Psychology Today51%
Why Ebola Scares Us More Than Everyday Killers 68%
By Jay K. Varma M.D.0%
6/8/2026, 2:54:49 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Hasty Generalization, and Anecdotal, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 19.5% saturation with 204 hits. Analysis detected 1,781 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,044 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 62.4% and a BS Rank of 68% (5,629 of 17,596 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 68.00% of the article peer group.
A reporter recently wrote about how they returned from a trip to Uganda, where there is an ongoing Ebola virus disease outbreak, and immigration officials failed to ask about their travel history.
Another recent news headline wondered how the U.S. will “stop Ebola at the World Cup.”
Media report these stories because Ebola elicits a unique kind of fear, and the possibility that someone infected might enter the country undetected sparks criticism and debate.
We know that there is close to zero risk of dying from Ebola if you live in the U.S.
In contrast, Americans are much more likely to die from heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents, and yet there is far less breathy news coverage of these topics.
We need to consider what it is about Ebola that takes up so much space in our minds, and why it matters.
What Makes a Disease Like Ebola Frightening?
After two decades of working on infectious disease outbreaks, I learned that some diseases trigger an immediate, visceral reaction that is greatly disproportionate to the risk they pose to the public.
Others kill people every day and do not generate any worry.
How the public reacts to a disease, particularly an infectious disease outbreak, shapes our ability to control it: how much money and personnel the government will allocate to it, whether people seek care, whether they cooperate with case interviews, contact tracing, and other interventions, and whether there will be consequences for elected officials if the outbreak is not controlled.
The diseases that frighten us share some similar characteristics.
Their symptoms are visually jarring, such as emaciated bodies with skin lesions in people dying of AIDS.
The death rate without optimum medical care is high, such as with bird flu.
They are unfamiliar, exotic, associated with faraway locales, such as with hantavirus.
And they are associated with a stigma that the patient is somehow dirty or flawed, as with herpes and other sexually transmitted infections.
Ebola is a disease caused by five related viruses, and, unfortunately, it has all of these characteristics.
Its symptoms are visible and frightening.
Its mortality rate without modern care is 30-50 percent.
It comes from places most Americans think are dangerous and dirty.
Everything about Ebola is calibrated to trigger the deepest kind of fear.
When I led New York City’s response to an imported case of Ebola in 2014, one of my biggest challenges was ensuring that our response was based on evidence and also calibrated sufficiently to reassure the public that the city was doing everything it could to keep people safe.
When I deployed to Sierra Leone in 2015 to fight the outbreak there, I saw how people had dramatically changed their social norms—elbow taps instead of hugs or handshakes, washing hands in dilute bleach before entering a building—even though their direct effect on Ebola transmission was limited.
Contrast Ebola to cardiovascular disease.
In the U.S., cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death.
It kills one person every 37 seconds, but we rarely hear emotional commentary on the news about it.
It is strongly associated with genetics, food, and physical activity.
It develops slowly, and the signs and symptoms are not visible to others.
Most of us know someone who lives with heart disease and functions normally.
None of that feels frightening, even though it should worry us individually and collectively.
Is Fear Helpful With Ebola?
Risk communications expert Peter Sandman has written extensively about this topic.
He considers fear and related emotions part of public “outrage.”
According to Sandman, “people assess risks according to metrics other than their technical seriousness: that factors such as trust, control, voluntariness, dread, and familiarity are as important as mortality or morbidity in what we mean by risk.”
In standard public health risk management, we think primarily about two factors.
What is the likelihood that a person will get a disease, and what are the consequences if they get it?
That is why car accidents are such an important public health concern.
The likelihood of being in a car accident is high, and the risk of dying is also high.
Nevertheless, there seems to be relatively little public discourse on a day-to-day basis about how we are going to eliminate fatal car accidents.
Sandman argues there is a third factor to consider: outrage.
How upset will people be if government does not do something about this problem?
People have largely come to accept that driving is dangerous and part of their daily lives.
They have not accepted that Ebola is part of their daily lives.
In this situation, the likelihood of Ebola infections is low, almost zero.
But the outrage is high.
Therefore, elected officials must do something about Ebola or the public will hold them accountable.
This potential outrage can be beneficial.
It’s part of what drives political and financial investment in detection and control programs both here and overseas.
Fear and outrage become productive when they are channeled into activities that benefit us all.
There are downsides, however, when outrage is poorly managed.
It leads to stigma against people from Africa that persists long after the outbreak.
It drives demands for travel bans and exclusion of exposed people that rarely work.
And it diverts resources to unnecessary programs.
Should You Be Worried About Ebola?
If you are an American reading about the current Ebola outbreak and feeling anxious, the first thing to know is that your personal risk is close to zero.
Follow credible sources, such as the World Health Organization, to understand what is happening.
The second thing to know is that your anxiety makes sense, because it is the natural response of a brain that has correctly identified the kind of threat that infectious diseases can pose, even when this particular outbreak is not a threat to you personally.
The third and most useful thing to know is what to do with that feeling.
Channel it into learning about public health policies in your community or in the U.S.
If there are health issues you care about, talk about them to your friends and neighbors, post about them on social media, and let your elected officials know that you want them to work on these issues.
Analysis
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