Dr. Céline Goundermedical correspondent, CBS News · physician, epidemiologist, medical journalist

=Ebola Killed Thousands for Nine Months. Nobody Cared Until This Happened.

Name: =Ebola Killed Thousands for Nine Months. Nobody Cared Until This Happened.
Uploaded: 2026-06-13T19:09:47+00:00
Duration: 20 s
Channel: Dr. Céline Gounder
Description: In this segment of a multi‑speaker conversation, Dr. Céline Gounder asks how to respond to the observation that public attention to the 2014‑2016 Ebola…

13 Jun 2026 · 0 min

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0:20

In this segment of a multi‑speaker conversation, Dr. Céline Gounder asks how to respond to the observation that public attention to the 2014‑2016 Ebola epidemic sharply declined after a U.S. patient (Craig) was discharged following the midterm elections, even though the outbreak continued until 2016. Speaker B points out that media and public concern spikes only when the disease affects people from the United States or the West, especially white individuals. Speaker C expands on this, emphasizing that many people conflate geographic origin with race, failing to distinguish between non‑white Africans, citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and those actually at risk. The discussion frames the issue as one of exposure risk versus identity, critiquing the racialized and Western‑centric lens through which epidemic coverage is often filtered.

after Craig was discharged from the hospital after the midterm elections, the amount of attention to Ebola dropped precipitously, even though it took until 2016 to bring the epidemic to an end. How do you react to that comment, oh, it's improving? Like, how would you respond to that?
That, to me, it kind of goes back again to what I've talked about, right? We only seem to care when it's people from the United States or the West that are infected, right? Especially when it's white people.
I'll just say that outright. A lot of people are not making the distinction between people who are not white and people from Africa and people who are actually from the DRC and people who are actually from the region where they might be at risk. And that was what you were getting at certainly earlier, Kritika, that it's about exposure risk. It's not about who you are, where you're from, or what country you've been in.
And I think that I've thought a lot about what happened in 2014, and you don't even have to talk about after Craig got better, right? This outbreak was ongoing for 9 months before they— people really paid attention in 2014. It was when Keth Brinsley got sent to Emory.