This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
When it comes to Ebola, there is such a thing as too much caution.
That's the view of a U.S. Navy infectious-disease expert who spoke Monday at a University of Utah conference about the economic future of Africa.
Health care officials must toe a fine line between informing and scaring the public, said Daniel Bausch, who was in west Africa last spring and is working with the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.
Health officials have scared people with an over-the-top reaction, such as isolating potential Ebola patients for longer than the established 21-day period, Bausch said.
It's confusing to Americans and others when they hear that the nation isn't at risk of a large-scale outbreak, but then see such extreme measures, he said.
"Those messages are dangerous," he said. "We need to make sure that we have courage to act on the science that we have."
Bausch stressed that people cannot contract the disease by coming into "casual contact" with an infected person, such as sitting in a movie theater or standing in line at a taco cart. And it's extremely unlikely the disease would mutate to transmit through the air like a common cold.
Ebola's "reservoirs" in west Africa, he said, are fruit bats, whose feces sometimes end up on the fruit or animals people eat in rural parts of western Africa. However, they can use bleach, cooking and alcohol to kill the disease.
The disease's "incubators," he said, are understaffed health clinics with too few clean gloves and a lack of clean needles. Often, people who come in with malaria leave such clinics with Ebola, he said, because health care workers stuck them with used needles.
Limiting the spread of Ebola will require more test vaccines for health care workers, and training for people in Liberia, New Guinea and Sierra Leone to help track it and educate neighbors about how to avoid getting sick.
"If there's any silver lining," he said, it may be that communities and doctors gain "some actual tools" in combatting future outbreaks.
Analeigh Sanderson, a 22-year-old senior from Minnesota, said the lecture put her more at ease in advance of her flight home for Christmas in a few months. She learned Tuesday that Ebola is much more difficult to contract than she had thought.
"Basically, just don't come in contact with anyone's bodily fluids," she said. "It's been overhyped."
Twitter: @anniebknox