Stay Calm About Ebola. I Said Stay F**king Calm!

Another sensationalist tweet from Natural News today, the site I previously took to task for spreading lies about what a deceased man had said about vaccines. This one is about the small problem that is currently spreading through West Africa, the ebola virus. What was the headline?

Why is more than half of the U.S. begging the CDC for more information about how to spot potential cases of Ebola?

 The US population currently stands at a shade under 314 million, so by my reckoning (and actual maths) that should be 157 million requests for information. Clicking on the actual article, it turns out that the number is lot less. Maybe its only 15.7 million requests and only 5% of the population? How about just over 3 million and around 1% of the population?

Nope. It's 70 since late July.

That's 1/39747th of a percent of the population of the US, which I'm sure we can all appreciate is less than half. Actually clicking on the article posted, it appears that what the over generous author was trying to say was that 70 requests for information on what do with a patient they suspected might have Ebola. And that these 70 requests came from 30 states and Washington DC meaning half of the political area of the US had requested information. A little bit of stretch to get to 'half of the US begging the CDC'?

But guess what? This really doesn't matter as only 10 had blood samples sent for testing, as the CDC said the rest weren't worth worrying about. This means we're looking at 60 cases where doctors, who presumably have a little bit of bias towards spotting Ebola, thought there might be a chance that the bleeding orifice of their patient was down to our viral friend and were told, 'No, thanks for playing.'

This is both sensible in the current environment, and perfectly displaying that when diseases become big news people start spotting them everywhere. Given the media exposure Ebola has, and the fact that US citizens have had Ebola, is it any wonder that doctors have moved Ebola a couple a spots of their differential diagnoses for internal bleeding. Put simply, it's still probably a Mallory-Weiss tear or some other trauma but its worth remembering Ebola exists and asking for more help if I really think it might be Ebola.

So what we have here is a bit of extra vigilance from doctors, a bit of assurance from the CDC that its nothing, and some woeful reporting all packaged together under one sensationalist headline.

PS: Other gems from the rest of the article include:

'This supposedly low-risk disease' in reference to Ebola, not sure there's anyone in the Western world who thinks Ebola is low risk.

'Ebola is spreading through the air' - pretty sure this is total bollocks. Though there are suspicions that it the outbreak may have started amongst a natural healer than Natural News is so fond of.