The public are not "high information consumers". The media know this and cater to their audience, as any good for-profit business would. You're not a "high information consumer", either. If you were, you would be reading medical journals. A "high information consumer" would have done this by now, or at least Googled "epidemiology of ebola."Mr. Perfect wrote: Because that would be news that would help the public. High information consumers like me.
The media has been citing journal studies and interviewing researchers who have had experience dealing with Ebola. Here's an example from today. Look at that! References to journal papers and quotes from epidemiologists! Took all of 5 seconds to find this.
A "high information consumer" would know that many common viruses, like the flu, can be spread before the onset of visible symptoms, or are easily aerosolized, or can persist for days on fomites. Even the "low information" media has covered this but apparently, you're still in the dark.Wow. Imagine, virus spread through contact. When you have symptoms. Boy you learned so much from those articles. Wow.They've also presented both the consensus view that Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids of a person with visible symptoms,
Which is pretty much what is happening with the constant stream of statements from the CDC, medical researchers, and personnel in charge of managing the US's Ebola response. I still don't know what Sharpton or Trump think about the situation but apparently you went to great lengths to seek out their opinions.I put my immovable goalpost up in the beginning. When there is a virus outbreak I want everyone to shut up except epidemiologists. When there is a shooting I want everyone shutting up except criminologists.
What exactly do you want to know? Survival rates? R0 number relative to other infectious diseases (already posted here and, predictably, dismissed by you)? Evidence for/against Ebola being airborne? How long (and by what vectors) it can be transmitted after a patient recovers? How long Ebola survives outside the body?The reason why is you actually, exhibit A, you've claimed to read all the high end journalism and you can tell us nothing about it that a school child can know and yet you think you are informed.
A "high information consumer", like me, already knows all the answers to these. In all the time you've wasted on this board, how come you don't know yet?
And even without reading medical journals or paying particularly close attention to the media, one can infer that Ebola is not a major threat. Planeloads of people have been flying out of West Africa since the outbreak began and less than a handful of confirmed transmissions have occurred in the developed world. In all cases so far, they've been in healthcare workers tending to patients who contracted the virus in Africa. Thomas Duncan's family haven't yet shown signs of infections. One can infer from all this that Ebola isn't worth losing sleep over.