Commentator Shepard Smith, who dropped out of college to chase his TV dreams, lectured his Fox News audience on Wednesday warning them not to overreact to the mounting Ebola crisis in the US.
Smith seemed to become exasperated on the air Wednesday with how the nation is reacting to the growing threat of Ebola, as two nurses in Dallas Texas were revealed as having been infected by now-deceased Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan. Giving voice to that exasperation, Smith went on a rant against the media for its coverage of the Ebola crisis.
“You should have no concerns about Ebola at all. None. I promise,” Smith insisted. He continued, “Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the fear-provoking words online. The people who say and write hysterical things are being very irresponsible.”
“We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Nowhere,” Smith lectured. “We do have two healthcare workers who contracted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America. Not one person in the general population in the United States.”
But even as Smith claimed “here are the facts,” he himself got at least one fact wrong.
Smith claimed that the second nurse who had flown on Frontier Airlines only days before she was diagnosed with the virus had flown free of symptoms. Smith said, “before she showed symptoms, she flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines.”
This appears to be untrue. Apparently she already had a fever while sitting on that plane.
Smith also went on to affirm that he knows exactly how Ebola is transferred from person to person, but even the experts disagree a bit on this matter. Many healthcare professionals in Africa have contracted the disease, and authorities can’t figure out how they got it. Even the two nurses in Texas were supposed to have been fully outfitted in protective gear but still contracted the virus.
Regardless, the left is lapping up Smith’s scolding of his Fox News audience.
The New Yorker, for instance, trumpeted Smith for “bringing a rare moment of sanity” to Fox News and celebrated the anchor as the network’s “conscience.”
The New Yorker even used the opportunity to attack Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the matter.
Huffington Post was quick to post the story with a hat tip to the far-left media tracking website Media Matters for America.
Speaking of Soros-funded Media Matters, the partisan attack site was early out of the box with its coverage of Smith’s tirade.
Following Media Matters’ example, Mediaite also touted Smith for “excoriating” the media for its Ebola coverage.
Vox.com also jumped on the bandwaggon with a headline blaring, “Fox News’ Shepard Smith destroys Ebola fear-mongering in 4 minutes.”
Not to be outdone, Politico’s Dylan Byers also proclaimed Smith to be a “voice of reason.”
Finally, former CNN writer Jordan Valinsky even went so far as to ridicule anyone that thinks Ebola might be a problem by calling the matter a “supposed ‘Ebola outbreak’ in the United States.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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