Professor Van Ry

Colleges across the country faced Ebola scares this week that sent at least one graduate student to the hospital, several employees into quarantine, and untold numbers of students into an unnecessary panic.

The widespread fear that has gripped the nation since two health-care workers in Dallas contracted the Ebola virus from a Liberian man who died there on October 8 has campus officials performing a delicate dance.

On the one hand, they want to take extra precautions when there is even a remote chance Ebola might find its way onto their campuses. On the other hand, they’re trying to avoid what a University of Wisconsin epidemiologist called “hysterical reactions that are not based on science.”

Few would fault Yale University for hospitalizing a doctoral student who came down with Ebola-like symptoms on Wednesday night, four days after returning from Liberia.

The public-health student tested negative for Ebola after 24 tense hours in which he was treated in isolation at Yale-New Haven Hospital. <Read more.>

Via Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education.