Addressing more Ebola myths

For several days now, people have been quoting The Hot Zone* at me as a realistic account of an Ebola outbreak. Just...no. I have an article up today at mic.com addressing this and some more Ebola myths: Everything you know about Ebola is wrong.

 

*Entertaining as hell, but very over-dramatized.

More like this

Though I haven't had a chance to write about this here, I have an article at Mic.com on Kent's experience with Ebola exposure in our area. Amber Vinson, the second Ebola-infected nurse in Texas, is a Kent State alumna and has relatives that work here. Our experience on campus so far is described…
New for August 16th I will try to keep new information and updates in the same post for a while until I have a chance to do a comprehensive re-overview of everything. The 16 August update from WHO indicates a large uptick in the daily number of cases. Over the two days of the most recent…
First, let’s look at the situation in West Africa, because that is way more important than anything going on in the US right now. The WHO has said two things about this. First, if there is not a full intervention, there may be hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases of Ebola several months…
The Hot Zone was first released in 1994, the year I graduated high school. Like many readers, that book and Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague* really sparked my interest in infectious diseases. In some sense, I have those books to thank (or blame?) for my career. But I'm still going to criticize…

Great article. I watched "Outbreak" when I was home sick with cytamegalo virus... I scared the crap out of myself. Since then, I have read as much as I can about Ebola, including "The Hot Zone". I also follow the news regarding the periodic outbreaks. As soon as this one got out of control I was just waiting for the panic to set in, and boy has it ever. Thank you, Tara, for all you are doing to help keep people informed. It has been great finding your articles.

Just a thought, if ebola was airborne amongst humans, then wouldn't it be claiming more lives? So if it were really an airborne virus since its genesis, by now we would've had a vaccine for it. However, the doctors who were infected were covered head to toe so how did they contract it? There are some really weird things going on right now. At this point we cannot trust media. We are being lied to like always.