Zach Roach sits back on his couch, his tone sounding somewhat annoyed. He, like many others, is tired of hearing about the Ebola virus from every mass media source in America. He said he thinks it’s being used to create fear in people who know little about the disease.
“Sure, it has the potential to spread, but no, I don’t have any fear,” Roach said. “There have been cases already, and with something like Ebola, I think that if it were going to spread, it would have spread already.”
Roach, a Ball State junior, is one of many Americans who have stopped taking the Ebola epidemic in West Africa seriously, because he thinks it has been sensationalized and blown out of proportion.
“I think [for Americans] Ebola is more of a deterrent to real problems,” Roach said. “So it’s an epidemic in that case. It’s a social epidemic, but not a medical epidemic.”
In October, Reuters reported that the Ebola virus broke out in Africa sometime last March, with cases sprouting up in seven countries in the following months.
Since then, the epidemic has attracted immense concern from Europeans and Americans, becoming a regular feature for headlines and breaking news stories from around the world.
The Centers for Disease Control has confirmed four cases of Ebola in the U.S. since October, causing panic among Americans who know little about the disease other than its high mortality rate.
The World Health Organization estimated that 70 percent of Africans who contract the virus die, but this doesn’t apply to all areas, including the U.S.
Read more information about ebola and public perception, here, at BallBearingsMag.com