I see these questions as being useless Kabuki theater, just as useless as President Obola’s policies toward this disease.

I wouldn’t worry about more lethal variants arising, there’s not a lot of headroom above a 70% lethality rate. The only things worse are rabies, pneumonic plague and weapons-grade anthrax, The path forward for zoonotic viruses in a human population is in exchanging lethality for transmissibility. RNA viruses are sloppy transcribers and mutations are common, but not all mutations are beneficial. The point of the virus is propagation, the maximization of propagation means a virus that is easier to catch but doesn’t kill the host as often. Still, an Ebola strain that is twice as transmissible but half as lethal would put it on par with smallpox on the lethality scale…and infect a lot more people.

I don’t believe the hospital in Dallas intentionally shorted their staff of protective equipment. I think the CDC guidelines at the time were inadequate (they did not require PAPRs, for example) and the idea was that this could be treated like super-C. difficile. The difference is that C. difficile doesn’t try to kill the hospital staff. This is a BSL-4 disease and in retrospect the patient should have been transported to a biocontainment facility immediately. No community hospital staff is ready for a BSL-4 disease the way the biocontainment people are, that’s what they do and what they practice. It’s the difference between a pro football team that practices and 11 great athletes with a pile of equipment and a printed playbook.

That nurse in Maine is a self-righteous idiot. Good for you that you went to Africa to help, now please get off your bike, stay in your house for a couple weeks and try to not reproduce the devastation here, mmkay? Plus, an outbreak here makes her cocktail party story of selfless heroism that much less valuable.

Treating one or a few like this is possible but not if there are many such.

The President, in his arrogance, spews out the zany notion that because America has such a high standard of health care that ebola can’t progress through our population — unlike west Africa.

Whereas, in fact, wherever ebola breaks loose, the human dynamic will be the same. No-one can stop it from propagating far and wide. That’s why it’s long been acknowledged as a pandemic scale disease, very much like Spanish flu.

BTW, the ONLY thing that slowed down Spanish flue was the use of quarantine.

It’s in the nature of these viruses that they propagate before it’s flamingly obvious that one is infected.

No better example: look at the staggering percentage of health workers that have become infected — even when going in they knew they were dealing with ebola — and had hazmat gear.

Yet they STILL contracted ebola — with dire, lethal, results — time and time again.

It’s now so bad in west Africa that medical staff are either dead or fleeing or have some immunity.

Even in the US, the minute it was known that ebola was brought into a hospital, staffers suddenly called in sick!

This ugly reality is suppressed by the MSM. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

It’s to be expected. The same wariness occurred during Spanish flu and the Black Death. After all, doctors and nurses were dropping like flies in winter.

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Also: while ebola monopolizes staggering amounts of medical talent — others are suffering and dying. It’s not as if there’s a ton of slack in the system. Every doctor I’ve known in recent times is working pretty much flat out. We’re not graduating more than one third of the talent needed within our own borders. America imports most of its doctors/ or trains them in off shore medical colleges. That’s remarkable — and is a sin.

Just because it needed to be repeated.

You and yours… well they can burn. So sayeth the Left.

I wasn’t referring to Physical Distance, rather the number of infections between the original vector and the patient – I should have said, generations of the virus.

Agreed that infectious disease control (of ebola in particular, but it wouldn’t be limited to that) should be done in specialized facilities.

However, if visas from affected West African countries continue to be freely given, the reality is that another West African visitor can walk into any emergency room at any time with symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, and fever not knowing he/she has ebola. That could expose emergency room staff. Some people have suggested mobile units to respond to such calls. Screening would have to be careful, though, and of course setting up such units all around the country would be very costly.

All because we refuse to suspend the issuance of non-essential visas from these countries for the duration of the epidemic. It wouldn’t solve the problem, of course, but it would greatly reduce the risk of a walk-in patient who didn’t know that he/she had been exposed, like Thomas Eric Duncan.