There are times when I wonder if this gets more air-play than it should simply because budgets are coming up, and African interests want to make sure they get greater funding.
I do recognize a threat of expanded infection. I still have to admit that I am leery of this being portrayed as much more dangerous than it really is.
How are the people in the U. S. doing, that are being treated? If they’re doing good, does that mean we can expect infected people in the U. S. to have a good mortality rate?
The working hypothesis is that Western care in Western facilities will reduce the mortality rate. This may or may not be true.
Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol are still alive at Emory (AFAIK). Presumably they are getting unusually excellent care, but I understand that all the ZMapp that has been produced is gone.
The biggest problem I foresee is discussed here. We do not have the capacity (in the whole US and Western Europe) to handle more than a few patients at the level that the Emory patients are being cared for. While actual Ebola cases will not be common, febrile arrivals from West Africa are not at all uncommon and they will need to be isolated, and HCWs protected, until Ebola testing is completed.
If anything crashes the system, it will be our inability to do that.
That depends on how many there are, for starters. According to an earlier article, there are 22 beds in facilities rated to take care of patients with this biohazard level of pathogen in the country (USA).