Some Ebola experts worry virus may spread more easily than assumed

As someone who has a small bit of background understanding of Ebola (that is, I read The Hot Zone, and then some follow-up texts related to it) and as someone who has an appreciation for the role that air travel would play in a pandemic, the lack of a proper travel quarantine procedure out of the affected west african countries is stupefying.

It is beyond all understanding that there is not a 21 day monitoring/quarantine period enforced for air travel out of these three affected countries.

EDIT: I have created this change.org petition which suggests what are, in my opinion, common sense travel guidelines that would avert a possible pandemic:

https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-and-u-s-senate-and-u-s...

I really don't have any more confidence because the CDC has been saying "it will be fine" than I did when the Japanese officials said Fukushima would be fine.

Enough optimism for the morning...

    There will certainly be Ebola patients from Africa who 
    come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. And they 
    might even infect a few people here who may then die. But 
    an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be 
    brought under control. I am more worried about the many 
    people from India who work in trade or industry in west 
    Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected, 
    travel to India to visit relatives during the virus's 
    incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a 
    public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too, 
    often don't wear protective gloves. They would immediately 
    become infected and spread the virus.

Ebola is probably high on a list of threats in the form of plausible terrorism. I'll be glad to be wrong. There's no shortage of it to procure. It presumably can't be detected easily. It can survive numerous transatlantic mailings for cultivation. It has about a week delay in symptoms. Short bursts of it in dense populations where people eat/interact would cause huge catastrophe in panic alone. That's one factor. Hopefully, an increased response will thwart its growth altogether and we can again see it as "zero."

There's no need to panic unless the authorities continue to downplay the seriousness of the disease, and continue to show their incompetence in handling contagious diseases.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010....

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/f...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/1006/Nigeria-cont...

So, while caution is always a good idea, there seems to be some practical evidence that supports the current sense of how easily (or not) ebola spreads.

edit: spelling

As a result of the spanish nurse's infection, I think health care workers need to be quarantined too just in case the protections don't work as we expected.

BTW, did you read the article about the Canadian experimental medicine that is available but not being shipped because the US exclusive distributor doesn't yet know how to handle the distribution. It is scary that a company that stands to make a huge profit, if the disease spreads to a first world country, is holding back the distribution of a cure.

The money line. Caged primates spreading ebola. They would have been physically proscribed from direct contact.