Pam's points: Tired of all ebola, all the time? Let's redirect fear and anger

photo U.S. Coast Guard Health Technician Nathan Wallenmeyer, left, and CBP supervisor Sam Ko, center, conduct prescreening measures on a passenger, right, who has arrived from Sierra Leone at O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 5 in Chicago in this Oct. 16, 2014, photo.

Ebola: Without fear or favor

Where's the line between watchdog public service and fear-mongering in the media's coverage of the emerging Ebola story?

I've heard and pondered that question several times this week. The answer is not easy, but then easy answers usually are not really answers.

Here are some facts:

• 15.8 million to 63.4 million (5 to 20 percent) of U.S. residents get the flu each year. More than 200,000 are hospitalized. Some 3,000 to 49,000 die -- a minuscule percent of those sickened.

• 2 people have contracted Ebola in the United States since the disease reached our shores for the first time this year, but nearly 10,000 cases of Ebola are occurring each week in West Africa. Again, that's 10,000 cases a week. Moreover, on average, every other person who gets Ebola dies. That's 5,000 deaths a week in Africa.

Are the comparisons apples and oranges? Absolutely. And that's the point. We don't and can't have an apples to apples comparison -- or reaction -- for the simple reason that we have much to learn about Ebola and all threats that we don't yet understand.

Unfortunately, questions we -- both as journalists and as a nation -- raise about a threat before it happens or grows are always considered alarmist. Yet questions, and even actions, raised after something happens are always viewed as too late and inadequate.

It is the nature of pubic debate, and it necessarily blurs the line in whatever role the media walks between hyping fear and informing the public. Like it or not, we do both.

Move the conversation forward

I'm certain the fact that I got a really vicious case of the flu in 2011 despite the fact that I'd had a flu shot -- albeit far too late into flu season -- was all the fault of George W. Bush.

It doesn't matter that I took a hike on a cold, rainy day and ran my immune system down. George W. Bush was in office and his CDC and health cabinet officials did not adequately prepare me to know better. Nor did they force me to take the shot early, rather than leave it to me to voluntarily take precautions.

Of course, I'm being ridiculous. But as I listened Friday to morning news talk shows, I heard one lawmaker, governor or political talking head after another, usually Republican, making similar ridiculous comments about President Barack Obama's handling -- or, by their reasoning, mishandling -- of Ebola control.

How could a health worker dare be allowed to take a bus, a plane, a vacation cruise that began while they were not stricken or within current health guidelines? Why don't we ban all flights from West Africa (and send travelers trying to leave there into covert escape routes)? Why wasn't our system better prepared for this threat?

Well, some years ago why did we allow those twin towers in New York to be built when we should have known that misguided extremists would target each of them with hijacked planes?

Let's move the Ebola conversation forward. Here's a better question: Why don't we stop wasting breath and time pointing partisan fingers, and instead stoke discussion toward fighting Ebola and other deadly pandemic-prone illnesses worldwide -- especially in western Africa -- right now?

Unfortunately the answer to that better question requires hard thought, whereas blaming is as easy as opening our mouths and spewing hot air.

But if all of these flapping tongues -- including those of journalists -- are serious in their and our concerns, then they and we must work to redirect fear and anger to something constructive like expediting (that means funding, not cutting or capping) research for treatments and vaccines.

It also means -- for the public and especially for journalists -- that we insist on pinning down each pontificator who falls back to finger-pointing with one all-important question: What are you going to do today to move beyond blame and reach for consensus that will result in a solution?

Not one more interview should appear or air without that exploration.

And not one more conversation should go without it, as well.

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