I will jot down my thoughts:
1) This is not Africa. And that is both good and bad. Why is it good? It's good because we are a technologically advanced society with a reasonably intelligent population and the ability to communicate health warnings quickly and broadly. Why it is bad? It's bad because we are a technologically advanced society with the right, the ability and the will to move about freely and we do so frequently.
During the earlier ebola outbreaks the infected were not highly mobile and that kept the death limited to geographically small and isolated areas. This ebola outbreak is different because the infection was able to (and allowed to) spread beyond small villages to large cities such as Monrovia. It is because of this that the health experts have plotted charts with geometrically escalating rates of infection...large numbers of people packed into a relatively small space. Small villages are not terribly difficult to quarantine but large cities are virtually impossible to keep sealed. It was inevitable that the disease would get out of these cities and gain footholds in other places, linked by modern travel modes. This has now happened and just like that, it's here in the USA.
2) As I noted in a different ebola thread, we are counting on government workers to thread the needle here. From the beginning of this first reported incident a hospital worker (who could have passed for a government worker) screwed the pooch and sent a symptomatic (and therefore highly infectious) victim away instead of immediately putting him into isolation. And that was even after the victim told the hospital worker that he was from Liberia and that he had been in direct contact with infected and symptomatic victims just a short while ago. This is the same type of indifferent mentality that allowed hundreds of morons to starve and wallow in their own filth inside the New Orleans Superdome for days on end in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Imagine just how much more incompetence would have been demonstrated if actual government workers had been involved.
Have we dodged a bullet in this one particular case? Almost certainly not. It will be nothing short of miraculous if there are not subsequent infections from this one particular case. But the thing is...there is a very high likelihood (bordering on near certainty) that there will be other infected persons in other parts of the country who had nothing to do with this one particular case...in other words, if it happened once then it can most certainly happen again.
Each new case, whether connected to this particular case or not, is another opportunity for the disease to be spread far and wide.
3) Which brings me to my third and larger point. Whether you believe that this crisis is planned or unplanned it is, nevertheless, a crisis. Remember back to the hours and days that followed the moment when the planes struck the WTC and the Pentagon. First, on a federal level we literally crippled the air transportation system instantly and kept it that way for a week. Then the country went on a (totally justifiable, in my opinion) paranoia binge as regards terrorists and terrorism. No one could have known at the time that there would not be another successful terrorist attack of the same magnitude. But we had to behave as if there could be. The effect on the country and the economy was very real. Certainly something less than crippling but definitely a ripple that ran through everything and that left a mark.
So...if we have further ebola patients popping up here and there and if those patients manage to spin off a few (or worse, many) new infected persons I believe we can expect some or even a very significant portion of the country to come to a grinding halt. This is what I see coming. It will not take much for the country to be pushed to a tipping point in this situation. All it will take is a few more reported cases coupled with the to-be-expected social media visuals (people convulsing, vomiting and bleeding profusely) and you will begin to see people voluntarily going into isolation. The country cannot take a three to four week vacation en masse and not pay a terrible price. But this could very well happen.
And that's a best case scenario when you think about it. That is all assuming that we get a relatively few infected persons flying into the US from Africa. What if we get a few dozen or a few hundred ebola African imports generously sprinkled across the country? We are supposed to have something like 13,000 visa holders from the affected African countries and the WH has today literally promised that there will be no ban on travel from these areas into the US.
4) I am also personally concerned about other modes of infection. Specifically I am concerned about ebola being transmitted by way of insect bite. More specifically I worry about mosquitos. Mosquitos are a disease transmission mode for quite a few diseases and I do not see why ebola cannot be passed from person to person in this manner. We are told (and I think correctly) that ebola is not passed on by airborne means and that it is (highly) unlikely to mutate in that direction. But, we are not told (by the media or by official government announcement) that ebola can not be spread by insects. They don't say that it can or can't but instead avoid the topic completely. This omission by omission is unsettling to me. Why not just come out and talk about it?
Malaria, for instance, is transmitted by mosquitos. Unlike ebola, malaria is a protozoan parasite and it is introduced into a host by way of the insect's saliva. (Coincidentally, ebola is frequently mistaken for malaria during the onset of symptoms...headache, fever, vomiting) Ebola virus material is significantly smaller than the malaria parasite so it seems to me that there is zero reason why a few strands cannot be passed back and forth between a mosquito and a human during a feeding. If, for instance, one can become infected from a light scratch of an ebola contaminated hypodermic needle then I see no reason why a mosquito bite cannot perform a similar action.
Another thing that bothers me is the opportunity for a blood borne infection to spread through fleas. This is, if I remember correctly, how the plague was spread. Also of concern is the possibility of bed bugs spreading ebola. Bed bugs are blood sucking parasites. They have in recent years experienced a pretty big comeback due to the unavailability of effective pesticides (thanks, libs). Bed bugs are nearly impossible to eradicate and they can be found in not a few hotels in any number of cities both large and small. The wikipedia entry on bed bugs states that there is no evidence that they transmit diseases from one human to another but I remain skeptical.
So...these are just a few of the things that I am contemplating in this brave new world that President Dumbass has bestowed on us.
