Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2014 is the workers who have risked their lives this year to treat the largest Ebola outbreak in history and they would be honored on its annual marquee cover. In 2014, Ebola has claimed the lives of more than 6,000 people in West Africa.
The Ebola workers beat out pop music artist Taylor Swift, Apple CEO Tim Cook, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma, the Ferguson protesters, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kurdish leader Massoud Karzani.
The magazine’s annual recognition is usually given to the person or entity that wielded the largest influence on the world in the previous 12 months. It is hardly the first time in the ‘Person of the Year’ feature’s 87-year history that the title has been bestowed on a wide group of people, rather than a single named person or persons.
According to the World Health Organization, 622 health care workers are known to have been infected with Ebola through the end of November; 346 of them have died.
