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Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old doctor, is the first person found to have Ebola in New York City. Since Spencer was rushed to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital on Thursday, immediately after showing symptoms, health officials have been retracing his steps and working to identify anyone the patient may have come into contact with since returning to the United States from Guinea on Oct. 17. As a member of Doctors Without Borders, Spencer had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, one of the three West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola epidemic. At a news conference on Thursday night, Mayor Bill de...

"They are both registered Democrats with a history of working in public health. Both Spencer and Dixon are professional do gooders according to their LinkedIn and professional websites. Spencer boasts a degree from Columbia’s University Mailman School of Public Health, according to his since deleted LinkedIn page. So why did health care professionals decide to go bowling just days after Spencer returned from Ebola-infected Guinea?"

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com, One of the most dangerous philosophical contentions even amongst liberty movement activists is the conundrum of government force and prevention during times of imminent pandemic. All of us at one time or another have had this debate. If a legitimate viral threat existed and threatened to infect and kill millions of Americans, is it then acceptable for the government to step in, remove civil liberties, enforce quarantines, and stop people from spreading the disease? After all, during a viral event, the decisions of each individual can truly have a positive or negative effect on...

At least 4,877 people have died in the world's worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, and at least 9,936 cases of the disease had been recorded as of Oct. 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, but the true toll may be three times as much. The WHO has said real numbers of cases are believed to be much higher than reported: by a factor of 1.5 in Guinea, 2 in Sierra Leone and 2.5 in Liberia, while the death rate is thought to be about 70 percent of all cases. That would suggest a toll of almost 15,000.

I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference. Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops. Thank You all for you participation.

The empirical evidence of an airborne Ebola Strain is overwhelming Hat Tip GWP - Patrick Sawyer was the American businessman, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, then collapsed after he got off a plane to Nigeria and died July 25. He was the first patient in Nigeria with the Ebola virus. The Nigerian authorities have refused to release the names of other passengers on the plane with Mr. Sawyer, or notify the media of their status.

U.S. Army warns of potential 'airborne' Ebola Virus could be transmitted by means other than contact NEW YORK – While Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization officials continue to insist Ebola cannot be transmitted by air from one person to another, an Army manual clearly warns the virus could be an airborne threat in certain circumstances. The handbook published by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, USAMRID, titled “USAMRID’s Medical Management of Biological Casualties Handbook,” is now in its seventh edition. The most recent edition was published in 2011, with more than 100,000 copies distributed...

Kevin LoriaOctober 6, 2014 The idea that Ebola could go airborne is terrifying. Once you are infected, few diseases are more likely to kill you — and death by hemorrhagic fever, diarrhea and vomiting often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure, sounds particularly awful. At present it's hard to get infected — healthcare workers and family members caring for victims are at highest risk — but that would change if the virus were to mutate so that it could be transmitted through the air while keeping its present lethality. That's a nightmare scenario. But it's more the stuff of bad...

Bloomberg - link and title only.

<p>Muslim burial practices are being blamed for the spread of Ebola.</p> <p>Remains of Secretary General of The Nigeria Supreme General for Islamic Affairs and Seriki of Egbaland, Alhaji Lateeef Adegbite at his burial in 2012.</p> <p>Islam requires family members to personally wash the corpses of loved ones from head to toe. This practise is putting more Africans at risk to catch the disease that is spread by body fluids.</p>

So does anyone doubt that if President Obama had appointed a medical expert to become the Ebola "czar" to manage the Ebola virus crisis, many Republicans would have criticized him for not appointing someone with experience in crisis management, media and political communications? Or if the president had appointed someone with those media/political skills, they would have criticized him for not appointing a medical expert? Get the drift? Ron Klain, whom I have known for over 20 years, is the right choice at the right time to bring order, management, discipline, media and political communications skills to helping the American...

What we can learn from the boot leather, organization and quick response times that stopped Ebola from spreading in this African nation …………… …….the rapid action after Nigeria's index patient was diagnosed helped keep the outbreak from spreading more widely. "In contrast the initial outbreak in Guinea remained undetected for several weeks," they wrote. "This detection delay facilitated the transnational spread of the virus to Sierra Leone and Liberia while difficulties and at times inability to track and contain infectious individuals compounded the situation and resulted in an as yet uncontrolled epidemic in these countries."

Leadership: In a telephone press briefing, the CDC director repeated that you can't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but infected or exposed people should avoid public transit because they might transmit it. Huh? During the Wednesday conference call with reporters, Centers for Disease Control director Tom Frieden was asked if he or anyone else at the CDC had vetted a videotaped message posted on U.S. embassy websites that showed President Obama saying you couldn't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, while the CDC's own guidelines advised those with symptoms or a...

Public Health: The man whose one job is to safeguard America's health has failed, saying that we must change our responses to Ebola after a Dallas health care worker becomes infected despite the rules he championed. After 26-year-old Dallas health care worker Nina Pham became the first person to contract Ebola on U.S. soil, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said during a press conference that (we) "have to rethink the way we address Ebola control." Yes, we do. Pham's infection, just as Thomas E. Duncan's death in Dallas after a multistop trip from Liberia,...

As a rule, one should not panic at whatever crisis has momentarily fixed the attention of cable news producers. But the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has migrated to both Europe and America, may be the exception that proves the rule. There are at least six reasons that a controlled, informed panic might be in order. (1) Start with what we know, and don’t know, about the virus. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other government agencies claim that contracting Ebola is relatively difficult because the virus is only transmittable by direct contact with bodily fluids...

During my years of medical training, back in the good old days, my professors hammered one very important aspect of medicine into our heads over and over: During a medical crisis, someone has to be in charge. There cannot be 20 voices in the room rendering opinions when somebody’s life is at stake. A prime example is when there is a code blue in a hospital setting where a patient is having a heart attack; there’s always somebody running the code, directing the staff with specific instructions on how to bring the patient back. You could take that same example...

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas lashed back Thursday at nurses' allegations that it had put workers at risk with shoddy protection policies and sloppy handling of waste while treating a Liberian man who died of the Ebola virus. [Snip] The hospital's response -- its second in two days -- in part shifted responsibility to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to the protocols the agency issued this summer to guide the handling of a patient infected by the virus, which is thought to have killed more than 4,400 people in West Africa. The hospital said the protocols...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus. However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth...

Complete Headline:Ebola-stricken nurse Amber Vinson may have had symptoms almost a week ago - BEFORE she left Dallas for Ohio, went bridesmaid dress shopping, and flew BACK to Texas Ebola-stricken nurse Amber Vinson may have been showing symptoms of the deadly virus as early as last Friday - before she flew to Ohio for the weekend and then back to Texas. The CDC made the shocking announcement on Thursday, after Miss Vinson was revealed as the second medical worker in Dallas to contract Ebola from the U.S.'s 'patient zero' Thomas Duncan. On October 10, Miss Vinson, 29, may have had...