MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA      THREE PERSPECTIVES

FORBES                                       Oc. 11, 2014

By Alic G. Walton

The Ebola situation in West Africa is clearly not good. The death toll is rising, and people continue to become infected.....

But the reality is that for people in America and other places outside of West Africa, the risk is still quite low. Caution is important, obviously, and airports and hospitals are taking measures to screen people and protect the public.

 The real issue is a different one: Our fear of Ebola has become many times worse than the problem.

Read full story

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/10/11/the-problem-with-ebola-in-the-media/

Mobile Phones, Social Media Aiding Ebola Fight

 U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT         Oct. 20, 2014

By Tim Risen

ASSOCIATED PRESS                   Oct 10, 2014, 4:36 PM ET

MONROVIA -- Liberian lawmakers on Friday rejected a proposal to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the power to further restrict movement and public gatherings and to confiscate property in the fight against Ebola. One legislator said such a law would have turned Liberia into a police state.

The proposal's defeat came as the World Health Organization once again raised the death toll attributed to the Ebola outbreak. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said that 4,033 confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola deaths have now been recorded.

Liberians stage a protest yesterrday outside the National Assembly against the government not doing enough to fight Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia.  (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)

All but nine of them were in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Eight of the rest were in Nigeria, with one patient dying in the United States....

THE WASHINGTON POST
by Joel Achenbach, Lena H. Sun and Brady Dennis         October 9

WASHINGTON---  When the experts describe the Ebola disaster, they do so with numbers. The statistics include not just the obvious ones, such as caseloads, deaths and the rate of infection, but also the ones that describe the speed of the global response.

Right now, the math still favors the virus.

Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number at 1.5 to 2.

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling about every three weeks. There is little evidence so far that the epidemic is losing momentum.

HOMELAND SECURITY TODAY               Oct. 9, 2014

 By Kylie Bull, Managing Editor

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a dynamic modeling tool called Ebola Response that allows for estimations of projected cases over time in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 The Ebola Response modeling tool can construct scenarios to illustrate how control and prevention interventions can slow and eventually stop the Ebola epidemic. Importantly, it can help public health and other planners make more informed decisions about emergency response resources to help bring the outbreak under control. The new tool allows input of data reflective of the current situation on the ground in affected countries and communities.

 The Ebola Response modeling tool is intended to help local governments and international responders generate short-term estimates of the Ebola situations in countries, districts and villages. The tool, in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, is to be made freely available online.

Meanwhile, in Liberia, the World Health Organization (WHO) has established a new training program for health workers on Ebola care.

 Read full story