Sure. So with the very real chance that Ebola could show up here any time how many doctors are fully suiting up to examine each and every patient who comes in with flu-like symptoms? The hard truth is that most medical professionals have never had to fully suitup for anything because the worst that could happen is that they pick up a cold or a flu. With Ebola, the worst that can happen is they die.
This would probably suffice for even Ebola, but, if not, the menace of a general outbreak would swiftly lead to stronger measures such as the cancellation of public events and suspension of non-essential work, shopping, and travel
Under penalty of what? I'm going to bet that the first time someone tells the residents of Ferguson (or any other black community) that they have to "stay home" some politician is going to pull the race card. This might have once worked in a United States where people respected law, order and the government. But our "leaders" have been very diligent to insure that hardly anyone holds these values.
An outbreak of Ebola in a developed country would lead to face masks, gloves, and the general spraying of disinfectant becoming routine in public places. In contrast, in Africa, poverty, corruption, theft, and the shambolic nature of its societies commonly make it impossible for even medical personnel who treat Ebola to have the benefit of containment garments and disinfectants.
Again I think you have an idealized version of the US in your head...possibly based on where you live. Look at the reaction of certain people to Katrina. Look at inner cities. Look at any large city for that matter. Many of the residents and officials are just as ignorant, just as corrupt, just as dishonest. If this disease takes hold in a black community you can bet that it's going to be billed as a racist plot by whitey. One of the problems in Africa was that many thought that Ebola was fake...that they were really just trying to get blood from people. Have large groups of people in this country ever been convinced of something that isn't true? Trayvon Martin? Saint Mike?
In a developed country that suffered an Ebola outbreak, medical care for the disease would improve rapidly, with new treatments and vaccines fast tracked into use. The result would almost certainly be the rapid and permanent containment of any such Ebola outbreak, just as bird flu and SARS were contained despite the dire predictions that attached to them.
Bird flu does not and cannot spread from person to person. You could only get it from direct contact with an infected bird. SARS isn't news anymore but it really wasn't contained. It ripped through several countries. And death from it was primarily in old people. There are and were people in the United States that have likely had SARs and just chalked it up to a bad flu or cold. How many times has something been "going around".
Ebola aren't like these. The Zaire strain has an up to 90% kill rate. Young, old, doesn't matter. It spreads person to person relatively easily in almost the same way SARS does.
In sum, Ebola is cause for concern and excitement in the US and other developed countries but is extremely unlikely to generate more than a relatively small number of cases.
Based on what? That's exactly what they said about it in Africa. Until is showed up in populous places. Once it shows up in a population all theories and practices about containment become kind of cute. Part of the effort is to trace back the activities of victims to see who they might have infected. This works up to a certain point. But it doesn't take much to overwhelm whomever's "job" it is to do this. Take any one hundred people in a mobile society like the United States and try to compile of list of everyone they might have come into contact with in the past week. Did anyone of them go to sporting event? Get on the subway?
Have you read "The Hot Zone"? It's not fiction. It is a detailed account of the major ebola outbreaks up until the mid 90's. Read it free here.
Ebola is the worst nightmare of virologists. Read it and see why.
In the US and other developed countries, a tangible and immediate threat of Ebola infection would quickly induce medical professionals to become acquainted with and to follow the necessary protocols. Similarly, the public would voluntarily avoid going out from their homes for non-essential tasks.
The authorities would avoid confrontations with and discontent by the public by turning a medical crisis into an enjoyable stay at home holiday. Simple measures would work the trick: delivering free food and household supplies door to door using the National Guard; upgrading and providing free cable; putting first run movies on broadcast and cable; shutting down most gas stations and common carriers; and closing schools and nonessential forms of employment while providing for continued salary and wages.
Several weeks of that would break the chain of transmission and would permit existing Ebola cases to be identified, isolated, and treated. Thanks for the link to "The Hot Zone."
I read it. I must say, that more than one article I’ve read over the last month has quoted virologists who have worked in Level 4 labs, or those who have treated patients to acknowledge that Ebola sdares the crap out of them.
Yet we have this group of people who claim that it could not possibly ever get out of hand here.
They may be right, but I’d feel better if they were worried, and explained to all of us dummies what we should do to prepare, if a worst case scenario breaks out even if they think such is not possible.