For Clinicians | How to Talk to Patients About Ebola
(and the Next Scary Headline)
By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, Jase
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member
The question we’re getting this week (or asking ourselves inside every time we hear about Ebola on the news) is, “Is this going to be like COVID?”
WHO declared a public health emergency in May. JFK is screening flights from affected countries. The strain driving the 2026 outbreak in the DRC, Bundibugyo virus, has no licensed vaccine and no specific treatment for it. CDC currently assesses the risk to Americans as low.
That is the news. The harder part of the job, the part that lands on us is the exam-room conversation that comes after it. Today we’re covering what the 2026 outbreak actually is, what CDC is and isn’t saying about US risk, and moves that actually work when a patient brings a big headline like this into the room.
How is the 2026 outbreak different from past Ebola outbreaks?
The vaccine. Ervebo, licensed in the US in 2019, is the vaccine our patients are picturing when they hear the word.¹ It works against Zaire ebolavirus. It does not work against Bundibugyo, the species driving the 2026 DRC outbreak.² Bundibugyo has been responsible for two earlier outbreaks (Uganda 2007, DRC 2012), neither of which got much US media coverage. There is no licensed vaccine for it, no licensed monoclonal antibody product, no specific antiviral.³
CDC’s US risk assessment is low, and the wording matters: travel from an affected country is not by itself an epidemiologic risk factor.⁴ The exposure pathway is direct contact with the body fluids of a symptomatic person, or with surfaces and objects contaminated by them.
The hype and virality we weren’t trained for
That’s the part our professional education didn’t cover. We were trained how to communicate diagnosis, treatment, and informed consent. We were not really trained in bedside risk communication. And the patient sitting across from us is being inundated every day with scary headlines and scary messages across every news platform and social feed they touch.
I don’t think patients are flooding doctors’ offices this week asking about Ebola. The reason this matters is that the question will come up everywhere else. Formally in the exam room, sometimes. Informally with your staff. And at the neighborhood barbecue this weekend, when somebody figures out you work in healthcare and wants to know what you think.
Peter Sandman has been working in risk communication for public health for forty years. He calls this Risk = Hazard + Outrage.⁵ Hazard is the actual probability of harm. Outrage is how upsetting it feels. High-hazard, low-outrage is the smoker who isn’t worried about lung cancer. Low-hazard, high-outrage is Ebola in the news cycle, which is exactly the conversation we’re walking into this week.
Sandman is explicit on what doesn’t work: telling an outraged person to calm down. It reads as dismissive. It tells the worried person their feeling is wrong and their trusted source isn’t taking them seriously. The next time something actually matters, that patient calls someone else.
Most of us default to “you’re fine, there’s almost no risk here, where you are, so don’t worry about it.” Patients notice. And when we don’t give them an answer they can actually carry home, they go to the internet for one. Most of us know in our hearts that they are fine. Of all the things to worry about in life right now, this isn’t one of them. We just don’t have the language ready to walk them all the way there.
Three moves that actually work
These come out of the canonical risk communication literature: the EPA’s Seven Cardinal Rules,⁶ Sandman’s outrage management work, and forty years of public health practice.
- Acknowledge the emotion before the fact.
The instinct is to lead with the data. “The actual risk to you is very low.” It’s correct. It lands flat. The patient came in scared and you skipped the part where you noticed. A sentence you could say in the room: “That headline is hard to look at. A lot of people I’m talking to this week have the same question. Let me tell you what I’m watching.” Same move at the barbecue: “Yeah, the news on this one is pretty unsettling. Here’s what I’m actually paying attention to.”
- Admit uncertainty plainly.
The “confident” sentence accidentally sounds dismissive. The plainer sentence is shorter and lands better. “I don’t know yet how the international response will play out, and the strain in this outbreak doesn’t have a licensed vaccine. What I do know is that the exposure pathway is narrow, and we can talk through it.” Naming what we don’t know doesn’t undermine credibility. It builds it.
- Redirect from “travel equals risk” to the actual exposure pathway.
CDC is explicit: travel from an affected country is not by itself an epidemiologic risk factor.⁷ Exposure is direct contact with the body fluids of a symptomatic person, or with surfaces and objects contaminated by them. Healthcare workers, burial team members, lab workers, and household caregivers carry the real risk. A casual co-worker, a fellow plane passenger, a kid in your kid’s class, a parent who traveled: none of them fit the actual pathway. Walking someone through it moves them from generalized worry to a specific mental model they can act on.
Appropriate medical preparation
Headline anxiety isn’t separate from the rest of medical preparedness. It’s the entry point to it. The patient asking about Ebola is often the same patient who has already noticed that pharmacies run out, that supply chains break, that the last news cycle changed how their household thinks about being ready for the next one. Dismissing the worry sends them looking for answers somewhere less responsible. Engaging it opens the next conversation: what does being prepared for their unique circumstances actually look like for them?
Appropriate medical preparation is the category we are building. The calibrated clinical voice is one layer of it. The structural layer is the chronic med supply they have on the shelf, the documented list they can hand to anyone, and the contingency meds for common conditions that don’t wait for normal pharmacy hours. None of this replaces primary care. It complements it. The households already paying attention to where the system is thin get there first; the rest follow when they have to.
Charting the grey area in public
If you’d rather hand patients a clinical reference than improvise an answer between rooms, send them our way at jase.com. We are publishing the framework we use, where we draw the lines, and what we are still working through. Public knowledge gets better when clinicians chart the grey area in public instead of letting the internet do it.
The bottom line
There will be another headline soon. The skill we are naming today is the one that travels: acknowledge the emotion, admit what we don’t know, redirect to the actual pathway. The structural preparation travels too: your patients’ med supply and their contingency kit. Both are appropriate medical preparation. Reply with the headline you want explained next without the panic. We’re building that library on purpose.
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ERVEBO. https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/ervebo
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About the Current Ebola Outbreak. https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/about-current-outbreak.html
- World Health Organization. Epidemic of Ebola Disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda determined a public health emergency of international concern. 17 May 2026. https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interim Guidance for Public Health Assessment and Management of Travelers from Countries Affected by the 2026 Ebola Outbreak. https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/php/emergency-guidance/index.html
- Peter M. Sandman. Outrage Management Index. https://www.psandman.com/index-OM.htm
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Covello VT, Allen FW. Seven Cardinal Rules of Risk Communication. Office of Policy Analysis, 1988. https://archive.epa.gov/care/web/pdf/7_cardinal_rules.pdf
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interim Guidance for Public Health Assessment and Management of Travelers from Countries Affected by the 2026 Ebola Outbreak. https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/php/emergency-guidance/index.html
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