Ebola: The Disappearing Threat

While the disease’s incidence rate of Ebola has been declining in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Guinea saw its highest incidence of the virus just over three weeks ago, according a recent Economist piece. Why then are American politicians no longer afraid of infected people wreaking havoc on American cities via air-travel and African “bush meat” being smuggled into the country? Because it’s January 14^th, midterm elections are over and Congressmen are getting cosy in their seats for at least the next two years. There is hardly anywhere clearer case of essentialization of ‘the Other’ for personal gain than the GOP fear mongering about Ebola that ripped through the nation, conveniently, at the height of midterm election season. Let’s take a jog down memory lane. A travel ban to West Africa warranted opposition by health officials including the World Health Organization, CDC director Tom Friedan, and public health researchers at institutions such as Harvard, Northeastern, and Johns Hopkins, to name a few. Despite these experts warning that a travel ban could actually hamper attempts to limit the spread of Ebola, 89 United States Congressmen backed a flight ban on flights from West Africa. Of those Congressmen, 78 were Republicans and 11 Democrats. Standing with the experts in official opposition to such a ban: 14 Congressmen, all Democrats.

And to back up the overwhelmingly Republican support for an irrational travel ban, came a host of fear mongering from media across the spectrum. After being assured by Doctors Without Borders U.S. executive director that all protocols concerning health-care workers returning from Ebola-ridden countries were developed from “medical science” and being followed, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd pressed, “Is there any new protocol you can add simply to assure the American public?” Throughout media and politics, the American public was being assured that there was more that could be done to protect them from ‘that African disease’; and the Democrats in power were simply not getting it done. Right-wing media outlets used a frame of the Orient, the backward other, to convince people that they were not safe. Fox News, not a new transgressor in ignorance, prejudicially stereotyped an entire country to promote fear: “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again—in these countries, they do not believe in traditional medical care. So, someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor who practices Santeria.”

But all of this is old news; everyone was around for the ‘Ebola scare’. The point is, as the 114^th Congress opened its doors last week, the Ebola scare must be contextualized. No longer on the home-page of American news websites, plastered in big info-graphics on the nightly TV news or on the legislative docket, the very politicians and news anchors who so feared Ebola only two months ago seem to have forgotten almost entirely about its existence. HR. 5688, HR. 5693, HR. 5694, HR. 5746, and S. 2953, all bills proposed in November by Republican Congressmen to deny or limit the issuance of visas to persons from countries effected by Ebola, have been sent to die in committee now that election season is far away and the public has stopped paying attention to Washington. Ebola was used as a tool to scare people into thinking Republicans could protect them from ‘imminent threats’ (that turned out not to be so imminent). Look no further than John Boehner’s urging President Obama to use executive action to implement a travel ban for proof. John Boehner, who in response to Obama’s executive action on immigration reform, said: "... we have a broken immigration, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it. And we oughta do it in the democratic process, moving Bills through the people's House, to the Senate, and to the President's desk...”. Of course, when the threat Ebola could be used to convince people Democrats are not protecting them, executive action should have been used; when executive action was used to fix a problem that Boehner himself admits is broken, shame on Democrats.

In the process of using this tragic disease as an electoral tool, politicians and the mainstream media further engrained the idea of backward Africa in the minds of the American public. The proposed legislation to deny visas to anyone from those countries affected by Ebola suggested that all these people are threatening and diseased. Americans must be protected from them. Fear of the Other, fear of Africans, fear of ‘African diseases’, all unjustified according to health scientists, painted entire nations (perhaps an entire continent) with a single prejudiced brush. And now that the next election is out of sight, Ebola seems to be off the radar of everyone except the families and loved ones of the over 8,000 people that have died from the disease.