| Summary/Abstract |
Almost six months after the peak of the West African Ebola outbreak, it is becoming hard to remember the panic and confusion that gripped the United States during the summer and fall of 2014. Using models that have since been discredited, the Centers for Disease Control tentatively projected that there would be up to half a million cases by January 2015. Health care workers returning from the affected region were threatened with involuntary quarantine, and schoolchildren with connections to African countries thousands of miles from the outbreak were asked to stay home. The United Nations passed a unanimous resolution declaring Ebola a “threat to international peace”; meanwhile, US President Barack Obama determined that only a military response could manage the logistics of containing the epidemic. The media focused relentlessly on the heroism of European and American responders and fell back on stock images of Africans as helpless, hapless victims who were nonetheless stubbornly resistant to Western medicine, irrationally carrying on with “secret burials,” and then getting on planes and spreading the disease to unsuspecting places like Dallas.
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