[DannyTN]

"Quarantines don't really work with ebola. The most important thing is to isolate the sick and especially the dead. That is a relatively small number of people in any group. Without that it spreads by sewage, by dogs, bats, rats, etc. The next step is obvious, it escapes the quarantine.

The best thing to do is hire lots of locals, wrap them in space suits and comb the cities and countryside for the virus.

They should do both. I agree with the combing, as that would help stop the spread in the affected community which would save lives and reduce the length of the quarantine.

But they should absolutely quarantine. There is no rationale for allowing this to spread further than it has.

Combing by itself is only going to catch people already showing symptoms and it's going to miss some of them. So you need a quarantine to stop the spread out of the affected areas.

And while they do think it's spread by bats. It requires a bat bite which is rare. I'm not sure that there is evidence that it's spread by dogs and rats. The Congo cases were spread by eating infected game and I wonder if that game had been in the infected areas.

But they have gotten this under control before. Clearly this one is more contagious than what they have dealt with before and they need to step up the game to control it.

An effective quarantine though is going to require humanitarian aid to these areas. Otherwise they are going to break the quarantine in search of food.

[palmer]

A quicker and better virus test would be great, I'm not sure if that is in the works. The quarantine of various areas is difficult to impossible. The peninsula in or next to Monrovia was a walk in the park compared to areas not surround by water. They dropped it wisely IMO. The problem is not just bringing in quantities of food (which they don't really have), but supplies of all sorts. Trade is extremely important and black markets will spring up if trade is restricted. Then the TP costs $100 a roll, then ebola-guy sneaks through the barrier to go get more to sell.

Perhaps the best compromise I can think of is national borders since they are (supposedly) protected. That way we can keep most countries entirely free and focus our resources on the rest. We would have to get the health care people in and out and a system to air-drop supplies or a keep a port sanitized.