I am a graduate student in journalism at the USF St. Petersburg. I helped run the Murrow Program last year. The International Visitor Leadership Program of the U.S. State Department leads the event. I was assisting USFSP in the organization of the program for this year’s event. It is a fantastic, life changing event.
Some see the recent decision to cancel the program as the result of bureaucratic fear. I respectfully disagree.
The reason for this decision was not fear, but an inability to assess risk when faced with a low-data, high-value decision. When taken in this context, the decision makes sense.
The bottom line is because the stakes are so enormous, and a full understanding of how to manage this crisis is in flux at the highest levels of government, USFSP had no choice but to fold on Murrow.
Some respondents see the unfairness of the situation by using the large population size of the affected nations. They believe it is unfair that 22 million people are assumed to have the virus. Yes, there are 22 million people in the affected countries. Yes, a tiny minority of a minority has the virus and yes, the entire situation is horrible and unfair.
The unfortunate fact is that it only takes one case to create total havoc, so you have to assume that everyone has the virus and, critically, you have to be sure you can check.
Ebola deserves our respect. It deserves this respect not because of large numbers, but because of small ones. It deserves our respect because of the fatality rate. It deserves our respect for the devastation that epidemics cause to the social fabric, to trust systems, to our freedom.
The stated rationale the U.S. has for allowing air travel is to prevent “information loss.” The U.S. Government has argued that the loss of information from a travel ban will paradoxically create more vulnerabilities in an effort to contain the epidemic.
The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want the air corridors open to capture information about Ebola makes sense.
That does not mean that air travel, particularly non-essential air travel, from affected areas to non-affected areas makes sense or is even desired.
The efficacy of travel bans is mixed. Nigeria has so far stopped the virus cold without a travel ban. The Northern Province of Sierra Leone, Koinadugu, has succeeded in preventing a severe outbreak. Sierra Leone did this by the intelligent use of limiting movement.
There has been a string of mishaps at the United States’ national level in response to Ebola. These mishaps have shaken the confidence of the country. The infection of two nurses at Texas Presbyterian serve as a stark reminder of this initial failure. The scores of people on quarantine are another.
As President Obama said about our Ebola response, “This isn’t tight.”
Indeed it isn’t. Right now this is a scramble. The likelihood that USFSP will get the risk information it needs to make a decision that protects the stakeholders of this event is low, and the downsides are too enormous to guess at this one.
Last, timing matters and for USFSP and the Murrow Program, the timing is lousy. Right now, the CDC are moving to change the protocols that they said were solid just a few weeks ago. It is highly probable that if the Murrow program was occurring three months from now, this would be a non-issue.
This decision is a “lose-lose” decision for USFSP, but I cannot say it is a wrong decision or one based on fear.
