As any real virologist knows, it doesn't take too much human Brownian motion to turn a minor news item about an outbreak in a far-off country into a full-blown national crisis. In fact, it only takes some long distance Brownian motion by one human to wreak havoc on the population of an entire country - a lesson learned in devastating fashion by the dissemination of the AIDS virus in North America in the eighties.
In 1984, epidemiologists at the CDC identified a certain Gaetan Dugas as the index case or patient zero for the entire AIDS pandemic, and even though that has become a somewhat controversial conclusion since, the data illustrates the deadly capacity of one peripatetic infected individual to potentially infect a nation. Why are we talking about this today, I hear you ask? Well, unless you have been living under a rock it has to be blindingly obvious that we are of course thinking about the mounting fears over another very nasty little virus - Ebola. That this viral particle can essentially liquify a sophisticated organism such as us humans with a mere 7 genes is both shocking and incredibly humbling.
And let's be specific here - the spread of AIDS primarily necessitates intimate (sexual) contact between humans, the spread of Ebola does not! As much as the authorities downplay the threat, with even Barack Obama doing his best to encourage the nation to sit back and forget about it, inevitably the virus has made its way from Africa to the United States. A shocker, not. It's interesting how Obama can make very much of one hidden threat, ISIS (or ISIL as he calls it), readily cranking up the hyperbole on how dangerous that particular enemy is to American life, yet downplaying worry over an even more insidiously hidden threat, a little virus we call Ebola.
This laissez-faire attitude has spilled over even to the medical profession itself, and this came to light in an excruciatingly embarrassing incident this past week via the dangerous actions of a medical loose cannon who works for the NBC news division - Dr. Nancy Snyderman. She is the Chief Medical Correspondent at NBC, and regularly is on-air on key shows such as NBC's "Today" and "Nightly News with Brian Williams". Not totally unlike many an MD one has come across at some point or another, Snyderman can come across as sanctimonious, supercilious and dare I say even superficial when dealing with medical affairs, and when spouting advice to the great American public.
I honestly find the bulk of what she typically says to be scratch-the-surface common sense; rarely does it ever exceed what I would expect from a science grad intern who had researched this disease or that one for even 30 minutes on the Internet. When someone on the opposite chair or panel asks a really scientific question (make that an unscripted scientific question!) the polish peels off rapidly, and the cracked veneer reveals an extremely basic general scientific knowledge. While that may be fairly typical for many general practitioners, I hardly think it is appropriate for a CMC at a huge network and news franchise such as NBC.
Yes, yes, I can hear the whispers that I am perhaps being a little harsh, but you know, everything that I have said (and more) is backed up by her staggeringly unsophisticated and even unprofessional actions upon returning from filming in Liberia. Snyderman and her crew returned from reporting on Ebola in Africa, having been in direct contact with an infected colleague, cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who is now being treated for Ebola in Nebraska. NBC announced that the entire crew would enter voluntary quarantine (21 days) upon their return, which is precisely what should have happened.
Now, it's one thing about how to police or enforce a voluntary quarantine when it's Joe Public, but when the ringleader is a very public, high profile MD then we have nothing to worry about, right? Wrong! Rather than assuming that because it is Nancy Snyderman, we can all breathe easily and not be in fear of taking our last breath due to Ebola, it appears that the contrary is the case. In other words, because it is Nancy Snyderman, the state of New Jersey is at heightened risk of being infected!
Shockingly, it transpires that the supposedly quarantined MD was spotted out and about in New Jersey, incomprehensibly even being seen outside a Hopewell restaurant (the Peasant Grill) picking up some soup. Are you kidding me?! You are an incredibly wealthy TV MD and yet can't find a way to get your hands on some soup without putting the lives of an entire state at risk? Her careless, carefree, dangerous and uneducated actions appear not only to be amazingly arrogant, but border on almost being criminal. Yes, I think potentially exposing people's lives to a deadly virus to be an action that is at least semi-criminal in nature.
Her very presence outside the Peasant Grill goes against any recommendation that any serious medical professional would advise. The fact that the New Jersey Health Authority had to step in and enforce a mandatory quarantine for an NBC CMC for violations - well, it is almost certainly a reason for termination. If for no other reason, simply due to a total loss of credibility for the role as well as for the network, while she remains in that role. She can coldy hand out her warnings to the American public, yet what's good enough for them is not good enough for her, because she knows more, so she doesn't have to take precautions against spreading a deadly virus such as Ebola?!
It reminds me of a medical hubris we have all seen from one MD or another, during out lifetimes. Getting a lecture on not smoking, or the evil of eating too much junk food, and then you see the off-duty doc standing against the side of a McDonald's restaurant, smoking after devouring their Big Mac! Somehow, dealing with cancer and heart disease every day almost endows one with a feeling of invincibility to it, because it happens to them (patients) and not us (doctors), right?
That's all well and good, when you are not putting anyone else at risk. But what Snyderman did was unforgivable for any medical professional, never mind one of the most high profile public doctors in the country who speaks to millions of people regularly on the "Today" show. Synderman's ongoing arrogance even in her "apology" caused the pot to boil over completely, and the media ripped into her with fervour. America gets over the sins of major celebrities but when they apologise vaguely, that is something that brings out the backlash - big time. Think Paula Deen or Lance Armstrong, whose careers were effectively halted or even terminated by such arrogance in the face of public outrage - and let's be clear, nothing either of these two examples did ever put an entire state's (and then country's) lives at risk!
"As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused," Snyderman said.
I bet that reassured the nation! Not. Note that she did not confirm whether or not she had violated the voluntary quarantine. But what conceit to state that simply because she has a degree in medicine, she can be confident that there are no Ebola virions circulating in her veins or in those of her colleagues, when in fact, she has no idea if that is true or not. She exhibits astounding personal and professional hubris that is simply not in keeping with her high profile (and exceptionally high salary) nor her role as an information source and key influencer.
Then again, why am I surprised? This is the same woman, who, on a recent episode of "Today" ridiculously claimed that the regime in Saudi Arabia was fairer to working women than that of the USA! That would be the same Saudi Arabia that requires women to have a male's permission to work in the first place, and the one that bans women from driving, and the one that enforces a strict dress code on women, right?! Cough. Splutter. Or did she actually mean the "alternative" Saudi Arabia, that other one, the one that exists only in her own head?
The extent of Snyderman's arrogance is not even so much depicted by her dangerous, careless action in heading out for take-out, but is rather truly underlined and emphasised by her woeful excuse for an acknowledgement or real apology, afterwards. Thankfully, in spite of her incredibly risky and arrogant lapse in judgement, New Jersey is alive and well, and the threat has been contained. She will be free soon enough to go out and about and roam everywhere she wants, just like before.
However, whether she will remain aligned with and attached to the estimable NBC brand is another question entirely, and I think that NBC has been put into a corner that there is only one way out of - if it does want to move forward with any credibility in the medical affairs arena. If social media are any barometer of what the nation is thinking about this sad state of affairs, and they are, then NBC must surely know what is expected from them now by way of a real response, in place of that condescending insult from their Chief Medical Correspondent.
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