I do not understand.
Ebola is highly contagious. We do not understand it well enough to develop an anti-virus for it. Arguments persist about the methods of transmission and the period at which it becomes contagious.
Yet we have health care professionals that know that they have been in direct contact with the virus who go out in public before the 21 day incubation period that the CDC is telling us about has passed. Now the World Health Organization is telling us that they think the incubation period is 42 days.
The latest case is that of a physician who travelled to west Africa to help with the crisis. Good for him.
When he returned to the United States he did not show his fellow citizens the respect that I would expect. He has told us that he rode the public subway in the city of New York. He also went to a bowling alley and at least one restaurant. He feels he was symptom free at the times.
Now he has Ebola.
Now businesses in New York will suffer economic disasters. People have been exposed needlessly.
Why wouldn’t a highly trained medical professional like this doctor quarantine himself voluntarily until the currently understood incubation period passed?
Then again why haven’t the authorities mandated quarantine for these people?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Looks to me as if you have answered your own questions. Apparently, there is no definitive answer out there as to just how long the incubation period might be.
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Early in our country’s history we gave infected blankets to the native population in an effort to wipe out whole tribes. Knowingly traveling about populated areas with an infectious disease should be considered a crime or an act of terrorism. That’s my dos centavos.
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Which just goes to prove that our own values leave a lot to be desired.
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Q: Then again why haven’t the Authority in the White House ban people in South Africa from coming here? A: Because President Obola is just as nuts as his parents and at least one set of his grandparents. It’s a shame that evolution is nothing more than junk science. l mean l’m tired of our weak, slow bodies that are susceptible to many diseases and brains just “intelligent” enough to make us realize just how crappy we have it.
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When all else fails, attack Obama personally. Meanwhile, we have no surgeon general because Obama’s opponents have been blocking Obama’s nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy since late last year. It was sort of funny when one Republican congressmen said publicly this week that the Surgeon General should be leading the ebola response. The congressman didn’t even know that the position is vacant.
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The Ebola outbreak is not in South Africa,which is a country, not a continent. If you are going to post attack messages, I suggest you at least take the time to read enough to have correct information.
The webmaster should delete this message.
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In veterinary medicine, when there is a disease outbreak, the government mandates cessation of all travel in and out of the disease outbreak area. These quarantine measures are the basics of epidemiology, yet CDC and the White House have ignored these basic measures when it comes to human Ebola Virus. This is sheer negligence of our nation’s health and our leadership needs to be held accountable. We are seeing total incompetence running our nation.
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When you say “cessation of all travel,” are you suggesting that no medical or other aid personnel, including the US military now building support clinics, should be allowed to travel to any area where there is a disease outbreak? And no infected person, including, say, a US missionary or doctor, should be brought to the US to be treated? What kind of cruelty is that?
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So…we let them just die?
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The WHO site says that 98% of all cases had an incubation period of 2 to 21 days. They use the 42 day period to determine the maximum period of “infection-free days” before declaring an outbreak over. Unlike the flu (which has killed millions over the decades), this virus only spreads through direct contact with body fluids, so simply being on the subway with someone who has come from the affected countries does not constitute infection. Are you suggesting that the federal government should organize teams to enforce quarantine for 42 days, including bringing food to the quarantined person who is not able to shop for supplies? When the troops return to Ft. Bliss, they must be kept in quarantine for 42 days, somewhere away from their families?
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There is an interesting issue that has not been acknowledged by those proposing a total cessation of travel from West Africa to the U.S. Are they advocating leaving ebola-free U.S. citizens stranded in Africa? That is what would happen if flights are cancelled altogether.
Also, most travel visas have an expiration date. What would happen to a U.S. citizen in Africa after their visa has expired if they are unable to travel back to the U.S.? I could envision African authorities placing those U.S. citizens in detention centers.
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Remember the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic? There were allegations that the WHO had conspired with the big pharma who manufactured the H1N1 vaccine to scare the world with a “campaign of panic”. Does anybody remember how many vaccines our health department had to throw away?
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Apparently some local RNs have a very different perspective on local ebola readiness than what had been represented in the local media by El Paso City Health, local Hospitals, and City Council.
In short El Paso is screwed by politics again.
US Nurses On Ebola: ‘We’ve Been Lied To’
http://www.businessinsider.com/nurses-say-us-not-ready-for-ebola-2014-10
Far from comprehensive Ebola training, most nurses are simply getting emails with links to the CDC website or flyers with basic information about the disease typed in bullet points, registered nurse Yadira Cabrera, who works at a hospital in El Paso, told reporters on Wednesday.
“Hospitals say they are ready, but my experience is they are not,” Cabrera said. “Nurses at my hospital are reporting a very different story. We received a 10-minute training on Ebola.”
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