Ebola Outbreak Update: NYC Doctor Who Contracted Ebola Blasts Media, Politicians

New York Doctor Craig Spencer who had Ebola while treating Ebola patients in West Africa last year has criticized the media's response to the disease."When we look back on this epidemic, I hope we'll recognize that fear caused our initial hesitance to respond - and caused us to respond poorly when we finally did," Dr. Craig Spencer wrote in an article published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Spencer, 33, went on to write that he kept a journal while in West Africa to help assess his "perceived level of risk of being infected with the deadly virus."

In the journal, he wrote how much risk each day's work had put him at, checking off "minimal risk" every day. Still, he was checked into Bellevue Hospital with Ebola in October 2014.

News of Spencer's infection unnerved some New York residents, particularly after they learned that he rode the subway system, ate out and went bowling in the days before he developed a fever and tested positive.

"The morning of my hospitalization," Spencer wrote, "I woke up knowing something was wrong. I felt different than I had since my return - I was more tired, warm, breathing fast."

"My activities before I was hospitalized were widely reported and highly criticized," Spencer continued. "People feared riding the subway or going bowling because of me...I was labeled a fraud, a hispter, and a hero."

"The truth is I am none of those things," Spencer says. "I'm just someone who answered a call for help and was lucky enough to survive."

He then went on to write little attention was placed on the science of Ebola."Meanwhile, politicians, caught up in the election season, took advantage of the panic to try to appear presidential instead of supporting a sound, science-based public health response," he said.

"We all lose when we allow irrational fear, fueled in part by prime-time ratings and political expediency, to supersede pragmatic public health preparedness," Spencer wrote.

"When we look back on this epidemic, I hope we'll recognize that fear caused our initial hesitance to respond - and caused us to respond poorly when we finally did," Spencer concluded. "I know how real the fear of Ebola is, but we need to overcome it. We all lose when we allow irrational fear...to supersede pragmatic public health preparedness."