Ebola

Shepard Smith Blisters His Fox News Colleagues With Calm And Sense On Ebola

Posted by on October 15, 2014 at 3:24 pm. 3 Comments :

Credit where credit is due. Fox News anchor Shepard Smith opened his program today with a well thought out commentary that put the facts about Ebola into perspective. It was a rare moment of realism and reason from Fox News and it was delivered with passion and a sincere intention to quell the unnecessary anxieties being stirred up elsewhere in the media. Without further ado, here are Shep’s words (and video below).

For the next few minutes I’m going to give you the facts on Ebola. It’ll take just three minutes. But first today, given what we know, you should have no concerns about Ebola at all. None. I promise. Unless a medical professional has contacted you personally, and told you of some sort of possible exposure, fear not. Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television, or read the fear provoking words online. The people who say or write hysterical things are being very irresponsible. […]

Indeed. And that includes Fox News.
Fox News Ebola

Again, these are the facts. We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Nowhere. We do have two health care workers who contracted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population. Not one person in the general population of the United States.

But that does not apply to Tea-Bola which is ravaging the wingnut constituency in America.
Tea-Bola

Suggestions have been made publicly that leaders and medical professionals have been lying to us. Those suggestions are completely without basis in fact. There is no evidence of any kind of which we at Fox News are aware that leaders have lied about anything regarding Ebola. I report to you with certainty this afternoon that being afraid at all is the wrong thing to do. Being petrified, and that’s a quote, is ridiculous. The panic that has tanked the stock market and left people fearful that their children will get sick at school is counterproductive and lacks basis in fact or reason.

Somebody tell Bill O’Reilly (and numerous other Fox alarmists) who says that leaders have lied and that they should resign.
Fox News Bill O'Reilly

There is no Ebola spreading in America. Should that change, our reporting will change. But there is nothing to indicate that it will. Best advise for you and your family at this moment…get a flu shot. Unlike Ebola, flu is easily transmitted. Flu, along with resulting pneumonia, killed 52,000 Americans last year alone. A flu shot will reduce your chance of getting flu. So get one.

Yet Still Fox fear mongers about an “outbreak” of two.
Fox Nation Ebola Outbreak

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This commentary is an island of rationality in a sea of animus, bluster, and rancid partisanship. It begs the question, how long does Shep have left on Fox?

OUTBREAK: Millions of Americans Exposed To Ebola-Phobia By Hysterical Media

Posted by on October 15, 2014 at 12:46 pm. 1 Comments :

There is a debilitating pandemic that is rapidly spreading across the nation and infecting millions of Americans. What’s more, it is airborne and spread indiscriminately by irresponsible entities that are licensed by the government.

It isn’t Ebola. It is Ebola-Phobia – the irrational fear that an extremely difficult to acquire viral fever is threatening every man, woman, and child in America. The transmission vehicle for Ebola-Phobia is a common carrier known as television news. And a new survey has revealed that the more one is exposed to an infected news source, the more likely the virus will spread, and the more serious the consequences for those infected. As reported on NJ.com…

“Those who claim to be following the outbreak the most closely also have the most inaccurate information about it.

“For example, people who are paying a lot of attention to Ebola are twice as likely to hold the erroneous belief there is effective medicine to treat it. They are also more likely to believe it is spread easily, even though the deadly fever is less contagious than the flu.”

This is a shocking development. How can it be possible that accumulating more information about a news event results in being less informed about it? That is the exact reverse of what ought to be the case for conscientious news consumers.

The problem rests primarily in the fact that the news producers are not particularly conscientious. They are deliberately stirring up panic and contributing to a wholly irrational hysteria. For instance, take a look at this headline from the Fox News community website, Fox Nation:

Fox Nation Ebola Outbreak

For more proof of the toxic nature of Fox’s lies…
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Outbreak? Is that an appropriate characterization of a viral infestation that has grown to engulf fewer people than can fit into a Mini-Cooper? It is if your purpose is to frighten rather than inform. Fox News and other media outlets may be more interested in curing their ratings deficiencies than in delivering factual data.

In addition to the survey from New Jersey, a national poll by the Harvard School of Public Health was recently concluded that shed some light on the adoption of misinformation by the American people.

“The HSPH/SSRS poll found people with less education are more likely to be concerned about an outbreak in the U.S. (less than high school 50% vs. some college 36% vs. college grad or more 24%). People with less education are also more concerned they or their family will get sick with Ebola (less than high school 37% vs. some college 22% vs. college grad or more 14%).”

There is a disturbing inference from the combination of these two studies. It tells us that people with less education who watch more news are the most likely to have incorrect impressions of the facts. It has already been established that Fox News ranks near the bottom of all news sources for education level of its audience, and it is the most watched cable news network. That sets the stage for a massive epidemic of ignorant panic over Ebola (or ISIL, or Benghazi, or ObamaCare, or the IRS, or gay marriage, etc.). And the proof of this rests in surveys that confirm that the more one watches Fox News, the more misinformed one is.

The fact that Fox News would portray the discovery of a second Ebola patient from the same Texas facility that produced the first one as an “outbreak,” shows how deliberately dishonest they are. Next they will probably report that the infection rate has increased by 100%. And while that’s technically correct, it obviously doesn’t advance the understanding of what is occurring. And that is what Fox intends to do with so much of their reporting – impede the advance of understanding.

[Addendum] Shortly after this was published, Fox News Anchor Shepard Smith delivered a rare and inspiring commentary that put Ebola into realistic perspective. It’s a must read/watch.

Bill O’Reilly’s Ebola Ultimatum: CDC Chief Must Appear On My Show Or Resign

Posted by on October 14, 2014 at 10:42 am. 5 Comments :

The 800 pounds of gorilla ego that is better known as Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, is bitterly dismayed by the refusal of Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, to accept his invitation to be abused for eight minutes on The Factor.

Fox News Bill O'Reilly

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O’Reilly believes that since he is the only living entity with the superpowers necessary to unravel the heinous plots that public health officials are devising to wipe out western civilization, submission to his brand of ignorant battering is mandatory for continued service. That’s why O’Reilly devoted his program’s opening Talking Points segment to lecturing the absent Dr. Frieden and calling for his resignation.

“We have asked Dr. Frieden a number of times to appear on the Factor. He will not because he is afraid. He knows that I know he’s not being candid, that he is spinning the situation and not being forthcoming about how the disease is being spread. Frieden should resign.”

Notice that O’Reilly never explains what Dr. Frieden is not being candid about or how Ebola, in his warped imagination, is actually being spread. And without any factual basis he called Dr. Frieden the government’s chief propagandist. This is typical O’Reilly intimidation tactics. He routinely accuses anyone who declines to be browbeaten on his program of being afraid of him. Of course, there are many good reasons to refuse his invitation, not the least of which is that he is an ignorant and hostile host with an inability to grasp any logic that conflicts with his pre-chewed biases. That’s the only thing scary about O’Reilly.

So now O’Reilly is terribly concerned that some horrible secret is being kept from the American people. He seems to think that Ebola is spreading by some undisclosed method that will ultimately put everyone at risk of certain death. He asserts that a second case of Ebola (count ’em, two) in Dallas is proof of a budding pandemic that threatens to engulf the nation, and that “Americans are rightly concerned that their government will not protect them.”

The segment’s headline, “Why The Government Is Not Protecting Us,” paved the way for O’Reilly to float a bunch of loony conspiracy theories alleging that we are not being protected, but he failed to answer his own question as to why. Is it because Obama wants to punish America for slavery as Rush Limbaugh says? Is it so he can declare martial law, throw people into FEMA concentration camps, and cancel the 2016 elections, as Ben Carson asserted? Or is he simply evil and wants to see people suffer as he fulfills his mission as the Anti-Christ?

O’Reilly never bothers to say why Obama would deliberately neglect his duty to protect the nation, even though that was the premise of the whole segment. However, he does make a bold prediction saying that…

“Talking Points is just asking for common sense, which the Obama administration is rejecting outright. But I will predict tonight, they will soon reverse course.”

Specifically, O’Reilly was referring to whether or not there should be a travel ban on Ebola-infected countries, which he neglects to realize includes the U.S. (The faulty reasoning for a travel ban was covered after “doctor” Keith Ablow, another Fox News crackpot, suggested it). But a quick recap of O’Reilly’s track record with predictions exposes a pitiful success ratio. For instance, he predicted that his program would have higher ratings than President Obama’s State of the Union address. He was wrong. But my favorite flub was when he insisted that the Supreme Court would strike down ObamaCare and that he would replay his prediction and admit he is an idiot if they didn’t. Of course the Court did not strike down the law, but O’Reilly never apologized or admitted his error or his obvious idiocy.

If refusing to appear on the O’Reilly Factor is justification for forcing someone to resign from their job, then 75% of the government should be dusting off their resignation notices. Fortunately, the reverse is a better gauge of an effective public servant. That is, anyone who is smart enough to turn O’Reilly down is automatically regarded as being better suited to public service as evidenced by their good judgment to snub him.

Shameless self-promotion…
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Ebolophobia: Fox News “Psycho” Analyst Infects America With Irrational Fear

Posted by on October 9, 2014 at 5:38 pm. 2 Comments :

Be afraid America. President Obama’s “reticence to put America first” is making it impossible to contain the “psychological virus” of fear that is spreading across the nation due to an outbreak of the Ebola virus that has already claimed as many as one life within our borders. That’s the warning issued by Fox News “psycho” analyst Keith Ablow, who is calling the epidemic of fear “Ebolophobia.”

Keith Ablow

Ablow is best known for his astute diagnoses of prior public health threats like the Obama Virus, which Ablow alleged would result in America’s children succumbing to “the subtle, chronic, steady erosion of their belief in themselves.” He prescribed the following preventative measure:

“So it is time to immunize our sons and daughters against the president’s psychologically toxic rhetoric, which has the capacity to destroy the self-esteem of a generation of young people.”

In response to the potential of unnecessary Ebola-related anxiety, Ablow suggests taking steps that only appear to be absurdly paranoid to those who aren’t gifted with his unique strain of dementia. He notes that “fears of a deadly epidemic in the United States are bound to accelerate,” even as he warns about “worries that dogs and other animals could transmit Ebola.” Now that may seem like a peculiar way of mitigating unwarranted fear, but then you would have to be a pseudo-professional like Ablow to understand its efficacy.

Ablow’s first proposal for treating Ebolophobia is to implement a travel ban on countries that currently have a problem with the virus. Never mind that public health experts agree that this would be counterproductive and could even exacerbate the problem by prohibiting the flow of medical personnel and materials to areas that need it most. And it would be unlikely to prevent infected persons from entering the country because anyone originating travel from, say Liberia, could easily fly to Rome and continue on to the U.S. from there. What’s more, the U.S. is now an Ebola-infected country. Does that mean that Ablow would advocate an international ban on travel by Americans?

As an indication of just how serious the threat of Ebola paired with the Obama Virus is, Ablow offers his diagnosis of the President’s mental state, which Ablow surmised via the classic “Puhlit Outta Myass” protocols that enable alleged doctors to arrive at conclusions about a subject despite never having examined, or even met them. Ablow says that…

“I think [Obama] sees himself as a citizen of the world and sees Americans as having infected others with our deadly economic policies for a long time, thereby inflicting untold suffering on developing nations. To now lead the way to America insulating itself from a scourge sweeping the very countries he seems to think we have preyed upon could, of course, strike him (if only unconsciously) as profoundly unfair.

I believe the president may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations.”

In other words, Ablow thinks that the uncaring socialist Obama is willing to infect every American with a deadly disease because of his hatred for the virus of Capitalism. Ablow literally believes that the President’s anti-Americanism is leading him to deliberately launch a pandemic. Furthermore, Ablow advises that the correct response should be “a medical-military one that replicates fighting a war.” Because who isn’t for more wars? Here is the rest of his prescription:

  • “The borders should be sealed to travelers who have visited nations affected by Ebola in the last 30 days.”
    Of course, that would include travelers who have visited the United States.
  • “The surgeon general and a special assistant surgeon general for Ebola defense should be dispensing daily information about public health initiatives and medical research initiatives being undertaken to contain and combat the illness.”
    He may want to talk to the Republicans who have blocked the appointment of Obama’s Surgeon General nominee for eleven months due to their fear of the NRA.
  • “A special national fundraising drive should be launched to pour money into virology labs to jumpstart research into an Ebola cure and a vaccine.”
    Because it certainly isn’t the government’s job to protect the welfare of the nation. That would just be more socialism. So let’s make financially strapped citizens fork over more cash or die.

Ablow closes by conflating the Ebola issue with the fight against terrorism in the Middle East. He blasts Obama as “a president who seems to see America as having no particular manifest destiny” which Ablow says “may be seen in the spread of ISIS abroad.” See? They’re exactly the same thing. Maybe Ablow would support a special national fundraising drive to eradicate ISIS. After that we could implement a travel ban on anyone who has been exposed to ObamaCare. And why not direct our public health institutions to develop a cure for Benghazi?

Ablow is right about one thing. There is an epidemic of irrational fear. And its source is the miscreants and misinformers that populate the Fox News Channel. They spend the bulk of their days deliberately frightening their dimwitted viewers with fabricated nonsense and unfiltered hostility toward fellow Americans who happen to have different opinions. Ablow is just another cog in the Fear Factory of Fox News, whose transparent intention is to spread distrust and division. Fortunately, there is a way to prevent infection by this virus of hate and ignorance. Turn off Fox News. Now, if only we could quarantine those already infected.

Ebola Terror Threat? The Best Fox News Horror Story Since Boob Bombs

Posted by on October 3, 2014 at 2:39 pm. NO Comments :

The Ebola crisis in West Africa is a truly disturbing situation that is tragically taking the lives of hundreds of people. But as painful as that is, the compulsion to turn it into a geopolitical hazard is unfounded and irrational.

Fox News Ebola

Nevertheless, Fox News is among the many media outlets who are attempting to unduly frighten the American people by speculating that terrorists are going to embrace Ebola as a mechanism for their homicidal escapades. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of biology is aware that Ebola would be an awful candidate for weaponized bioterror. It is difficult to work with without infecting oneself, and it isn’t even an effective agent because of how hard it is to spread. Every good terrorist knows that anthrax, ricin, or sarin, among others, would be far more effective. Even the conventional flu virus, which already kills about 36,000 American each year, would be a better choice.

What is abundantly clear is that the right-wing media is obsessed with turning every scary news story into a prospective terror plot. Children cross the southern border into Texas and suddenly terrorists are disguising themselves as twelve year old immigrants. A women is decapitated by a disgruntled former co-worker and now beheadings can be expected across the nation. A single man is found to have placed a bomb in his shoe in a failed attempt at bringing down a jetliner and now millions of people have to remove their shoes to board a plane.

Perhaps the most ludicrous nightmare fantasy came from Fox News when they published an article sourced to the ultra-fringe WorldNetDaily that announced that British spies were “Hunting Breast Implants of Death.” That’s right, folks. Boob Bombs have arrived to terrorize our helpless mammary-fixated nation. And while that was over four years ago, there has still not been a breast-related attack, unless you count a few angry Hooters waitresses.

To date, the number of deaths attributable to Ebola in the United States is zero. Contrast that with the 8,000+ homicides committed by guns. There is a good argument to be made that the NRA is a bigger threat to America than Ebola. In fact, the U.S. currently has no Surgeon General (a figure who could be instrumental in educating the nation during this alleged crisis) because the NRA has conservative members of Congress scared of confirming the nominee that President Obama put forward, specifically because of his views that firearms play a role in public health. That view is affirmed, of course, by the statistic cited above.

Shameless self-promotion…
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And if you’re not already sufficiently afraid of infectious terrorists from Mexico with exploding breasts hiding in every shadow, then think about this: Jihad Monkeys: A ridiculous story about the Taliban training monkeys to do battle with American soldiers. The story, sourced to the People’s Daily in China, was published by at least two Murdoch properties, Fox Nation and the New York Post. No, really. Here’s “proof.”

Ebola Panic: Stephen Colbert Beats Fox News Fear Mongers At Their Own Gaminess

Posted by on August 9, 2014 at 10:48 am. 2 Comments :

News Corpse just wanted to make sure that everyone saw this hilarious segment of the Colbert Report that illustrates how obsessed Fox News is with fomenting fear among their trembling, dimwitted viewers. Of course, Colbert is a good friend of News Corpse as shown by this totally “real” photograph:

Fox Nation vs. Reality - Colbert

In the segment, Colbert skewers the tendency of Fox News to make a crisis out of everything and blame it on President Obama. But the best parts are aimed at the pitiful losers who are often featured on Fox making asses of themselves. For instance, Colbert brings up a favorite of the Fox & Friends Kiddie Krew with this introduction:

“Ebola is spread only through intimate contact with bodily secretions such as vomit, blood, or feces. Speaking of vomit, blood, and feces – Donald Trump…”

Colbert also singles out the neurosurgeon-turned-Teabagger, Ben Carson, by noting that when he was offering his insane speculation about bio-terrorism he was really “just yanking shit out of his ass. But remember, that’s another way Ebola is spread.”

The ridiculous hysteria that Fox is spreading about Ebola is way out of proportion to any actual threat. There have zero deaths due to Ebola in the Untied States. Contrast that with the 53,000 annual deaths from the flu. If you’re intent on worrying about exposure to a virus, you may want to reassess which one to irrationally fear. In fact, you are even more likely to die by your own hand (39,000 annual suicides) than to be killed by Ebola. So whatever you do, don’t get on any plane that you are on.