An employee uses a microscope during research in a laboratory used to detect contamination in employees' clothing at the Bavarian Nordic A/S biotechnology company, where the research into infectious diseases, including the ebola vaccine, takes place in Kvistgaard, Denmark, on Friday, Oct. 31, 2014.Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images
PolitiFact has named the panicked response to Ebola as the 2014 Lie of the Year.
The website, which fact-checks the statements of public figures, noted 16 erroneous claims made for Ebola last year, which together produced “a dangerous and incorrect narrative.”
Those included Fox News analyst George Will’s false assertion that Ebola could spread through a sneeze or cough, Senator Rand Paul’s description of the disease as “incredibly contagious,” “very transmissible” and “easy to catch” and Congressman Phil Gingrey’s warning that migrants could carry Ebola across the U.S.’s southern border.
“When combined,” PolitiFact writes, “the claims edged the nation toward panic. Governors fought Washington over the federal response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stumbled to explain details about transmission of the virus and its own prevention measures. American universities turned away people from Africa, whether they were near the outbreak or not.”
Photographing TIME's Person of the Year in Africa, Europe and the U.S.
Foday Galla, 37, Ambulance Supervisor, photographed at home wearing a PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) suit, in Signboard community, in Monrovia, Liberia. Nov. 26, 2014Jackie Nickerson for TIMESalome Karwah, 26, a nurse currently working at Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres’ Ebola Treatment Unit in Monrovia, Liberia. Nov. 26, 2014Jackie Nickerson for TIMEDr. Bruce Ribner, Medical director of Emory University Hospital's Serious Communicable Disease Unit in Atlanta where he treated U.S. Ebola patients. Nov. 20th 2014.Bryan Schutmaat for TIMENurse Kaci Hickox photographed outside her relatives home Freeport Maine. Nov. 16, 2014. Hickox was quarantined in New Jersey after treating Ebola victims in Sierra Leone.Bryan Schutmaat for TIMEA Nurse and Hygienist trainee dressed in PPE at the Liberian Ministry of Health’s Ebola Treatment Unit at the former Ministry of Defense compound, in Monrovia, Liberia. Nov. 27, 2014Jackie Nickerson for TIMEProfessor Thomas W. Geisbert at his Lab at the the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Dec. 2, 2014. Geisbert is a virologist who conducted the first Trials of the Drug TKM-EBOLA.Bryan Schutmaat for TIMEFoday Galla, 37, Ambulance Supervisor, photographed in Signboard community, in Monrovia, Liberia. Nov. 26, 2014Jackie Nickerson for TIMEAmber Vinson and Nina Pham, nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. They contracted Ebola while treating patient Thomas Eric Duncan. Dec. 5, 2014Bryan Schutmaat for TIMEDr. Jerry Brown, 46, Medical Director of ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Nov. 27, 2014Jackie Nickerson for TIMEDr. Pardis Sabeti photographed in her lab at the Broad Institute in Cambridge. Nov. 26, 2014. Dr. Sabeti sequenced the Ebola Genome from this outbreak.Bryan Schutmaat for TIMEProf. Peter Piot photographed in a lab at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Nov. 12, 2014. He discovered the Ebola virus in 1976.Bryan Schutmaat for TIME
