"Vaccinating potential contacts is a tactic that has worked to contain outbreaks of other diseases, and would work with Ebola ... Yet we only vaccinated people who are at occupational risk of getting it [rabies], such as veterinarians."
In the case of the late Mr. Duncan in Dallas, that would have meant everyone exposed to him including the schoolchildren, every resident in the entire apartment complex, everyone who entered the apartment in question, the paramedics and law enforcement exposed to him, every worker at Texas Presbyterian who wanted a vaccination, etc.
Which didn't happen because the vaccines haven't finished testing, let alone entered production.
But this is clearly what should be done in future outbreaks and, eventually, will be done. It's just a question of how many Americans will unnecessarily die, and how much damage will be done to the economy, before then. We have the means of snuffing out Ebola when it comes here. Only the political will to do so is lacking.
That is assuming the vaccine works.. Which I am not sure that is a safe assumption at this point..
You wouldn’t need to vaccinate all of those people. I’m sure vaccination would be offered after a risk assessment, just as rabies vaccine/prophylaxis is offered now. So, not everyone in the apartment building would be offered vaccine, but Mr. Duncan’s family would receive it.
I will interject that it has now been 12 days since anyone was potentially exposed to Mr. Duncan, and no one has become ill. That’s good, since the average incubation is around 7 or 8 days. In 9 more days, his contacts are all officially out of danger.
The big problem with Ebola vaccines and drugs is that we cannot test them using the normal clinical trial protocols. No one is going to volunteer to be exposed to Ebola to see if the vaccine works, and there is no way such a trial can contain a placebo arm. Drugs can be tested on actual Ebola patients, but then there is an ethical problem with including a placebo arm to the trial.