Contradictions, Mistakes and Bullshit Are What Worry Us in Ebola Response

News that Ebola virus had escaped Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and invaded the city in the body of an infected nurse was the last straw. It's not the virus that's going to drive us crazy. It's the officials who keep making stupid promises that they have no ability to fulfill.

From Thomas R. Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• "It is not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the U.S. That is not in the cards." 7/31/2014

• "This is a tried and true protocol, this is what we do in public health and this is what we do in this country. We're stopping this in its tracks." 9/30/2014

• "It's a virus that doesn't spread through the air, and that we do know how to control." 10/7/2014

Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson:

• "This is not Africa. We have a great public health infrastructure to deal with this type of disease." 9/30/2014

Dr. Edward Goodman, epidemiologist, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital:

• "There is no risk to any person in the hospital." 9/30/2014

Let's not even talk about the possibility of deliberate serial deceptions by the hospital about why they set this crisis off in the first place by sending Patient Zero home, un-quarantined, unmonitored, with a bottle of the wrong pills. Presumably that matter will get sorted out sooner or later. Right now I'm just talking about the blowhards who keep striking heroic poses against panic.

Nothing drives people crazier than being told not to worry when there are serious reasons for worry right in front of their eyes. A scene that sticks with me from an early newscast outside the apartment complex where Thomas Eric Duncan had stayed: A woman, clearly born in this country who lived in apartments just down the road, was standing outside the hot-zone apartments where news helicopters were buzzing above, where emergency vehicle lights were flashing, the air bristled with broadcast towers, an army of media were pressed up monkey-claws on the fence, and inside the fence ghastly figures in hazmat suits were staggering around like yellow Frankensteins.

"They keep telling us not to worry," she said, rolling her eyes meaningfully toward the scene, "but why wouldn't we?"

Yeah. And how many instances does it really take for them to learn that promising invincibility is at the very least an extremely bad bet in dealing with Ebola? It would make us all a lot more calm to hear them start saying things that didn't sound stupid.

But. There also have been instances along the way where information was withheld for reasons that will probably be deemed sound when the dust settles. One thing we will learn when it all comes out, for example, is that there have been multiple false alarms from people self-reporting for Ebola. They didn't have Ebola. Some of them said they'd had contact with Patient Zero. They hadn't had contact.

People in positions to know have told me about these incidents on condition that I not name them. Why? In an atmosphere of ongoing contention over handling and release of information, they don't want to get in Dutch with other officials. But they wanted me to understand there have been good reasons for keeping some things out of the news stream.

We all saw what happened when a sheriff's deputy who had been inside Thomas Eric Duncan's infected apartment went to a doc-in-the-box in Plano and said he felt sick. The live TV coverage was tantamount to war. The speculation went crazy, including one rumor, apparently false, that he had only dreamed of being inside Duncan's apartment and had actually never been there. I think that's called wishful speculation.

Apparently we could be subjected to scenes like that every other day if officials just regurgitated every single incident in the city that involves someone mouthing the word "Ebola." We all get that. But that doesn't mean withholding information is always the best way to quiet fears, and it certainly does not mean that misleading the public will do anything but worsen fears.

And there's the puzzle. What to say and what not to say, and when. As much as anything, that's what Dallas has been learning the hard way in these last two weeks.

One great service Dallas could render to the rest of the country, in fact, would be a tough no-holds-barred postmortem on information-sharing in this crisis — what was done right, what was done wrong. Ebola struck here first, but the public information dilemma flowed downhill from Washington. From the moment the Thomas Eric Duncan story first lit up, the CDC preached a very Big Brother line — that risks to the public in this country were minimal, that our health-care system would beat Ebola with a first-round knockout and that the most important thing to avoid was public panic.

Maybe if you're the director of the CDC your most important goal is avoiding panic. But for most of the rest of us out here in the country, our most important goal is avoiding Ebola. If a dose of panic gets us up and running with a sharp eye out for exposure, then a little bit of panic might be a good thing.