Ian Fell

Marley Latham
November 1, 2014
English 1010

Handling the Ebola Crisis

Practically everyone has heard about the recent Ebola Crisis taking place in Africa and
America and many are desperate for answers. Melissa Melton tries to give some of these answers
on her website with an article describing what she thinks about how the government is handling
the issue. When the issue is searched for on google this article is the first result, which means
that many people have read the article. She claims that not only is the government using the
worst possible methods to rid the country of the disease, but it is encouraging the spread of it.
Whether her claims are true or not, many common Americans have seen this and could have
gotten the wrong idea. Melton wrote this to present what she saw as the truth, and to try to reveal
to her audience the same truth. This article was not written well because it does not give the
audience a clear understanding of the problem at hand and uses faulty reasoning to convince
others that her claim is true.
Let me first state that nowhere in this article does she mention any credibility for herself
or her partner, Aaron Dykes, because she does not have any to mention. Her statements are
entirely opinion fueled and based off of the public media she finds that is also accessible to
everyone else. She makes assumptions about the government and the CDC without the
knowledge of what can be done and what is actually being done. The first part of this article talks

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about the origins of the Ebola crisis, how it began in the African countries of Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone. Melton calls to attention how little the situation was talked about in America at
that time and uses it to appeal to logic. With that she makes believable what she says about how
little the government shares with them. She then writes that no measures were taken to prevent
any cross border infections, but these are still only assumptions. That happened at least five
months before she wrote the article and at that time, there could have been some methods of
prevention that the people just didnt notice. The first sentences of these paragraphs are short and
have a sad feeling to them. The death toll continued to rise. Not much Meanwhile, more
people died (Melton) She appeals to emotions by repeating that many deaths have happened
because of the virus, which makes people angry that more action was not taken sooner.
In the next paragraph, she writes that infection research teams were in the African
countries that Ebola had become rampant it. With this she hopes to push the blame for the
outbreak onto those teams from the U.S. What she fails to mention is the possibility that those
teams might have been researching a cure for the virus instead of releasing and studying the
effects of it. She also offers a scholarly article by one of the teams and even takes a quote from it.
The quote is long and confusing and she has no explanation for why she included it in the article
or what it means. She automatically expects her readers to understand what the quote means, but
her audience does not have that knowledge to interpret the meaning.
The following paragraph is pointless and only serves to weaken her claim. The way she
starts it with the phrase, By the way at once tells her audience that it is unnecessary and
discourages them from reading it. It says that, of the five strains, the U.S. has a patent on one,
the newest strain is named Bundibugyo, or Ebobun for short. (Melton) The U.S. government

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actually holds a patent on this strain Again she offers no explanation as to what this means,
even if it would have proven her claims her audience doesnt know what the U.S. does with a
patent on a virus. The following block quotes do not bring anything to the table, they simply
restate what was already said without giving any sort of proof. Again she fails to explain why her
quotes matter, the only phrase she said after it is, Why indeed. That only makes her audience
question her more than they already are.
She then writes about the first two infected Americans that were brought back to the U.S.
from Africa. She mocks the container they were brought back in even though she has no idea
how well they work and insulted the government on their decision to bring the two doctors back.
What she fails to do is consider the other viewpoints on these matters. The container they were
brought back in might have been a very effective way to transport highly infectious patient, but
only the CDC would know that. Also, if you consider the views of the actual patients and their
friends and family, bringing them back might have been the best choice. Yes, when you look on
the situation from the outside like she was, you might think that leaving them there is the most
logical plan. Even though she does appeal to logic here, it would work much better if she gave
more facts and details about what she knows.
Following that is a small passage that exists to shock the reader, where it tells about an
unprotected civilian standing in close proximity to the infected. At first it serves its purpose by
making the reader feel angry at those carrying the infected, but then they realize that they are
taking as many precautions as they deem necessary with their knowledge of how Ebola spreads.
Maybe they did not need protection to carry him, but did need it for whatever they were going to
do when the press wasnt watching them. In the next paragraph, more history on what the

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African government did is given, and that many Africans blamed the American government for
the outbreak. Many Africans believe the Ebola outbreak is a government conspiracy. Which
government? The United States. (Melton) The word believe implies that nothing the Africans
think of the outbreak is proven and is just rumored. Therefore, this does nothing to back up her
claim and further confuses her audience.
A short three lines are dedicated to explaining how far the African government went to
protect their uninfected, which does not do much to let her audience know how serious it is. She
then appeals to pathos by stating the projected number of infected by January, but gives no
reason why that would be true. Right after that, she blames the government for taking no
measures to stop American infection, and again has no evidence to support it. She says that
America is the first non-African country to have an Ebola patient diagnosed there (Melton), but
that is assuming it is because of the government facilitating it. Assumptions like these hold no
authority in an article that is on a website called truthstreammedia.com.
One of her most important paragraphs starts with the comparison between our
government and the governments in the fictional works The Stand and Outbreak. These are
called fiction for a reason, it never actually happened; and without evidence to support that the
two are similar, her claim remains fiction. In that very same paragraph, a story meant to explain
how CDC protocols have failed to prevent further infection is told. Again her lack of knowledge
about the situation is shown because she does not say what those protocols are or if they were
even correctly followed by the staff that attended to the man in the story. If you look at the
outcome of the story, the protocols worked; no one the man came in close contact with became
infected.

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All in all, this is not a very convincing article. Melton tries to frighten the American
people by telling them that their well-being is at risk because of the poor handling of the disease.
She tries to hide her ignorance with false logic and either or situations, and does not give any
support or proof to her assumptions. Lastly, she couldnt have reliable knowledge on the subject
because she is a spectator living on the sidelines.

Works Cited

Melton, Melissa. The Handling of this Ebola Crisis Is like a Bad Horror Film. Truthstream Media. 3
October 2014. Web. 19 October 2014. <http://truthstreammedia.com/the-handling-of-this-ebola-crisis-islike-a-bad-horror-film/>