Humankind possesses a deadly companion: disease. Illness, sickness, plague – no matter the name, disease stalks mankind. Millions of viruses affect humans, from the mundane cold to lethal bacteria. What is most frightening are deadly, widespread diseases: the epidemics, plagues and pandemics. Large scale outbreaks of illness infect people both physically and mentally, causing a variety of psychological responses: denial, hysteria, apathy. These base reactions are present throughout our shared history with disease, and what motivates them are the external factors of an outbreak, such as location, media coverage and societal conditions. Our reaction to disease is directly influenced by these circumstances, as is seen in the 2014 Ebola epidemic, the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s, as well as the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
The 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa illustrated the panic and psychological breakdown that occur during an outbreak. The first cases of the Ebola epidemic appeared in Guinea, as reported to the World Health Organization in March 2014 (Hammer 136). According to Joshua Hammer, a veteran journalist and war correspondent, within four months, Ebola spread from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone, “infecting more than eight hundred people and killing more than half of them” (140-41). With the help of modern travel and the virus’ infectious nature, pockets of Ebola erupted across West Africa. Compounding the effects of widespread infection, many medical centers were unprepared for the size of the epidemic. Hospitals lacked the necessary stratagem and resources needed to treat the skyrocketing number of Ebola patients. In the words of experienced internist Victor Willoughby, who contributed to Hammer’s article, “’We had no strategy, no laboratories, no observation centers. We were completely unprepared” (139). Soon, rumors began to spread. According to the World Health Organization, there were whispers throughout West Africa of medical staff infecting people with Ebola, Ebola patients being neglected, and deceased patients being dissected and drained of their blood. These rumors exacerbated the Ebola epidemic by encouraging families to hide the sick, thereby spreading the contagion rather than treating or containing it (“Busting the myths about Ebola;” “’Wise people’ help to fight Ebola”). The staggering scope and speed of the Ebola epidemic displaced West Africa’s sense of safety; combined with the lack of hospital preparation and no known cure, it triggered widespread panic. The rumors surrounding Ebola contributed to the overall psychological breakdown of West Africa by increasing the actual and perceived severity of the epidemic. This intense fear strengthened mass hysteria, encouraging people to make poor decisions concerning disease prevention, which in turn perpetuated a vicious cycle of infection and panic.
Alarm over the Ebola epidemic was not limited to West Africa. The United States experienced a wave of hysteria almost on par with that of West Africa despite being relatively unaffected by the epidemic. But the American Ebola panic did not start with the announcement of the epidemic in Africa. In fact, the United States as a nation did very little to aid Ebola-stricken Africa. Rotimi Faan, a reporter for the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard, accuses the world of leaving Africa floundering for a cure without any assistance, and America especially for “[hoarding] its ZMapp and other vaccines” that could have treated Ebola-stricken patients. When Africa was in crisis, the United States reacted with apathy, choosing not to concern itself with an epidemic not present in the country; it decided that the personal risk was too great compared to the sparse potential benefits. However, once Ebola made its debut in America, panic erupted throughout the country.
A major contributor to the U.S. Ebola panic was the media. While the accessibility of modern media outlets is convenient for the dissemination of information, it is all too efficient at fear-mongering and spreading half-truths. Many news stories in the United States that covered the Ebola epidemic were sensationalist, predicting that an Ebola-infected end was nigh for America. Even the titles of these articles were ghastly: “’Ebola: The ISIS of Biological Agents’ on CNN, or ‘Broader U.S. Ebola Outbreak ‘Inevitable’?’ on the Fox News Channel … Even respected news magazine Bloomberg Businessweek chose to illustrate their September 14, 2014, cover with ‘Ebola is Coming,’ written ominously in dripping blood” (Griffin). These headlines, in addition to the publication of misinformation concerning Ebola, gave rise to a hysteria that gripped Americans, convincing many that an Ebola epidemic loomed over the U.S.
Despite sensational media speculations, the likelihood of an Ebola epidemic equal to West Africa’s occurring in the United States was quite low. In fact, according to a graphic used by Michaeleen Doucleff, a reporter for NPR’s Science Desk, there was a one in 13.3 million chance of contracting Ebola in America in 2014; that is lower than the chance of dying by car crash, by shark, or by a lightning strike. The American media played upon the fears of the public by outsizing the threat of Ebola in the United States, sending everyone into a ‘fearbola’ epidemic – a term ironically coined by the same media that whipped the population into a state of unbridled panic. But why was the reaction to the perceived threat of Ebola so strong if, at other times, the American people are quick to call out similar sensationalist reporting?
The media was successful in putting the United States into hysterics because Ebola was a foreign disease and health agencies were losing authority. Stacy Lu, a member of the Monitor staff for the American Psychological Association, asserts that “[novel,] exotic threats like Ebola or avian flu raise anxiety levels higher than more familiar threats do.” Americans are unfamiliar with Ebola – how it is contracted, its symptoms, the treatments – and because the epidemic in Africa had such a high death toll, the public became more afraid than if it had been a sudden rash of deadly flu cases. The overwhelming degree of panic was caused by the mere fact that Ebola was not a common disease in the United States. Additionally, public mistrust of health agencies was building, which aided the media. Paul Slovic, PhD, a University of Oregon professor and the president of a non-profit which studies judgment and decision making, states that the first cases of infection in the United States caused the public to suspect that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was neglecting proper safety protocols (Lu). Health agencies like the CDC were accused of jeopardizing the safety of the American people; they were discredited in the public eye. This paved the way for fear and the media’s sensationalist portrayal of the coming ‘epidemic.’
Recall that the United States was not concerned about the Ebola epidemic as long as it remained in Africa. Only when a case of Ebola was confirmed in the United States did the public begin to worry– and consequently panic. This is not a new psychological trend, people shifting from apathetic to hysteric. In fact, a very similar case took place in the 1980’s. An epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, also known as HIV/AIDS, took the United States by storm in the 80’s. The epidemic had its humble beginnings amongst two groups: the homosexual community and injection drug addicts. According to AVERT, an organization that provides information on HIV and AIDS, a series of stories were published in 1981 concerning a rash of rare medical cases in Los Angeles, New York and California. In Los Angeles, five healthy gay men were diagnosed with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare lung infection. In New York and California, a group of men were diagnosed with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, an aggressive cancer. Within the year, cases of PCP were also reported in injection drug users (“History of HIV and AIDS overview”). Though the media did report on the budding AIDS epidemic, few people outside of the affected communities expressed concern. Neither homosexuals nor drug users were looked upon fondly by the public.
Many people had the misconception that AIDS was limited only to homosexuals and injection drug users. Incidentally, AIDS was originally christened ‘gay-related immune deficiency,’ or GRID, because the homosexual community was predominantly affected (Zimmerman 185). People used their prejudice against these groups to set them apart – to otherize them – so that the masses might claim in full confidence that they could not contract AIDS. Some even decreed that it was a plague enacted by God to punish those particular sinners. Trevor Cullen, an associate professor and Head of Journalism at Edith Cowan University, affirms this: “HIV was predominantly framed as a disease of gay people and drug addicts. While this distortion was eventually corrected, early coverage left a lasting impression and even today, some people still believe HIV doesn’t affect heterosexuals.” But then the dynamic of the HIV/AIDS conversation changed when the rest of the public began to contract the virus.
Once HIV and AIDS spread, the epidemic panic began. People began to wonder, “Could it be that the wrath of God was now bearing down on innocent heterosexuals?” (Zimmerman 187). Much like with Ebola, now that the majority was affected, people became enraptured by developments concerning HIV/AIDS. Cullen describes how the media portrayed the epidemic as a war, using metaphors with terms like “fight, killer, disaster and holocaust.” Figures of speech like this gave the public a sense of urgency and anxiety, making them paranoid and causing rumors to circulate, such as casual contact with an infected individual can transmit the virus. Like Ebola, these rumors and panic-inducing headlines caused a wave of AIDS hysteria to wash over the United States. However, serious AIDS attention was justified based on statistics from that time. According to AVERT, by the end of 1987, six years after the epidemic started, 47,022 cases of AIDS were reported in the United States. That same year, 71,751 cases of AIDS were reported to the World Health Organization, and five to ten million people were living with HIV worldwide. AVERT also shows that the HIV/AIDS epidemic carries on today. In 2015, there were an estimated 1,100,000 AIDS deaths and 2,100,00 new HIV infections worldwide.
Today, the hysteria of the 1980’s HIV/AIDS epidemic has faded with the past, despite the ongoing crisis. This is largely because most major media coverage ceased about a decade after the initial announcement of the epidemic, despite the fact that HIV/AIDS is an ongoing public health issue. This is shockingly similar to the Ebola epidemic. According to researchers Rob Savillo and Matt Gertz, following the 2014 midterm elections, there was a sudden drop in Ebola segments being aired on the evening news. In the weeks before the elections there were 975 total segments, which dropped to a total of 49 segments afterwards. As media coverage waned, so did the public’s interest in the epidemics, even though scores of people are still afflicted by HIV/AIDS and Ebola today.
The waning of media presence on Ebola and HIV/AIDS is what caused sudden apathy within the public. Once people believed they were no longer at risk of being struck by Ebola or AIDS, many stopped caring or began to otherize the disease again. The mentality with Ebola is that: “I will not become infected because I am not in Africa.” With HIV, the mentality is: “I am not homosexual, I am not a drug addict, so I cannot become infected.” People like to designate disease to certain groups, particularly those that are already shunned or looked down upon. This lowers their sense of personal risk through otherization and denial. Unafflicted groups use this as a way to distance themselves from the afflicted, granting them a sort of psychological immunity against the disease and the guilt they may feel from their detachment.
Another interesting correlation between media coverage and hysteria is found in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, or the Spanish Flu. Or rather, it is interesting that the panic surrounding the pandemic was not so severe as in other outbreaks. A pandemic differs from an epidemic in that it affects a variety of regions, or the entire world, rather than a specific area. The Spanish Flu was the sort of pandemic that spanned the world, with outbreaks appearing in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. The deadly influenza caused public panic, but hysteria was not extremely widespread. Measures were taken in the United States to prevent infection, such as laws passed by individual cities. Zimmerman describes how the Chicago police were instructed to arrest anyone publicly sneezing, and how a San Francisco law declared that surgical masks must be worn in public (“Common Viruses That Kill” 141). Though the world was ravaged by this contemporary plague, the panic does not quite compare to the HIV/AIDS and Ebola hysteria. Why? A theory is that, because media was not so well organized or universal, there was a lower possibility for the pandemic to be blown out of proportion – though that would have been difficult considering the monumental death toll.
Additionally, though people feared being infected, as evidenced by the extensive safety precautions put into place, they did not fear the disease itself. As mentioned previously, exotic diseases alarm people more than those that are perceived as common, such as the flu (Lu). Furthermore, once people reach a certain psychological point, horror and morbidity take on a certain monotony. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was also somewhat overshadowed by the horrors of World War I. Ironically, the Spanish Flu killed more people than the Great War did: it is estimated that between 50 to 100 million people died from influenza during the 1918 pandemic (Lerner and Lerner 442). However, the Spanish Flu is not a common point of conversation and is often ignored, even by the people who lived through it. Gina Kolata, a science reporter for The New York Times contests that “the flu was expunged from newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and society’s collective memory.” Kolata quotes a man by the name of Alfred Crosby, describing how the Spanish Flu is America’s forgotten pandemic:
The important and almost incomprehensible fact about the Spanish flu is that it killed millions upon millions of people in a year or less. Nothing else – no infection, no war, no famine – has ever killed so many in as short a period. And yet it has never inspired awe, not in 1918 and not since, not among citizens of any particular land and not among the citizens of the United States. (53)
Though it was one of the most devastating pandemics in world history, it has been rolled up and tucked away with World War I, forgotten or suppressed even by those directly affected by it. A lack of news coverage and the normalcy of the virus kept the panic surrounding the 1918 Influenza Pandemic low, and the trauma it caused in conjunction with World War I caused the world to put it to the back of its mind.
Throughout Earth’s history, there have been many outbreaks of disease, both documented and undocumented, short and sustained. Despite the years that separate them, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and the Spanish Flu all share common ground: the psychological reactions of the human population. Apathy, denial and hysteria are a few of the most prevalent responses to outbreaks. These factors of psychological breakdown are exacerbated by the media and the sudden onset of the disease, and softened by societal conditions and location. The driving force behind it all is fear: fear of the unknown, of illness, and of death. So though human beings and diseases may be separated by time and place, the psychological response remains the same.
Works Cited
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