December 10, 2014

Now Back on NBC, Nancy Snyderman Apologizes for “Scaring” Community

On last Wednesday’s Today Show, NBC’s chief medical editor and Princeton resident Dr. Nancy Snyderman apologized for “scaring my community” by violating a self-imposed quarantine after being exposed to the Ebola virus.

“I am very sorry for not only scaring my community and the country, but adding to the confusion of terms that I think came as fast and furious as the news about Ebola did,” she told Today host Matt Lauer in her first television appearance since breaking the 21-day quarantine.

In October, after one of her cameramen had been found to have the Ebola virus, Ms. Snyderman and her team returned from Liberia where they had been reporting on the crisis. Ms. Snyderman had agreed to a voluntary 21-day quarantine at her home in Princeton. But after she and members of her crew were spotted in a vehicle outside the Peasant Grill restaurant in Hopewell as they waited for a take-out lunch order, the quarantine was mandated by the State and members of the public were outraged. The news prompted calls for Ms. Snyderman to resign.

As Mr. Lauer pointed out, “It wasn’t about what was medically right to do, it was about breaking a promise.”

Asked by Mr. Lauer, to respond to criticisms that her behavior was “unacceptable,” Ms. Snyderman explained: “I wear two hats. I have my doctor hat and I have my journalist hat, and when the science and the messaging sometimes collide, and you leave the optics, in this case a hot zone, and come back to the United States, good people can make mistakes. I stepped outside the boundaries of what I promised to do and what the public expected of me, and for that I’m sorry.”

Ms. Snyderman explained that she had failed to appreciate how frightened Americans were of Ebola. ”We knew the risks in our head but didn’t really appreciate, and frankly we were not sensitive to, how absolutely frightened Americans were,” she said.

Ms. Snyderman also spoke of the tragic scenes she had witnessed in Liberia, including the sick being delivered to hospitals in wheelbarrows and women giving birth in the middle of the street. “I would go back tomorrow and so would my entire team,” she said. ”My concern is that this has been a distraction from the real issue at hand. We can’t afford to not concentrate on West Africa.”

The veteran medical correspondent pointed out that the Ebola epidemic is ongoing and that in future there may be viruses that will jump from animals to humans. “We have to remember that we live in a smaller world day by day and this may be a big lesson for all of us in how we treat epidemics in the future and how we message better and how we keep our promises.”