Would you fly on Ebola Airline?

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

I have business trips in the next month to Lisbon, Paris, Dublin, London, Rome, Milan, and Venice. After our corporate travel office made the air bookings, my staff member who is travelling with me and I went over everything with an eye to airlines and other potential danger points for ebola. Fortunately we are not going through Brussels on any connections or flying on Brussels airlines for any legs, but my staff member was a bit nervous about London and Paris due to all the connecting traffic through there, and since we make our own hotel reservations, I agreed that we would not get hotel rooms near either of those airports (even though we have very early flights out) but stay in the city center instead.

I'm thinking of going on a cruise next month.
It's on one of those mega mega ships.
Are they going to do complete background checks on everyone?
This is going to get ridiculous. :roll eyes:

Meanwhile in the hospitals where this should be taken more serious,
the administrators are not preparing for this like they should.
Maybe having some sort of mobile unit outside the hospital
might make more sense to treat these patients instead of
infecting the whole place. We were doing that for chemical and
radioactive patients when I worked there, not sure why they aren't
thinking along these lines unless they are just gonna wing it.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

The way to solve the Ebola "epidemic" in the USA is obvious. Since the only known cases have originated in Dallas, we should be stopping all air travel in & out of Texas. Congress should also immediately approve funding for building a $14 gazillian concrete block wall topped by barbed wire to be built on the borders of Texas to close the "porous" border so no Ebola carrying refugees can sneak across. Problem solved.

I gather that you disagree with this World Health Organization doctor who says we are not doing enough at our borders to keep Ebola out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...travelers.html

. . . and I guess you also disagree with the US Marine general commanding the US Southern Command on the potential Ebola threat on the southern border:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...rder/?page=all

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

I gather that you disagree with this World Health Organization doctor who says we are not doing enough at our borders to keep Ebola out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...travelers.html

. . . and I guess you also disagree with the US Marine general commanding the US Southern Command on the potential Ebola threat on the southern border:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...rder/?page=all

On the contrary...there is a definite threat of the spread of Ebola and the most immediate threat is from the state of Texas. If we need to stop Ebola at borders, then the Texas border would be a good start.

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

A full medical exam including screening for Ebola is required to obtain a visa to enter the US from Liberia. There is also a hefty fee. I don't know what European countries require but it looks to me like the US is doing a pretty good job restricting travel from the Ebola hot spot to the US.http://monrovia.usembassy.gov/nonimmigrant_visas.html

I understand people's concern when flying internationally but within the US I would only hesitate flying into or out of Dallas, a major hub in the west. After 9/11 the panic over terrorists on flights was a huge economic hit to the airlines & tourism. This media driven Ebola panic, fostered further by a political agenda, could be even worse. The so-called "best healthcare system in the world" failed miserably in Dallas. I see absolutely no reason to panic about Ebola since I tend to trust actual medical experts more than some talking head on the TV.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

What you do not grasp is that not everyone jumps on a plane immediately after their visa is issued. Some may wait days, some weeks, and some months. In that time, they can catch Ebola. What needs to happen is to cancel all visas and stop travel from those countries, like Saudi Arabia did when it cancelled visas issued from the infected countries for the Hajji this year (over 7,000 of them). Alternatively, travellers from those countries should have to undergo a quarantine for at least 21 days (actually some experts now say 41, I see) at their own expense, on arrival, and I mean a locked down quarantine, not one where they can step out to a soup restaurant or some other place. Saudi Arabia protects its citizens, while the US leaves ours in harms way.

Europe ought to be doing the same thing.

Patient Zero in Dallas, Duncan from Liberia, is a case in point to why visas should be cancelled or mandatory quarantine instituted. He obtained his visa, passing the ebola screen since he did not have it yet, then quit his job in preparation to come to the US, and then took a neighbor with ebola to the hospital where he got it himself. Then using his visa obtained before he got the ebola, he got on the plane and came to Dallas. Things like that should simply not be allowed to happen if the American people are to be protected.

And you would trust the CDC after they have royally bungled handling ebola to this point, like telling that nurse it was okay to fly?

A full medical exam including screening for Ebola is required to obtain a visa to enter the US from Liberia. There is also a hefty fee. I don't know what European countries require but it looks to me like the US is doing a pretty good job restricting travel from the Ebola hot spot to the US.http://monrovia.usembassy.gov/nonimmigrant_visas.html

I understand people's concern when flying internationally but within the US I would only hesitate flying into or out of Dallas, a major hub in the west. After 9/11 the panic over terrorists on flights was a huge economic hit to the airlines & tourism. This media driven Ebola panic, fostered further by a political agenda, could be even worse. The so-called "best healthcare system in the world" failed miserably in Dallas. I see absolutely no reason to panic about Ebola since I tend to trust actual medical experts more than some talking head on the TV.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

It appears that most, if not all, of the uninfected African countries in that part of west Africa have closed their land borders with the infected countries.

Most European airlines have cancelled flights there, and the one international carrier that is most curious is Korean Airlines, which cancelled its flights to Kenya due to ebola, even though Kenya is in East Africa, not West Africa, and thus a long, long way from the ebola outbreak.

[Sydney Contributor - Bronze Find all posts View Profile Close Sydney]

So much incompetence all round. Atrocious disregard for disease control and consideration of others for people to travel while they are possibly infected, especially the guy who flew to America after having contact with an infected person. It's like people who have the flu going to work or sick kids attending preschool or school - totally irresponsible.

[easyrider Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close easyrider]

It was said that " An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". This applies to most issues of safety, imo. In other words, there should be travel restrictions to the hot zones in Africa and a FEMA type facility used to treat ebola cases. I think the Gitmo Beach Resort would be a good place to set this up.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

As to ''experts'' botching things on ebola, it is not just our own blundering CDC, but now the UN's World Health Organization is admitting, at least internally, that it botched things on ebola:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...10-17-10-08-12

We need to err very much on the side of caution on this awful disease.

[easyrider Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close easyrider]

I agree that the "experts" did "botch" this up but I would add that ebola is now a political issue drawing in attitudes from the left and right as to how to use ebola as a political issue this November.

Now U.S. scientist Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease believes the current Ebola outbreak may be caused by an infection that spreads more easily than it did before.

Dr Jahrling explained that his team, who are working in the epicentre of the crisis in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, are seeing that the viral loads in Ebola patients are much higher than they are used to seeing.

He told Vox.com: 'We are using tests now that weren't using in the past, but there seems to be a belief that the virus load is higher in these patients [today] than what we have seen before. If true, that's a very different bug.

'I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running [tests]. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing.

The head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota – Dr. Michael Osterholm – is a prominent public health scientist and a nationally recognized biosecurity expert.

Dr. Osterholm just gave a talk shown on C-Span explaining that a top Ebola virologist – the Head of Special Pathogens at Canada’s health agency, Gary Kobinger – has found that the current strain of Ebola appears to be much worse than any strain seen before … and that the current virus may be more likely to spread through aerosols than strains which scientists have previously encountered.

Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.

“We just don’t have the data to exclude it,” said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.

Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government’s massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. “Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here.“

Its not a good idea to place US soldiers, who are getting only four weeks of training, to deal with ebola, imo. The protective gear that the troops will use are face masks and gloves. Where will the infected soldier end up ? Will they end up on base to infect other soldier ?

Troops from the 101st Airborne Division leading the military response to Ebola in West Africa will only need gloves and masks to protect themselves from the deadly virus, so said Gen. David Rodriguez at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday.

“They don’t need the whole suit – as such – because they’re not going to be in contact with any of the people,” the commander of U.S. troops in Africa said.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne will primarily be building hospitals, ultimately leading what could be a contingent of 4,000 American service members. They’ll be housed either in tent cities at military airfields or in Liberian Ministry of Defense facilities, Rodriguez said.

Soldiers’ health will be monitored through surveys and taking their temperature on their way in and out of camps. If a service member does get sick, Rodriguez said they will be flown home immediately for treatment.

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

So....why aren't there big headlines about the 43 people who were in close contact with Duncan (the only Ebola patient who died in the US) who have now been released from quarantine because they have no symptoms & test Ebola free? Why are there no headlines screaming in BOLD print that all 70 of the healthcare workers at the Dallas hospital who are in quarantine have not shown any signs of contagion? Why is the media continuing to broadcast fear and point fingers at government instead of the the invisible hand of the free market healthcare system in Dallas that obviously screwed the 2 employees who got the virus by counting beans instead of providing adequate protection & training for viral diseases? Politics, people. Simple politics. There is no Ebola crises in America. We are not being overrun by people fleeing a tiny spot in the enormous continent of Africa. Maybe if there was less panic and more compassion for those who are actually experiencing this health crisis, Ebola could be stopped at the source.

[easyrider Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close easyrider]

I doubt that ebola will be stopped at its source in the West African hot zones. The people in these hot zones, for the most part anyway, are not well educated and this causes fear or suspicion that makes it very hard to treat any disease.

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

fear or suspicion that makes it very hard to treat any disease.

Sounds like what is happening in the US. With help from the wealthiest nation on earth with the best healthcare system (Ha. ha. ha) we could do it. But those people are not our concern. They have no oil.

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

Why is no one talking about the Oklahoma Border Crisis? Diseased foreigners (Texans) are poised just south of the Red River, ready to invade.

Maybe James O'Keefe could wank about that. Put on a cowboy hat and show how easy it is to get in.

[barndweller Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close barndweller]

So Nigeria has held the line on Ebola. Maybe we should copy what they have done. Oh wait...that would mean spending money on training & equipment. That pesky debt gets in the way. What can we cut to make it up. Let's see, how about cut medicaid for poor folks who are sick? And maybe some food programs for undernourished kids. Yeah, that's the ticket.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...emain-vigilant