Introduction

On October 8, 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan died in a Dallas hospital from Ebola virus infection. From the moment he was diagnosed with Ebola newspapers all over the country blared the news that the first case of Ebola in the United States had oc¬curred. Blame for his death was immediately assigned to the hospital that cared for him and to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By the end of the month a total of four cases had developed in the United States: two in people— including Duncan— who acquired it in African countries where the disease was epidemic and two in nurses who cared for Duncan. Headlines about Ebola continued to dominate the pages of American newspapers throughout the month, warning of the risk we now faced of this deadly disease. These media reports were frightening and caused some people to wonder if it was safe to send their children to school or ride on public transportation— even if they lived miles from any of the four cases. “There are reports of kids being pulled out of schools and even some school closings,” reported Dean Baker in the Huffington Post. “People in many areas are not going to work and others are driving cars rather than taking mass transit because they fear catching Ebola from fellow passengers. There are also reports of people staying away from stores, restaurants, and other public places.” An elementary school in Maine suspended a teacher because she stayed in a hotel in Dallas that is 9.5 miles away from the hospital where two nurses contracted the virus. As Charles Blow put it in his New York Times column, “We aren’t battling a virus in this country as much as a mania, one whipped up by reactionary politicians and irresponsible media.” It turns out that Thomas Duncan was not the only person who died in the United States on October 8, 2014. If we extrapolate from national annual figures, we can say that on that day almost 7,000 people died in the United States.