As you may have learned from reports in the media, one of the doctoral students who returned recently from a research mission to Liberia was hospitalized in isolation on Wednesday night after developing a low-grade fever.” That’s how an Oct. 16 email from President Peter Salovey, GRD ’86, to the Yale community began, and with it came a deluge of headlines and frantic calls from home. The Ebola virus, many assumed, had arrived in New Haven.
As Salovey noted, reports in the media had taken off hours before his email, turning Twitter and Facebook into an Ebola-related frenzy with stories speculating on the case of a Yale student, later revealed to be Ryan Boyko, GRD ’18. Later that day, Salovey emailed again: Boyko had tested negative for Ebola. More headlines, and phone calls—this time, relief.
Boyko and one other doctoral student are still under quarantine, as are six others in Connecticut. Each has tested negative for the disease, yet a lingering confusion remains about how to best handle Ebola—who is in charge, what’s happening behind closed doors, or in quarantine rooms? With confusion comes panic, likely communicated through texts from many concerned moms and warnings about hand washing. The questions, then, are what we should know and how scared we should be.
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Ebola isn’t new: the virus was first discovered in West Africa in 1976. But the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the current outbreak is the largest and most complex one that has ever occurred. There are currently over 10,000 cases of the Ebola virus worldwide, and over 4,500 deaths since March 2014, when the outbreak began in Guinea. Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have been most affected, with counts of cases and deaths in the thousands. “Ebola is an opportunistic threat,” said Kristina Talbert-Slagle, senior scientific officer for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute. “It spreads throughout the war-torn countries of West Africa in large part because they have weakened health systems and infrastructures that cannot stop the spread of this deadly virus.”
By contrast, the United States has had 4 cases so far and only 1 death. The U.S. boasts multiple infrastructural advantages that, theoretically, should help counter Ebola. Nevertheless, some are concerned that we are not well-equipped to handle a potential outbreak. For example, President Barack Obama has not nominated a Surgeon General that Republicans will confirm, creating a leadership void that makes it effectively impossible to coordinate an appropriate medical response.
Dr. Richard Skolnik, BR ’72, who teaches at the Yale School of Public Health and wrote Global Health 101, a widely-used global health textbook, emphasized that leadership and preparation are essential to combating Ebola and are sadly lacking. Skolnik noted in a letter to the Washington Post on Oct. 15 that the U.S. lacks a comprehensive plan to handle Ebola currently. In an email to the Herald, he wrote, “Politicians are likely to seize on Ebola and the mistakes we have made so far, politicize the problem, and lead us in a variety of uncoordinated and technically unsound directions.”
In light of this mismanagement on a national level, individual states have made their own quarantine polices. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy attempted to articulate his plan of attack in response to Ebola in a press release on Oct. 16. Malloy’s plan calls for the creation of a Unified Command Team (UCT) to coordinate the state’s emergency management and communicate with the public. Moreover, Malloy explained that, “Connecticut hospitals have a heightened level of awareness for detecting a patient with Ebola, given the level of cooperation we have received in preparing.” Dana Manarne, director of public relations and communications for the Yale-New Haven Health System, agreed. “Yale-New Haven Hospital employs protection measures even greater than those recommended by the CDC,” she said.
Despite these precautions, Boyko, the Yale graduate student quarantined after displaying Ebola-like symptoms, characterized his quarantine experience at Yale-New Haven Hospital as isolating, and marked with “miscommunication” and a lack of clarity between the state and local officials, he said in an interview with The Rachel Maddow Show on Oct. 27.
Boyko has been subjected to a mandatory 21-day quarantine, which was imposed statewide for any individuals who have traveled to Ebola-infected areas on Oct. 16,when Boyko first arrived at Yale-New Haven Hospital. New York and New Jersey had also imposed 21-day quarantines, but after being widely criticized as a politically motivated to assuage public fear, rather than based on scientific expertise, both of the states rescinded the orders.
“The 21-day quarantine for people without symptoms is not something that the public health, scientific, or scholarly community supports,” said Elizabeth Bradley, EPH ’96, director of the Yale Global Health Initiative and master of Branford College. The CDC recommends only quarantining those at high-risk, and Obama administration officials have expressed concerns that mandatory 21-day quarantines will deter health workers from traveling to Ebola-affected parts, where they’re needed the most. According to Bradley, that brings us to the main question that educators and officials must address: “How do you educate people without creating so much fear that the fear is what’s creating policies?”
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Media coverage of the ebola crisis has been criticized in two ways—first, for perpetuating historic stereotypes about Africa as homogeneous and dangerous, and second, for publicizing news that does not educate the public.
President Salovey’s original email on Oct. 16 stated in its final paragraph, “I feel that I should directly address the question of why our Public Health students—or why anyone affiliated with Yale—would even consider traveling to these dangerous parts of the world.” Salovey then discussed the importance of Yale sending clinicians and other experts to parts of the world affected by Ebola, but to some students, his message seemed paternalistic.
Esther Soma, JE ’16, president of the Yale African Students Association (YASA), told me the email was deeply disturbing. “It took me a while to process and articulate exactly why I was upset,” she said. “I realized it was because I felt alienated. When Salovey asks why ‘anyone affiliated with Yale’ would go to these places—well, it’s because these are homes for some members of the Yale community. That statement took away from the diversity of the Yale community. I’m part of that, and so are some of my friends from these ‘dangerous parts.’”
The idea that Salovey’s email ignored the role of familial ties from the Yale community was echoed by Maya Binyam, BR ’15, in an op-ed for the Yale Daily News on Thurs., Oct. 16. When asked how Salovey could have worded the statement differently, she said, “basically, Salovey anticipating the questions people might ask was not the right gesture,” she told me. “I think instead of generalizing, he could have very specifically talked about the students who were there.”
President Salovey responded to these concerns in an email to the Herald. “I do apologize if it struck some readers that way. My intent was the opposite—to say we had an obligation to share our expertise when we could (rather than refuse to be involved),” he wrote.
The main takeaway here is how we frame discussions about Ebola matters. “There are definitely people who know what’s going on,” Soma said, “But others just get their exposure from the media, which is not necessarily telling the whole story. It’s providing one narrative, when there are so many other counter narratives there to understand.” Soma described instances where she and members of YASA have spoken to organization leaders to change how Ebola-awareness events are framed—for example, through moving discussions away from generalizations about Africa towards Ebola as a specific problem in three African countries. For those trying to seek out information on Ebola, the mainstream media may not be a good resource. Yaa Ampofo, ES ’16, president of the Yale Undergraduate Association for African Peace and Development (YAAPD) described the news coverage as “[driving] people into a frenzy, rather than educating.”
Binyam added that she’s noticed a “frightening light-heartedness” coupled with “grating anxiety” from students. Frightening lightheartedness comes through in Ebola Halloween costumes and Ebola jokes in dining halls, as if snide comments will make Ebola vanish. Grating anxiety manifests itself in different ways—through a deluge of Overheard at Yale posts on Facebook describing panicked reactions, to daily New York Times coverage, to calls from home about washing your hands more. Meanwhile, as of the publication of this article, if you Google “Ebola,” it takes until page three to find proof that cases of Ebola exist anywhere outside the United States.
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Given the media’s frenzy and panic, Yale must ask what its role is in dispelling the rumors and offering more accurate information. The question is, how? What kind of obligation does Yale have to address Ebola? Primarily, with its resources, Yale stands to contribute through providing education and furthering research. Yale created an Ebola Task Force on Oct. 3, headed by Bradley, with the goal of increasing education and awareness through seminars. “The task force’s goal is not to shape Yale policy,” Bradley said. “Our mission is to educate the population about what’s going on and be the voice of evidence.”
Bradley and Talbert-Slagle agreed that the Global Health community plays an important role in promoting student and faculty engagement in issues surrounding Ebola. “This is done by disseminating knowledge about Ebola and its spread, facilitating donations via Yale Relief for Ebola efforts, and convening student and faculty conversations about Ebola and what it means,” said Bradley. Talbert-Slagle added, “We can contribute research findings about Ebola, specifically, as well as infection control and health systems strengthening more generally.”
All the students and faculty members interviewed agreed that Yale’s intentions are good, but that the University isn’t counteracting the harm done when students are inundated with sensational media coverage and poorly framed messages. Message and language are paramount in understanding this global health crisis. Soma pointed this out, and the importance of including the human element of the disease in conversation. “How do we humanize people?” Soma asked. “I feel like there’s been a lot of detachment from the victims of Ebola. Let’s just remember there are people behind this,” she concluded, “Not just numbers.”
It’s easy to forget this, given how the mainstream media has buried it beneath layers of stigma and exaggeration. Ideally, programs like Yale’s Task Force can start to gradually undo this and begin to replace stigma with science.
-Graphics by Julia Kittle-Kamp