Sean Hannity ignored the insights of Fox News’ own medical contributor and brought back a panic-promoting doctor to frighten Fox viewers into thinking an Ebola pandemic is “inevitable” any day now, thanks to the untrustworthiness of the U.S. government.
You may recall that earlier in the week, Hannity trotted out Dr. Gil Mobley, fresh from a publicity stunt in a hazmat suit, who told the Fox News viewers that it’s “absolutely inevitable” the U.S. will be “importing Ebola on an hourly basis.”
On that show, Fox's own Dr. Marc Siegel, the other guest, nicely smacked down Mobley’s panic mongering.
Last night, Hannity ditched Siegel and thus ensured Mobley’s hysteria would not be mitigated by anything like authoritative medical judgment.
Hannity gave undeserved credibility to Mobley in the first question: “You have been more outspoken about the real dangers. How bad do you think this could get?”
“We really don’t know,” Mobley said. “But it looks like the worst-case scenario continues to play out. …The problem is, the CDC just doesn’t seem to be truthful with us.”
Hannity claimed “a top U.S. commander” is warning that if Ebola breaks out in Central America, we’ll be overrun with contagious (brown-skinned) immigrants “It’s literally, Katy, bar the door,” Hannity said, supposedly quoting that “top U.S. commander.”
Ebola has not broken out in Central America, but why not fear monger just in case?
Mobley called the Central American scenario “very real.” He went on to say, “They say it’s hard to catch but you tell that to the NBC cameraman that caught it from a car.”
In fact, it’s not known how cameraman Ashoka Mukpo caught the virus, and Mobley’s suggestion – that Mukpo caught it just from sitting in a car that had once transported an Ebola carrier was misleading. From CNN.com, earlier in the day:
A reporter asked Tuesday if Mukpo might have gotten the deadly virus while cleaning a car that he used to transport someone suffering with Ebola. (Dr. Phil Smith, the medical director of the biocontainment unit at the hospital treating Mukpo) said that was possible, depending on a few factors including “how sick the patient was in the car.”
“If they just had a fever than that’s very different from a patient that was actively vomiting or having diarrhea or bleeding,” Smith said. “Contact with bodily fluids like that actually can transmit this disease.”
“Don’t blame me for the panic, blame misinformation from the government,” Mobley insisted.
Hannity, of course, ate it up. He piled on: “The scientist who discovered Ebola says you cannot overprotect against this. What does that mean to you?”
Hannity left out the fact that the scientist, Peter Piot, was referring to medical personnel treating Ebola patients. As Yahoo reported, but Hannity did not:
But while Ebola poses a threat to health care workers around the world, Piot said there was “no risk that I see for outbreaks” in developed countries like the one that has killed 3,439 people in west Africa, according to the latest WHO toll.
Mobley laughably said about Piot, “That’s who we need to listen to and maybe the World Health Organization as well. They said September 4th that Ebola was coming to industrialized nations. It’s a matter of time and inevitable.”
I could not find any such statement from WHO. But I did find this article from The Washington Post, one day earlier, quoting WHO’s director general, Margaret Chan, at a briefing the day before:
Speaking of the importance of a robust international response to the outbreak, Chan added, “with this international response, coordinated response, the money is coming, the technical experts are coming, so we hope to stop the transmission [of Ebola] in six to nine months.”
That same day, USA Today reported, “Chan said people shouldn’t be afraid to travel to West Africa, noting that she and her colleagues are visiting the area and remain perfectly healthy.”
Do you think that within 24 hours, WHO decided it was only a matter of time until some mass contagion hit the rest of the world?
By the way, this is not the first crackpot doctor Hannity has promoted in order to advance a personal agenda. Remember Dr. Hammesfahr?
Instead of paying Hannity, Fox could offer an hour each night with just someone fearfully screaming. They could have a scrolling list of all the things to fear at the bottom of the screen.
Dempsey, if he wasn’t preoccupied with the Middle East, should tell his people to STFU about things they’re not competent to comment on— including, apparently, the public heath infrastructure of the countries that make up their command responsibility.
As for Mobley, he’s mentally unwell
During her “My Take” segment, Carlson said that the government can’t be trusted to tell the truth about Ebola because of the IRS, Obamacare, the Secret Service screw-ups, the Veterans Affairs situation, and of course, Benghazi.
She said the following…
With the government’s recent track record not being so hot, well, we learned we couldn’t trust the IRS after the targeting of conservative groups, the Secret Service after an armed man made his way into the White House, the VA after reports men and women who served this country died waiting to get health care. We couldn’t trust the promise that Obamacare that we could keep our doctors that we wanted. And do we trust that we know all the answers yet about Benghazi? What more and more people seem to be asking about Ebola now isn’t that they are necessarily scared about actually getting the disease, but that they’re scared the government agencies responsible with helping us if we do get sick might not be up to the task. So if Ebola becomes a bigger issue, the question still remains: will we be safe?
