– Panic growing –
As panic and Ebola scares spread worldwide, Obama called for patience and perspective.
“This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear — because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need. We have to be guided by the science,” Obama said.
Friday saw a number of false alarms in the United States as fears grew, including at the Pentagon, where an entrance was closed after a woman vomited in a parking lot. US authorities later found no evidence that she had contracted Ebola.
Meanwhile, US media reported on overzealous action taken by some worried communities, including a group of Mississippi parents who pulled their kids from school because the principal had recently travelled to Zambia – a southern African country far from the Ebola crisis in west Africa.
The United States – where a Liberian man died from Ebola on October 8 and two American nurses who treated him have tested positive – was not seeing an “outbreak” or “epidemic”, Obama stressed.
More “isolated” cases in the country were possible, he conceded. “But we know how to wage this fight.”
The US president played down the idea of a travel ban from west Africa.
“Trying to seal off an entire region of the world – if that were even possible – could actually make the situation worse.”
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