I think our threat perception is wildly off.

One person in our entire nation contracted Ebola and he came from the place the infection is known to be. Even if it becomes as bad here as it is in Africa, a few thousand people might die. We aren't talking about nuclear holocaust here, which is probably more likely to happen and we haven't freaked out about that properly since I was a little kid. Calm down. The forum here is starting to resemble a 24 hour news channel with all the Ebola coverage, and that is a real bummer. We shouldn't emulate the kind of psychodrama we see on the MSM.

Well, the problem is there is no vaccine, cure or treatment that with 100% certainty works, so even though it at this moment might not be to bad, it could escalate very quickly if brought around the world.

It should be isolated to the place of origin and stay there to limit its spread.

a reply to: Nechash

We know how to stop Ebola’s further spread: thorough case finding, isolation of ill people, contacting people exposed to the ill person, and further isolation of contacts if they develop symptoms. The U.S. public health and medical systems have had prior experience with sporadic cases of diseases such as Ebola. In the past decade, the United States had 5 imported cases of Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) diseases similar to Ebola (1 Marburg, 4 Lassa). None resulted in any transmission in the United States.

CDC.Gov

The real key is if patient zero managed to transmit the virus and, if so, to whom. Ebola, in all of it's variations, is highly contagious. Exponential exposure rates are a potential. If that happens then it is a pandemic, local or otherwise.

The blessing here is that Ebola Zaire carries a substantially lower mortality rate than it's other strains and that, in the US, death by dehydration is a much more minimal risk than it is in the third world.

Having said all of that. Should it spread, even locally, the death toll would be enough to qualify as tragic. Thus it is concern and news worthy.

a reply to: Hefficide

I understand. It is a relatively new killer that strikes without reason or remorse and it creates a huge feeling of apprehension and a lack of control. Fear is more threatening to me than the disease itself is. The disease can only kill you. Fear can rob you of your effective creative powers, rendering you dead long before they put you into a casket. For me, the living, fear is the greatest threat and it is fear we should face head on.

a reply to: Nechash

As far as that goes, we are a culture fueled and controlled by fear. Every aspect of modern western society is entrenched in it. If it wasn't Ebola, it would be ISIL, or Putin, or a plague of strange gnats, or anything that the media could manipulate to keep us tuned into our cable news channel of choice - and to keep us just leery enough of one another to prevent us from uniting as a people ( nationally or globally ).

Of course the media is fear mongering, it is what they do. But their mongering does not imply that there is nothing to fear - only that there are those with motive and opportunity seeking to exploit it.

a reply to: Hefficide

We can change that. Our egos can be fueled by many things and then we can even transcend those too. Hope, ambition, romance, idealism, passion, desire, comfort, pleasure, etc are all much better motivators than fear even for a being which is totally unaware of their fundamental natures, and a society orbiting around these virtues will reverberate on a much higher plane of existence than the darkness we now subsist within. (Sorry for the flowery language, it is late and I'm on my last spark for the evening). We are truly extraordinary machines.

a reply to: Nechash

But Necash,,,, it's on the list. Look down there under E. There it is, A B C D E bola.
We've got to follow the list.

a reply to: Nechash

I like your thinking Sparky.

Thanks!

a reply to: Hefficide

Obviously panicking over Ebola is foolish since the government says so. This is a conspiracy site and I call conspiracy

Natural Ebola isn't this contagious, that's the scary part. The method of transmission they are taking about is based on the Ebola we've known about for decades which has been mostly confined to the Congo. Normal Ebola transmits just like they say but this isn't normal Ebola. I say bioweapon (Soros/gates kenema Ebola research lab) but perhaps it's a natural mutation.

The real suspiciousness of this unprecedented outbreak is in where it is occurring. The Ebola we're taking about is the Zaire strain which has never occurred outside of Congo (aka Zaire) or Gabon, a close neighbor. Every outbreak was limited to these two nations. There is one going on right now in Congo but that gets no press because it's business as usual.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

Secondly and far more conspiracy style the supposed patient zero was traced to a 2 year old treated in a city called Gueckedou in Guinea, a city of 200,000 located right by where Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia's borders meet (like the 4 corners in the US). It's also only one hundred or so miles from Kenema where America has its Ebola research lab. The area between the two cities is very densely populated and not far from Monrovia, the densest population center in the area,where the outbreak is currently the worst.

Liberia and Sierra Leona are both nations with deep roots of American influence, having been founded by former American slaves. Not only does America have sufficient reach and control in this area to obfuscate an intentional or accidental pandemic which started very close to their weapons lab, but it makes sense based on standard conspiracy theory viewpoints. It would be the world's greatest # you irony if the civilaztion ending plague started by rich white men began in the backyard of their historic slaves, who they used as patsies. America clearly doesn't care about these countries at all so why would the NWO?

Only time will tell if this is same old same old nutjob conspiracy or reality but we can all clearly tell this is way more dangerous than SARS or swine flu. I was the first to call BS on those panics. Ebola just doesn't act like this historically (it's not like this is some new unknown disease, we've known about it and studied it for about thirty or forty years, hell I read about it for summer reading in the 90's) and there's too many suspicious and shady American connections involved.

www.npr.org...

a reply to: Mianeye

There are no cures for ANY disease, which always work, without fail.

Human bodies contain unique biochemistries, each of us is different in this regard. Some of these differences can cause certain drugs and antivirals or antibiotics to fail to operate in the normal fashion, so there are no one hundred percent curable diseases, and there are no one hundred percent effective treatments. For anything. Period.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I know, thats why i mentioned vaccine and treatment, a cure would be to remove the virus completely never to be seen again, not that that is ever going to happen, but still.

But with ebola the fear is there is no vaccine to prevent it from spreading and when it's spread there is no treatment at the moment or more like enough of what they might have, if it gets a foothold it could become a very serious problem.

I'm not getting worried 'til I see thousands of cases in the US. 'til then, I live in denial. Thanks Africa! Oh, and thanks to Mexico for H1N1(I think).