Are You Terrified? You Should Be.

Ebola has been in the news lately. Two brave American health workers who contracted the virus were recently brought to a hospital in Atlanta. Which is good news. If your network has been scrambling to find a scary story ever since people accepted changes to the health care system, your somber news host can now say “Ebola is coming to America.” And she can do this while providing no real context to the claim, which she makes right before the station goes to an ad. This lets her suggest that (1) America could be under attack and (2) her network alone cares deeply about your safety — all while not technically lying.

I’m fine with that, because people who claim to be experts (like the Centers For Disease Control) keep trying to reassure us that everything is under control. But you won’t fall for this myth if you watch Fox News.

I was back home when this story started gaining steam, and I was fortunate enough to see the same expert coverage over and over each night. Here are the Fox News ebola insights so far:

* A guest with some vague connection to the medical profession claimed that young people fleeing north from Honduras “could be carrying the disease.” If that’s true it means these people travelled to West Africa and then swam home. And then hiked north. That’s bad for the US, but very promising for Honduras in the 2016 Summer Olympics. It means their athletes are in amazing shape and are bound to take the Gold in long-distance swimming.

* Dr Ben Carson appeared on the show. A retired neurosurgeon and Republican presidential contender, Ben knows even more about ebola than Dr Oz does. The host kept fishing, asking about ebola from different angles, desperately trying to get Ben to give us something to fear. So Ben told her that “America needs to guard against the worst case scenario.” Which is probably what most Americans will do in the Republican primaries by voting for someone else.

Ever since ER went off the air, I’ve struggled to find a source of medical information that’s both inaccurate and entertaining. I lost that when Clooney moved on. Thank god we’ve got Fox.