We haven’t had a new case – or a new scare – for a few days now, and maybe the election will push Ebola out of the news for a little while. But since the first case was diagnosed, one risk of extreme Ebola worrying is clear. People are so irrationally afraid that they lose the ability to read a map. Africa is a big place, people.
The three countries living through an Ebola outbreak are on the far west side of the continent: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The countries that caused people to foolishly freak out are marked with stars on the map above (you have to squint to see Rwanda). It’s about 1,700 miles from Abuja, Nigeria to Monrovia, Liberia and twice that from Nairobi, Kenya to Monrovia.
What’s really sad about this problem is that school officials seem to be the most vulnerable to this side effect.
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I have two young sons, so I understand the paralyzing and (sometimes) irrational fear of them getting a serious illness from a kid at school. But, I also know that I have to pick up an atlas before freaking out about the travels of their classmates. If anyone should be able to overcome the instant freak out factor of Ebola, it is school officials. Pick up a map and take advantage of this teachable moment. Don’t shun little kids and teachers who happened to travel to an enormous continent where there is an Ebola outbreak. It would be like France putting French children in quarantine for visiting Alaska.
Here are five cases where school administrators and parents have had exactly the wrong reaction to students and teachers traveling to Africa and then returning home.
Corsicana, Texas – Navarro College rejected applications from at least two Nigerian students, citing confirmed Ebola cases in the country as the reason. Kamorudeen Abidogun, a Texas man originally from Nigeria, let several relatives living in Nigeria use his address to apply to the two-year community college with a campus about 58 miles from Dallas. The college rejected the applications.
Hazelhurst, Mississippi – A principal traveled to Zambia and “hundreds of parents removed their children from the middle school after hearing rumors about the principal, panic then spread to the elementary and high schools.”
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Louisville, Kentucky – A teacher and nurse went on a medical mission to Kenya recently. When she returned, her employer – a Catholic school – asked her to take a 21-day leave of absence, just in case she had somehow contracted Ebola.
Maple Shade, New Jersey – Two students from Rwanda enrolled at Howard Yocum Elementary School in mid-October.
Initially, the school was going to take precautions, by taking the African students temperature three times a day for the next 21 days. The school quickly reversed that decision but the parents of the students decided to keep them home for 21 days anyhow.
Milford, Connecticut – A family took a trip to Nigeria, so that a seven-year-old girl could be a flower girl in a wedding. The school told the father that the girl would have to stay home from school for 21 days. He sued the school and got his daughter back in class.
[African map from Nations Online]
