WaPo | Last week, President Obama announced
an ambitious — and expensive — plan that effectively placed the U.S.
military at the forefront of the global fight against the worst Ebola
outbreak in history. In an effort that could cost as much as $750
million in the next six months, he assigned up to 3,000 military
personnel to West Africa to “combat and contain” what officials call “an
extraordinarily serious epidemic.”
As those military doctors and
officials begin what will be a difficult task, among the challenges
they face are rumors that spread fear — fear of Ebola, fear of
quarantine measures and fear of doctors. Already, several medical
workers have been murdered in Guinea — throats slit, bodies dumped in a latrine. Then six Red Cross volunteers were attacked earlier this week while they tried to collect the body of an Ebola victim.
And now, in what may plant further seeds of mistrust and suspicion, a major Liberian newspaper, the Daily Observer, has published an article
by a Liberian-born faculty member of a U.S. university implying the
epidemic is the result of bioterrorism experiments conducted by the
United States Department of Defense, among others.
And while some
commenting on the article were critical, the number who praised it was
telling. “They are using” Ebola, wrote one, “for culling the world
population mainly Africa for the…purpose of gaining control of the
Africans resources criminally.”
