Back in Washington, Obama had done what he could to fight the stigma, inviting Texas nurse Nina Pham to the Oval Office after she was released from the hospital, and giving her an effusive embrace. I had taken to describing the photo of the scene as “the hug heard around the world” because everyone from Camara to Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had mentioned how much it meant to them. “Our countries need to be hugged like Nina Pham,” Johnson Sirleaf told me.
