And you just stated in response to Flamberge:
Contact with contaminated surfaces is insidious and almost impossible to avoid. If a virus can survive for a few hours while encapsulated in a fomite or droplet, it can find a new host."Fomites become a problem when those infected with Ebola do not go to the hospital. People are avoiding the hospital--which could explain (at least in part) why this outbreak keeps on going."
You just admitted that buildings can be contaminated by Ebola! People are at risk of contracting Ebola by entering Ebola-contaminated buildings, which can be grocery stores. I am an old Cold War civil defense guy and fully understand the implications of that.
The quarantine measures necessary to contain a significant Ebola outbreak in the U.S., absent widespread availability of an effective vaccine and/or treatment, will entail cessation of economic activity in the affected areas. This will have vast economic and financial effects. There will also be widespread panic which will have similar effects outside the affected areas.
This means likely economic and financial apocalypse countrywide should there be a significant Ebola outbreak in this country. Even in the absence of demographically significant fatalities.
That I understand too. Bill Quick has outlined a very possible scenario for such a financial apocalypse in the 2/3 of the U.S. not devastated by the fictional EMP pulse in his novel, _Lightning Fall_.
This has been my concern in an urban environment: Contaminated common contact surfaces, from door handles to handrails, shopping carts, park benches, ATM machines, any other surface multiple people are likely to contact in a relatively short period of time has tremendous potential to be a vector.
I didn't "admit" anything! I am trying to give the most accurate information I have, which is really difficult since there is so much we do not know about Ebola. We don't know how long it can survive on a surface, how long it can survive in air if artificially aerosolized (artificial, because it doesn't naturally aerosolize from human victims), how long it persists in certain bodily fluids after infection clears. We are hampered in learning these things because this virus is too danged dangerous for anyone who has not been properly trained to work with, and it takes months to learn how to work in a spacesuit.
We are extremely fortunate in that Ebola does not spread through aerosols. If it did, it would be worldwide pandemic by now. It does not spread easily. It will not become a pandemic. Thank God for that.
If we get an outbreak here, I plan on staying home for at least a year.