Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Ebola Nancy apologizes

I'm sorry but this just won't do:
Dr. Nancy Snyderman returned to NBC Wednesday morning to give an apology for breaking in October a 21-day home quarantine she agreed to after returning from reporting in Ebola-plagued West Africa.

“We had already been taking our temperatures 4, 5, 6 times a day, and we knew our risks in our heads, but didn't really appreciate, and frankly we were not sensitive to, how absolutely frightened Americans were,” Snyderman told colleague Matt Lauer on the “Today” show. “So I came back, agreed to a voluntary quarantine in my home, and then 72 hours, left my home.”
Uh-huh, because you wanted soup. This is the most insufficient apology imaginable. Snyderman is allegedly a medical professional, a smart woman and a journalist. She "didn't really appreciate...how absolutely frightened Americans were"? How could that be, since everyone in the United States was filled with mindless terror over Ebola and there was absolutely nothing on the news that wasn't about Ebola and Americans who were terrified of catching it? (And, ahem, Snyderman is a newswoman.) The TV coverage was all-Ebola, all the time for weeks. And her perfidy occurred in the midst of this. But poor Nancy had no clue that Americans were frightened?

And then there's what she didn't say. This had nothing to do with the fear of Americans, it had to do with the medical safeguards put in place to contain a deadly disease, and Ebola Nancy's disregard for those safeguards. Let's be clear: she was completely familiar with the protocols and voluntarily agreed to a quarantine. And this isn't just any woman; she is the NBC expert in this area, on the teevee nightly to tell us rubes all about it. And she broke quarantine for a supremely ridiculous reason: she wanted some hot soup. That's inexcusable.

The truth seems to be that Nancy Snyderman has a one-percenter mindset and thinks the rules don't apply to her. I will not accept her return to TV as a medical expert. She blew that gig. Blew it up, in fact. The woman needs another job, one that has nothing to do with medicine, trust, or educating the public about anything.