent to Dallas earlier could have prevented the two nurses from getting sick, Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith lectured Americans on how they should react to the news on his Wednesday show.
Transcript as follows:
All together now, (breathing) — for the next few minutes I’m going to give you the facts on Ebola. It will take just three minutes. But first, today, give what we know, you should have no concerns about Ebola at all. None. I promise. Unless a medical professional has contacted you personally and told you of some sort of possible exposure, fear not. Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio or television or read the fear provoking words on-line. The people who write and say hysterical things are being irresponsible. Here are the facts. A man contracted Ebola overseas. Tragically he was dying in a Texas hospital. He was at his most contagious while showing the most severe symptoms, that’s how Ebola works.
And a health care worker at the hospital got the virus from him. She is doing well, she says. Skyping with her family from isolation just saying she’s blessed to have so much support and such great medical care. The CDC director told all of us he did, indeed, expect other health care workers at that hospital who treated that one dying patient to contract the virus and that’s now happened. Another health care worker at that same hospital now has Ebola. They tell us they’re transferring her to Emory University in Atlanta. Now before she showed symptoms, she flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines. They say she should not have done that but she did. As we know if you don’t show symptoms you are not contagious. She did not show symptoms according to the doctors. Still, medical professionals are contacting everyone who was on that plane to make sure each person is okay. The CDC director says chances are very slim that any of those passengers is sick.
Now, big picture, this is important. You have to remember, that in the middle of all of this, you have to remember that there is politics in the mix. With midterm elections coming, the party in charge needs to appear to be effectively leading. The party out of power, needs to show that there is a lack of leadership. So the president has canceled fundraising and is holding meetings, and his political opponents are accusing his administration of poor leadership. For the purpose of this fact dissemination exercise, those matters are immaterial. Again, these are the facts. We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Nowhere. We do have two health care workers who contracted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America. Not one person in the general population in the United States.
Suggestions have been made publicly that leaders and medical professionals may be lying to us. Those suggestions are completely without basis and fact. There is no evidence of any kind of which we at Fox News are aware that leaders have lied about anything regarding Ebola. I report to you with certainty this afternoon that being afraid at all is the wrong thing to do. Being petrified and that’s a quote, is ridiculous. The panic that has tanked the stock market and left people fearful their children will get sick at school is counterproductive and lacks basis in fact or reason. There is no Ebola spreading in America. Should that change, our reporting will change. But there is nothing to indicate that it will. Best advice for you and your family at this moment get a flu shot. Unlike Ebola, flu is easily transmitted. Flu with resulting pneumonia killed 52,000 Americans last year alone. A flu shot will reduce your chance of getting flu. So get one.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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