8 Mistakes We're Making About Ebola That We Also Made When AIDS Appeared
Anyone who was alive in the 1980s will find these headlines familiar:
“Rare cancer seen!”
“AIDS: Fatal, Incurable, and Spreading!”
“AIDS Alert After 3 Babies Die!”
“Now No One is Safe From AIDS!”
The sheer panic the new and unfamiliar disease caused was mirrored and amplified in the media in a way we have not seen since. Until now. The parallels between reactions to Ebola and AIDS are evident in the media coverage of the crisis today. The same jittery headlines, same hysterical fear of a deadly disease, same paranoia, and in some cases, same prejudices.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, who was also involved in the fight against AIDS, recently compared the two diseases. "In my 30 years in public health, the only thing that has been like this is AIDS,” he said. “We have to work now so that this is not the world's next AIDS." From a medical standpoint, there are notable similarities between AIDS and Ebola. Both are caused by viruses that originated in Africa… Read full story…
