(HOLLYWOODREPORTER) — Journalists are accustomed to putting themselves in dangerous situations. But with the Ebola virus crisis in West Africa has come widespread trepidation among the public as well as the colleagues of reporters covering the story in Liberia.
Infected NBC News freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo has been quarantined and is receiving treatment at Nebraska Medical Center, one of four hospitals in the U.S. with biocontainment units and the specialty training to care for Ebola patients. And while Mukpo is improving, Dr. Nancy Snyderman — NBC News’ chief medical editor, who worked briefly with Mukpo in Liberia — recently made headlines for breaking a voluntary quarantine to go on a take-out food run near her home in Princeton, New Jersey. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams read a prepared statement from Snyderman apologizing for the lapse on the Oct. 13 broadcast. But the infection of a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who was treating Liberian Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Oct. 8, has spurred a new wave of panic.
ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser, an infectious disease specialist and the acting director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the similarly sensationalized swine flu outbreak in 2009, tells THR that he understands the widespread fear. “But the big misconception about Ebola is that there’s risk to people in America. And that’s just not the case.”
