Stacey Dash is being called clueless for her ideas on containing Ebola in the United States, after she shared ideas that have been criticized as fear mongering.
The Fox News contributor and former actress called for the federal government to establish quarantine facilities across every American city where patients could be quarantined.
“I think they should set up special centers for just Ebola in each state,” she said. “They shouldn’t be letting people go into regular hospitals, where it could be spread.”
“I just think that for this specific disease, we should have a special facility with specially trained people,” Dash later added. “In each city. That way it’s not spread, and when the person walks in, they know what they’re looking for, they know if they find it, they know how to contain it. And they know how not to infect themselves.”
Many have criticized her remarks and Fox News for using someone with no expertise on the issue.
CNN has sci-fi authors talking Ebola, Fox has Dionne from Clueless talking politics. http://t.co/s2v2JMNO56 pic.twitter.com/27igMIZZ2J
— Leanne Naramore (@LeanneNaramore) October 15, 2014
Her view was not out of the ordinary on Fox News, which has been accused of overblowing the threat of Ebola in the United States. But experts say that the virus is not highly contagious and not the threat to public health that some like Stacey Dash has made it out to be.
This week, the fear mongering was taken on by Shepherd Smith , who called out his fellow Fox News pundits for spreading fear and misinformation.
“Unless a medical professional has contacted you personally and told you of some sort of possible exposure, fear not,” Smith said. “Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the fear-provoking words online. The people who say and write hysterical things are being very irresponsible.”
He later added, “We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Nowhere. We do have two health-care workers who contracted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America — not one person in the general population in the United States.”
President Obama has also downplayed the warnings of Stacey Dash and others who say an Ebola outbreak could take place in the United States. The president said that the risk of Ebola spreading in the United States is very low.
