With Phone Calls and Persistence, Tracking Travelers at Risk for Ebola

The New York Times /MSN ^ | Anemona HARTOCOLLIS

[wtd]

On the 12th floor of a glass tower at the city health department’s headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, workers huddle like telemarketers at banks of 30 computers, doggedly calling one telephone number after another.

Darryl Wong, a French-speaking operator, was trying to reach a West African man who had left New York several days before and had not returned when he said he would.

(Snip)

Two-thirds of the 289 people being tracked recently came to New York City from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three hardest-hit countries; the rest are workers who have been involved in the care of Dr. Craig Spencer, the city’s first Ebola patient, who was released from Bellevue Hospital Center on Tuesday. The travelers are not under quarantine because they said they did not have contact with Ebola patients; in fact, almost no one in the United States is now under quarantine.

[null and void]

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your......

(Since all records of obama's past were lost in a tragic boating accident and fire, no one can be certain that the guy in the red circle isn't him...)

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...