Ignorance or Arrogance?

English: Ebola virus virion. Created by CDC microbiologist Cynthia Goldsmith, this colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why are US health officials and medical professionals not taking ebola more seriously?  What genius at the CDC advised the Dallas nurse, who had treated the original ebola patient and was reporting a fever, that she could fly to see her family in Cleveland?  

Now some 130 passengers on that plane are being monitored, along with all the family, friends and healthcare providers who had contact with the original victim from West Africa.

What does this say to me?  That if ebola ever mutates from a fluid-transmission mode of reproduction to an airborne virus, we are thoroughly f****d.  Our "experts" have about as much chance of containing it as I have of becoming a rock star.

Want a picture of what a spreading plague looks like.  I'm currently reading "The Ghost Map" (2006) by Steven Johnson… the story of the London cholera epidemic of 1854.  We humans knew a lot less then.  But are we putting our 160 years of subsequent knowledge to good use now?  It sure doesn't look like it down in Dallas or at the CDC in Atlanta.

I heard on the radio this morning that Obama has cancelled travel plans to stay in DC and focus on the ebola issue.  Good luck… and I mean it.

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