[Amendment10]

It would be interesting to know how long this situation concerning people coming from ebola-striken countries has existed. Ebola may not be as contageous as we are inclined to think. (But better to overreact than to be sorry.)

• FR: Report: Ebola Virus Spread Because of Lax Quarantine Enforcement

• FR: No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola?

[Sherman Logan]

Quite right.

It’s been working away in Africa, under conditions incredibly suitable to transmission, and has still not quite got to 10,000 cases in 10 months.

Nigeria has apparently managed to stop an outbreak in its tracks.

The taxi driver who drove Duncan and the pregnant girl around is giving interviews.

The guys who do the mass burials of the corpses are on strike for higher pay instead of being dead.

These are not the characteristics of a wildly contagious disease. If you get it, it’s horrible and deadly. But it is perfectly obvious it just doesn’t spread that easily. Or it already would have and there would be tens of millions of cases, not <10,000.

[Smokin' Joe]

In previous outbreaks, those affected were rural villagers for the most part. Few of them could afford airfare elsewhere, and as a rule, the outbreaks died in the communities or within short distance of the communities they started in.

This outbreak is unprecedented in a couple of ways: It is far, far larger.

It is in urban areas, and not limited to small rural communities/villages.

By virtue of the latter, the outbreak has affected people of means and status who can afford to travel internationally.