Who's up for a Shep Smith lecture about not panicking over Ebola?
Via Mediaite, the outfit responsible for posting this clip to YouTube is none other than Media Matters, making this a rare case of a lefty hatchet shop approvingly circulating a segment from Fox News. But it makes sense. Obama's under pressure because he and the CDC seem to keep getting surprised by developments, first when an Ebola patient showed up in the U.S. ("unlikely," Obama claimed last month) and then when he transmitted the disease to two nurses. Shep's PSA here was earnestly delivered, I'm sure, but Media Matters naturally enjoyed it twice over because it turned down a little of the heat on President Precious.
John Ondrasik's right, though:
It's not the fear of Ebola that's creating hysteria, it's the fear that our gov't is incompetent in protecting us from Ebola. #54F
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) October 15, 2014
A couple of points here. One: Shep, in lecturing people on the facts, doesn't have all of his facts right. He claims that the second nurse had no symptoms whatsoever when she flew to Cleveland on Monday. Not true; she had a slight fever of 99.5. Whether that qualifies as a symptom of Ebola is disputed, since typically you're not considered symptomatic until your fever is 101.5 or higher. But if the head of the CDC himself thinks she shouldn't have flown, Shep probably should have mentioned the fever — or, if he's unaware of it, should have been more cautious in his pronouncements. Seeing bold assertions about the disease disproved is one of the reasons the public is jittery, which, again, is Ondrasik's point...Also read:
'I feel so much better': Fox News' Shep Smith tells everybody to relax about Ebola
The spectacular implosion of the hit piece on Cory Gardner
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