the most dangerous path of transmission is health officials lying in an attempt to prevent panic

americanthinker |   The public has been misinformed regarding human-to-human transmission of Ebola. Assurances that Ebola can be transmitted only through direct contact with bodily fluids need to be seriously scrutinized in the wake of the West Africa outbreak.

The Canadian Health Department states that airborne transmission of Ebola is strongly suspected and the CDC admits that Ebola can be transmitted in situations where there is no physical contact between people, i.e.: via direct airborne inhalation into the lungs or into the eyes, or via contact with airborne fomites which adhere to nearby surfaces. That helps explain why 81 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have died in West Africa to date. These courageous healthcare providers use careful CDC-level barrier precautions such as gowns, gloves, and head cover, but it appears they have inadequate respiratory and eye protection. Dr. Michael V. Callahan, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has worked in Africa during Ebola outbreaks said that minimum CDC level precautions

“led to the infection of my nurses and physician co-workers who came in contact with body fluids.”

Currently the CDC advises healthcare workers to use goggles and simple face masks for respiratory and eye protection, and a fitted N-95 mask during aerosol-generating medical procedures. Since so many doctors and nurses are dying in West Africa, it is clear that this level of protection is inadequate. Full face respirators with P-100 (HEPA) replacement filters would provide greater airway and eye protection, and I believe this would save the lives of many doctors, nurses, and others who come into close contact with, or in proximity to, Ebola victims.

The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases conducted a monkey to monkey Ebola study in December 1995, published in The Lancet, Vol. 346. (Here is a link to the abstract, but the entire article must be purchased.) Several Rhesus monkeys were infected with Zaire Ebola by intramuscular injection while three control Rhesus monkeys were kept in cages separated 10 feet from the infected monkeys. All of the injected monkeys died of Ebola by day 13 and 2 out of 3 control monkeys died of Ebola by 8 days after that. The authors of this study concluded that:

"The exact mode of transmission to the control monkeys cannot be absolutely determined, although the pattern of pulmonary antigen staining in one of the control monkeys was virtually identical to that reported in experimental Ebola virus aerosol infection in rhesus monkeys, suggesting airborne transmission of the disease via infectious droplets... Fomite or contact droplet transmission of the virus between cages was considered unlikely. Standard procedures in our BL4 containment laboratories have always been successful in the prevention of transmission of Ebola or Marburg virus to uninflected animals. Thus, pulmonary, nasopharyngeal, oral, or conjunctival exposure to airborne droplets of the virus had to be considered as the most likely mode of infection... Our present findings emphasize the advisability of at-risk personnel employing precautions to safeguard against ocular, oral, and nasopharyngeal exposure to the virus."

Another NHP to NHP (monkey-to-monkey) study was published in July of this year. Rhesus monkeys were infected with Ebola via intramuscular injection and they were terminated on day 6 after becoming unresponsive, but without developing vomiting, diarrhea, or apparent respiratory illness. Ebola virus was detected in their blood, and genetic fragments of Ebola were found in their nose, mouth, and rectum, but no intact infectious Ebola virus was found. 

Control Cynomolgus monkeys were caged 1 foot away from the infected Rhesus monkeys but did not become infected with Ebola. This experiment is not a helpful comparison in human to human Ebola infections which are characterized by GI (vomiting & diarrhea) and respiratory (cough and expectoration of sputum) shedding of the intact infectious virus. The monkeys in this year’s study simply died too fast, not allowing time for them to shed infectious Ebola particles. It goes without saying that monkeys which do not shed infectious Ebola particles cannot transmit Ebola to other monkeys. Had this year’s rhesus monkeys been infected by the nasal route, as was the case in a pig-to-monkey experiment in 2012, or if they had lived up to 13 days as in the 1995 study, allowing time for intact infectious Ebola virus to appear, and thus more closely matching human Ebola disease, then we may well have seen monkey-to-monkey airborne transmission of Ebola. The authors of this study concluded that:

“NHPs [non-human primates such as monkeys] are known to be susceptible to lethal EBOV infection through the respiratory tract [just like humans] putting the onus of the transmission on the ability of the source to shed infectious particles.”

We know that airborne transmission of Ebola occurs from pigs to monkeys in experimental settings. We also know that healthcare workers like Dr. Kent Brantly are contracting Ebola in West Africa despite CDC-level barrier protection measures against physical contact with the bodies and body fluids of Ebola victims, so it only makes sense to conclude that some -- possibly many -- of these doctors, nurses, and ancillary healthcare workers are being infected via airborne transmission. It makes perfect sense that sick humans, as they vomit, have diarrhea, cough, and expectorate sputum, and as medical procedures are performed on them, have the ability to shed infectious Ebola particles into the air at a similar or higher level compared to Sus scrofa (wild boar) in the pig-to-monkey study.

Ft. Detrick aerobiological warfare sciences data on airborne ebola jeopardizes trust

potr |  According to the Center for Aerobiological Sciences, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland:

(1) Ebola has an aerosol stability that is comparable to Influenza-A

(2) Much like Flu, Airborne Ebola transmissions need Winter type conditions to maximize Aerosol infection

"Filoviruses, which are classified as Category A Bioterrorism Agents by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, GA), have stability in aerosol form comparable to other lipid containing viruses such as influenza A virus, a low infectious dose by the aerosol route (less than 10 PFU) in NHPs, and case fatality rates as high as ~90% ."

"The mode of acquisition of viral infection in index cases is usually unknown. Secondary transmission of filovirus infection is typically thought to occur by direct contact with infected persons or infected blood or tissues. There is no strong evidence of secondary transmission by the aerosol route in African filovirus outbreaks. However, aerosol transmission is thought to be possible and may occur in conditions of lower temperature and humidity which may not have been factors in outbreaks in warmer climates [13]. At the very least, the potential exists for aerosol transmission, given that virus is detected in bodily secretions, the pulmonary alveolar interstitial cells, and within lung spaces"

Analysis:  Its clear that when Ebola is in the air it is at least as hardy as Influenza. Its also clear that coughing and sneezing is what makes Influenza airborne; the same should be expected of Ebola.

Moreover, just as sun, heat, and humidity along the Earths' Equatorial regions serve to 'burn' Influenza out of the air, the same should be expected of Ebola. The difference with Ebola is that physical contact with even the tiniest amounts of infected bodily fluid can cause infection, hence unlike flu it also readily spreads in equatorial regions. When Ebola spreads to the regions of the Earth which experience Fall and Winter Flu seasons, airborne Ebola infectious routes are to be expected in conjunction with direct contact infection.

Ebola has the capability to infect pretty much every cell in the entire human respiratory tract. Similarly, our skin offers little resistance to even the smallest amounts of Ebola. How much airborne transmission will occur will be a function of how well Ebola induces coughing and sneezing in its victims in cold weather climates. Coughing and nasal bleeding are both reported symptoms in Africa, so the worst should be expected. In that regard, co-infections with Flu, Cold, or even seasonal Allergies will readily transform Ebola victims into  biowarefare factories.

Unlike Flu, a person need not inhale airborne Ebola to be infected via airborne transmission. Merely walking through an airspace (or touching the objects therein) where an Ebola victim has coughed or sneezed is potentially enough for a cold weather infection to occur. As such, all indicators are that Ebola's potential rate of infectious spread in cold weather climates is EXPLOSIVELY  greater than what is occurring in Equatorial Africa

In that regard, the government's Filovirus Animal Nonclinical Group [FANG] is standardizing on a Airborne Ebola Infectious "challenge" of 1000 PFU that all proposed medical countermeasures must defeat in order to gain acceptance.

to keep ebola at bay - big don say - "schmoke weed everyday"

mtlblog |  Not a day has gone by in the last few weeks without a mention of Ebola. Having made its way into North America, Ebola has become reached the top of the “to fear” list, making many worry that it will only be a matter of time before the disease dominates the continent. Effective vaccines and treatments for Ebola have yet to be discovered, though one may be hiding in plain sight: cannabis.

Cannabinoids in marijuana have gained more and more of a reputation as a way to control and aid one’s immune systems, specifically with diseases that target a body’s natural defense measures against viruses, like HIV. Dr. David B. Allen, medical director of Cannabis Sativa, Inc, and Brad Morehouse, founder of NewCure.org, both believe cannabis can combat Ebola in the same way.

First, a rundown on what Ebola is and does, so everyone understands the argument. Ebola is a virus that targets the RNA (which creates proteins) in cells, takes over, then begins to replicate itself. The virus is able to hide itself from virus killing cells by creating indivisibility cloak-like surface proteins, which makes fighting Ebola especially difficult for the body.

Another consequence of Ebola being an RNA virus is that it makes each strain unique to the individual infected, thus making the creation of a widely applicable vaccine incredibly difficult.

What makes Ebola deadly is the way in which one’s immune system reacts as time goes on. Aside from creating hemorrhaging and leaking between cells, Ebola primarily kills when a person’s body releases a massive amount of enzymes (a cytokine storm) and an overabundant, and fatal amount, of immune cells being activated.

That’s where marijuana comes in as a potential saving grace to those afflicted with Ebola. As Joe Martin points out, cannabis is contains natural antiretrovirals and is also an anti-inflammatory able to reduce the harm to the body caused by a cytokine storm.

Dr. Allen also notes that cannabis has already become a legitimate regulator of immune system processes for those infected with HIV, with the same processes being applicable to Ebola. Being a natural virus killer, Allen also notes how cannabis can prevent the other harmful consequences of Ebola, namely hemorrhaging and cell leaking. Fist tap Big Don.

the only thing between u.s. and a massive ebola outbreak is winter weather and one ebola infected sneeze...,

Sources Preparedness for Prevention of Ebola Virus Disease

http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/4/10/2115/pdf

US ARMY Says EBOLA = FLU in Airborne Stability, Needs Winter Weather To Go Airborne

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0041918

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/

http://vet.sagepub.com/content/50/3/514.full

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113787/

Ebola Bodily Fluids Readily Weaponizable Using An Ultrasonic Humidifier

Ebola Emergency ZMAPP Production Rates & Costs

CDC's "Lesser Of Evils" Double Standard On Health Care Worker Protection Indicates They Expect a Large Ebola Outbreak In USA

CDC Warns Hospitals On EBOLA "CONTAMINATED AIR" and Directs use of "Airborne Infection Isolation Room"s

Inhalation Ebola: Governments Ready For World War Ebola

CDC Sees AIRBORNE EBOLA Transmission, Issues Guidance For Aircraft Flight Crews, Cleaning & Cargo Crews

 CDC is already evacuating DOUBLE the number of expected Ebola infected personnel at a rate of 7 doctors per month

surprise, surprise..., the firestone rubber plantation stopped ebola in its tracks

CDC |  On March 30, 2014, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) of Liberia alerted health officials at Firestone Liberia, Inc. (Firestone) of the first known case of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) inside the Firestone rubber tree plantation of Liberia. The patient, who was the wife of a Firestone employee, had cared for a family member with confirmed Ebola in Lofa County, the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia during March–April 2014. To prevent a large outbreak among Firestone's 8,500 employees, their dependents, and the surrounding population, the company responded by 1) establishing an incident management system, 2) instituting procedures for the early recognition and isolation of Ebola patients, 3) enforcing adherence to standard Ebola infection control guidelines, and 4) providing differing levels of management for contacts depending on their exposure, including options for voluntary quarantine in the home or in dedicated facilities. In addition, Firestone created multidisciplinary teams to oversee the outbreak response, address case detection, manage cases in a dedicated unit, and reintegrate convalescent patients into the community. The company also created a robust risk communication, prevention, and social mobilization campaign to boost community awareness of Ebola and how to prevent transmission. During August 1–September 23, a period of intense Ebola transmission in the surrounding areas, 71 cases of Ebola were diagnosed among the approximately 80,000 Liberians for whom Firestone provides health care (cumulative incidence = 0.09%). Fifty-seven (80%) of the cases were laboratory confirmed; 39 (68%) of these cases were fatal. Aspects of Firestone's response appear to have minimized the spread of Ebola in the local population and might be successfully implemented elsewhere to limit the spread of Ebola and prevent transmission to health care workers (HCWs). 

Firestone Liberia, Inc. is an affiliate of Firestone Natural Rubber Company, LLC, a division of Bridgestone Americas, Inc., that operates rubber tree plantations in Liberia. The original plantation was established in 1926 by the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. The company harvests natural rubber and wood from a plantation area of approximately 120,000 acres (185 square miles) in the Firestone District of Margibi County (Figure 1). The populations of Margibi County and Firestone District are 238,000 and 69,000, respectively (Government of Liberia 2014 population estimates). Employees and their dependents reside within 121 communities inside the Firestone plantation. Nearly 16,000 students matriculate at 27 schools operated by Firestone. Although Firestone manages the plantation, the area is accessible to non-company residents from surrounding communities and includes roadways permitting passage of people and commerce.

Firestone operates a referral hospital, two clinics, and seven health posts, with 181 health care providers within the plantation area. The main hospital has an emergency department, labor and delivery department, intensive care unit, and 170-bed routine inpatient capacity with an additional 130-bed surge capacity for both adult and pediatric patients. Health posts are located within housing communities and staffed by non-physician primary care providers who reside in those communities. Firestone also operates a mobile medical unit that follows a daily route through the plantation area and surrounding communities. Firestone's reported health care catchment population of roughly 80,000 includes employees, retirees, dependents, and the residents of the densely populated surrounding communities in Margibi and Montserrado counties. Firestone provides perinatal care (representing 70% of all deliveries at Firestone's main hospital), routine vaccinations, primary care through the mobile medical unit, and emergency care for members of the communities surrounding Firestone's plantation area. The total number of patient visits to Firestone facilities averages nearly 5,500 per month.

trust issues: u.s. biowarfare laboratories in west africa are the origin of the ebola epidemic in west africa

ICH |  Could Ebola Have Escaped From US Bio-warfare Labs? American law professor Francis A. Boyle, answers questions for tvxs.gr and reveals that USA have been using West Africa as an offshore to circumvent the Convention on Biological Weapons and do bio-warfare work. Is Ebola just a result of health crisis in Africa - because of the large gaps in personnel, equipment and medicines - as some experts suggest?

That isn’t true at all. This is just propaganda being put out by everyone. It seems to me, that what we are dealing with here is a biological warfare work that was conducted at the bio-warfare laboratories set up by the USA on the west coast of Africa. And if you look at a map produced by the Center of  Disease Control you can see where these laboratories are located. And they are across the heart of  Ebola epidemic, at the west coast of Africa. So, I think these laboratories, one or more of them, are the origins of the Ebola epidemic.

US government agencies are supposed to do defensive biological warfare research in these labs. Is there any information about what are they working on?

Well, that’s what they tell you. But if you study what the CDC and the Pentagon do… They say it is defensive, but this is just for public relation purposes than anything. It’s a trick. What it means is what they decide at these bio-warfare labs. They say, “well we have to develop a vaccine”, so that’s their defensive argument. Then what they do is to develop the bio-warfare agent itself. Usually by means of  DNA genetic engineering. And then they say, “well to get the vaccine we have to develop the bio-warfare agent” - usually by DNA genetic engineering - and then they try to work on the vaccine. So it’s two uses type of work. I haven’t read all these bio-warfare contracts but that’s typical of the way the Pentagon CDC has been doing this since at least the 1980’s. I have absolute proof from a Pentagon document that the Center of Disease Control was doing bio-warfare work for the Pentagon in Sierra Leone, the heart of the outbreak, as early as 1988. And indeed it was probably before then because they would have had to construct the lab and that would have taken some time. So we know that Fort Detrick and the Center for Disease Control are over there, Tulane University, which is a well-known bio-warfare center here in USA - I would say notorious for it - is there. They all have been over there.

In addition, USA government made sure that Liberia, a former colony of  the USA, never became a party to the Biological Weapons Convention, so they were able to do bio – warfare work over there - going back to 1980’s - the USA government, in order to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention. Likewise, Guinea the third state affected here - and there is an increase now – didn’t even sign the Biological Weapons Convention. So, it seems to me, that the different agencies of the US government have been always there try to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention and engage bio-warfare work. Indeed, we had one of these two lab bio-warriors admit in the NY Times that they were not over there for the purpose of either screening or treating people. That’s not what these labs are about. These labs are there in my opinion to do bio-warfare work for different agencies of the US government. Indeed, many of them were set up by USAID. And everyone knows that USAID is penetrated all up and down by the CIA and CIA has been involved in bio-warfare work as well.

Are we being told the truth about Ebola? Is that big outbreak began all of a sudden? How does it spread so quickly?

The whole outbreak that we see in the west coast of Africa, this is Zaire/Ebola. The most dangerous of five subtypes of Ebola. Zaire/Ebola originated 3500 km from the west coast of Africa. There is absolutely no way that it could have been transmitted 3500 km. And if you read the recently published Harvard study on the DNA analysis of the west Africas’ Zaire/Ebola there is no explanation about how the virus moved there. And indeed, it’s been reported in the NY Times that the Zaire/Ebola was found there in 1976, and then WHO ordered to be set to Porton Down in Britain, which is the British equivalent to Fort Detrick, where they manufacture all the biological weapons for Britain. And then Britain sent it to the US Center for Disease Control. And we know for a fact that the Center for Disease Control has been involved in biological warfare work. And then it appears, at least from whatever I’ve been able to put together in a public record, that the CDC and several others US bio-warriors exported Zaire/Ebola to west Africa, to their labs there, where they were doing bio-warfare work on it. So, I believe this is the origins of the Zaire/Ebola pandemic we are seeing now in west Africa.

Why would they do that?

Why would they do that? As I suggested to try to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention to which the US government is a party. So, always bio-warriors do use offensive and defensive bio-warfare work, violating the Biological Weapons Convention. So effectively they try to offshore it into west Africa where Liberia is not a party and Guinea is not a party. Sierra Leone is a party. But in Sierra Leone and Liberia there were disturbances which kept the world from really paying attention of what was going on in these labs.

USA sent troops to «fight» Ebola. What do you think about that move?

The US military just invaded Liberia. They send in the 101st Airborne Division to Liberia. That’s an elite division of combat and they have no training to provide medical treatment to anyone. They are there to establish a military base in Liberia. And the British are doing the same in Sierra Leone. The French are already in Mali and Senegal. So, they’re not sending military people there to treat these people. No, I’m sorry.

how will american clubs respond when resident evil comes home to roost?

economiccollapseblog |  If Ebola continues to spread like wildfire throughout West Africa, it is probably just a matter of time before it starts popping up in major cities in other areas of the globe.

If this were to happen in the United States, life would change for all of us almost overnight.

It is hard to put into words that kind of chaos that we are witnessing over in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone right now.  Panic and fear are everywhere, and the corpses just keep piling up.  The following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times article...

The Ebola epidemic is spreading rapidly in Sierra Leone’s densely packed capital - and it may already be far worse than the authorities acknowledge.
Various models of the growth of the epidemic here “all show an exponential increase,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team in Sierra Leone. “The conditions are amenable to Ebola spread.”
“Since last month, it’s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming” to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer.
A cloudy stream drains from the area of the new graves into the slum, further frightening the residents.
“We are at risk, big risk,” said Ousman Kamara, a resident. “We have made many complaints.”
But the bodies, he said, keep coming.
“Even at night,” he said. “You stand here, and you see them coming.”

Could you imagine something like that happening in America?

At this stage of the crisis in West Africa, all existing treatment facilities are absolutely overwhelmed.

Because there are no more beds, large numbers of people with Ebola are being turned away.  Many end up dying just outside of the walls of some of these clinics...

A new Ebola clinic opened in Monrovia this week, but bodies lay on the ground outside its walls. Ambulances filled with Ebola patients, some that have traveled seven hours to get there, are not unloaded. Without help to get them inside, the patients fall in the dirt, mere feet away from treatment.

If things are this bad already when we only have thousands of cases, what are things going to look like when we have more than a million cases?

A representative for Samaritan’s Purse admitted the other day that "it's too late. Nobody's going to build 100,000 beds."

And it can be absolutely heartbreaking for health workers to turn away people that are dying.

The following is firsthand testimony from a health worker that is on the front lines of this crisis that is actually having to do this...

The first person I had to turn away was a father who had brought his sick daughter in the trunk of his car. He pleaded with me to take his teenage daughter, saying that whilst he knew we couldn't save her life, at least we could save the rest of his family from her.

Other families just pulled up in cars, let the sick person out and then drove off, abandoning them. One mother tried to leave her baby on a chair, hoping that if she did, we would have no choice but to care for the child.

I had to turn away one couple who arrived with their young daughter. Two hours later the girl died in front of our gate, where she remained until the body removal team took her away.

Those that are working on burial teams often see things that are even worse.  Just consider the following example...

Dressed from head to toe in white protective suits and thick goggles, the burial teams try to stay safe, but nothing can shield them from the unspeakable horrors they've seen when they make their regular rounds. On Friday, Kiyee described what he saw when he entered a home:

"I took the key and opened the door and went in and saw a 6-month-old child licking on the mother's skin," said Kiyee. The mother was lying on her stomach. She had died from Ebola. The baby was searching for the mother's milk. "Right away I started shedding tears."

This is the kind of pure hell that we could see in the United States if Ebola starts spreading here.

Just because we have a more advanced medical system and better living conditions does not mean that we will be able to stop the spread of this virus.

In fact, some medical professionals are already warning that we are not prepared for an Ebola pandemic.

If cases of Ebola do start appearing in major cities throughout America, you will want to be prepared to stay at home as much as possible.  There will not be any magic pill that you can pop that will "cure" you of this disease.  It is a brutally efficient killer that does not show any mercy.

open mic fail after cdc ebola press conference...,

raconteurreport |  There are, in fact, a total of four medical isolation units in the entire United States, as we noted yesterday, that are capable of handling infected Ebola patients near endlessly.

Where are they, and what can they handle?

Emory University's Serious Communicable Disease Unit is in Atlanta, GA. That's where Brantly and Writebol were treated. It has three beds.

St. Patrick Hospital's ICU Isolation Unit is in Missoula MT. It has three beds.

The National Institute of Health's Special Clinical Studies Unit is in Bethesda MD. It has seven beds.

And the biggest, the Nebraska Medical Center's Biocontainment Unit is in Omaha NE. It has ten beds.
  3+3+7+10=23 beds, coast to coast.
So, for the entire country, all 316,100,000+ of us, we're fully prepared to treat 23 Ebola patients at the same time. (For reference, that's how many Ebola patients Liberia had last April. It hasn't gone well.)
But the 316M-person question is, what happens when we have 24?
More happygas, anyone?

"But any major medical center could really take care of an Ebola patient," said William Schaffner, an expert on infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine. 

Most ICUs have isolation rooms that are used for patients suspected to have tuberculosis, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome or another infectious disease. Schaffner said that not much would be different for an Ebola patient, though more stringent precautions might be taken to ensure that health care workers are following all protocols.

Why yes, gosh darn it, of course they can!

Just look at how well that worked at Texas Health Presbyterian, a top-tier 968-bed acute primary hospital in Dallas, and a regional healthcare keystone in that city.

They misdiagnosed their first patient.

Their computerized EMR doesn't dump the nurse's triage notes onto the doctor's page, so critical screening information was missed.

They exposed their hospital lab to specimens that weren't safe to handle, because they didn't know Thomas Duncan needed a BL4 response and specimen handling.

They exposed doctors, nurses, staff members, patients, and visitors to Ebola unknowningly.

  They sent him back into the community to expose family, friends, EMS workers, and random strangers as well.

Which led to inappropriate hazmat cleaning at his home;

the potential exposure of four public schools to the disease, which has necessitated closing them for cleaning while parents keep their children home, some withdrawing them completely;

and on and on, with 18/100/50 (depending on which number is currently operant) people under self-imposed quarantine and monitoring.
And that was a good look at how it's going to go everywhere else, the first time "shit's getting real". It's called the Normalcy Bias. "We've never had an Ebola patient walk in the door, so we never will, and we won't assume otherwise." Because ABCNNBCBS haven't been hawking any news to the contrary for months, right?
There are other problems: as noted yesterday, once you start traipsing highly infectious patients, frequently vomiting and squirting Ebola-laced body fluids everywhere, the hospital is unavailable for any other use.

That's not even news, it's CDC standard policy!
But don't believe me, go to their Ebola Info Sheet:

ebola in mosul?

zerohedge |  Forget targeted US airstrikes, ISIS faces a new existential threat. Citing an unnamed source in a Mosul hospital, Iraq's official pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, said Ebola arrived in Mosul from "terrorists" who came "from several countries" and Africa. Mashable further confirms, three outlets reported that Ebola showed up at a hospital in Mosul. For now, it's unclear if any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus; but it would mark the first time the virus had been detected in an area controlled by ISIS, a group that doesn't embrace science and modern medicine.

As Mashable reports,

Reports that Islamic State militants in Mosul have contracted Ebola swirled though Iraqi media sources on Wednesday. World Health Organization officials said they haven't confirmed the cases, but the organization has reached out to offer assistance.

"We have no official notification from [the Iraqi government] that it is Ebola," Christy Feig, WHO's director of communications told Mashable.

Feig added that WHO is in the process of reaching out to government officials in Iraq to see if they need help investigating the cases, a task that could be a challenge, given the restrictions that would come with operating in ISIS-controlled territory.

It's unclear if any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus. A Kurdish official, who was convinced the cases are Ebola, told the Kurdish media outlet Xendan that the militants' symptoms were similar to those of the Ebola virus.

Citing an unnamed source in a Mosul hospital, Iraq's official pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, said the disease arrived in Mosul from "terrorists" who came "from several countries" and Africa.

If the cases in Mosul turn out to be Ebola — a scenario that, at this point, seems highly unlikely — it would mark the first time the virus had been detected in an area controlled by ISIS, a group that doesn't embrace science and modern medicine.

Over the past few weeks, militants affiliated with ISIS have executed more than a dozen doctors in Mosul, according to Benjamin T. Decker, an intelligence analyst with the Levantine Group, a Middle East-based geopolitical risk and research consultancy.

trust issues: um, er, ah..., why the pentagon deploying domestically, redundantly, to address these "issues"?

zerohedge |  President Obama may have been busy golfing this weekend, and his brand new Ebola Czar may have had more pressing matters to attend than the White House's Saturday evening meeting on the US "response to domestic Ebola cases" (because clearly the Ebola Czar is superfluous at such Ebola-related events), but that doesn't mean that the administration will once again be caught with its pants down the next time an Ebola index patient is unveiled on US soil. Nope. 

In taking a page right out of America's response to the Ebola pandemic in... West Africa, where the US has dispatched several thousands troops to do, something, unclear what, earlier today, it was revealed that the U.S. military is forming a 30-person "quick-strike team", which according to CNN is "equipped to provide direct treatment to Ebola patients inside the United States, a Defense Department official told CNN's Barbara Starr on Sunday."

From CNN:

The team will be under orders to deploy within 72 hours at any time over the next month, the official said.  The Department of Health and Human Services requested the military team, and the Pentagon has given verbal approval, the official said.

The team will include five doctors, 20 nurses and five trainers, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement.

The Pentagon has been working to determine what assistance it could offer the civilian health care sector following a White House meeting last week during which President Barack Obama said he wanted a more aggressive response, according to two Defense officials.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered chief of the Northern Command, Gen. Chuck Jacoby, "to prepare and train a 30-person expeditionary medical support team that could, if required, provide short-notice assistance to civilian medical professionals in the United States," Kirby said.

Jacoby is already working with the military on the joint team, Kirby said, and once formed, it will head to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for up to seven days of training in infection control and personal protective equipment. The training, provided by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, will begin "within the next week or so," Kirby said.

The team will remain in "prepare-to-deploy" status for 30 days, he said. It will be able to respond anywhere in the U.S. if "deemed prudent by our public health professionals," he said.

To summarize: the Pentagon, as in the US army, will provide direct treatment to Ebola patients.

So just how exactly is the US army's crack 30-person "SWAT" team which has a whopping 5 doctors, more competent to deal to deal with what is, at last check, a medical situation than, say, America's medical professionals? Or is, in the parlance of our times, where an "Iraq military advisor" really means crack commando fighting Syrian troops on the ground on behalf of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, "direct treatment" merely a euphemism for something far less enjoyable? 

For the partial answer to some of these questions, please read "Public Health Emergency Declared In Connecticut Over Ebola: Civil Rights Suspended Indefinitely, and also "Obama Mobilizes National Guard, Army Reserves To Fight Ebola" - they serve as a good starting point for where all of this is ultimately headed.

ebola and applied cultural "evolution"...,

socialevolutionforum |  A colleague of mine named Beate Ebert started a Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) called Commit and Act in Sierra Leone. They run a psychosocial center in Bo, a city in the south of Sierra Leone, led by a local counselor, Hannah Bockarie. Bo is a high risk area of the Ebola epidemic, where some of the first cases showed up. One reason that the disease is so deadly is that it creates a perfect storm of cultural confusion. Here is how Beate described it to me in a recent email message.

Ebola mostly spreads because of local habits like washing and kissing dead bodies. People don’t get the information needed. They avoid hospitals as most people with Ebola die there. Doctors and nurses look like monsters in their prevention suits when they come to villages. The inhabitants are scared and think the health workers bring the disease. People circulate text messages that stimulate fear and also lead to avoiding treatment, like not contacting strangers.

The public health practices that can limit the spread of the Ebola virus are known, but getting people to adopt new practices—even when it is a matter of life and death—is not easy. Can evolutionary science help? Beate thinks that it can and her local team is bravely working to use a method of cultural change being developed at the Evolution Institute to help stem the Ebola epidemic where previous efforts have failed.

The method is called PROSOCIAL and is designed to improve the efficacy of any group whose members must work together to achieve common goals. It helps to create a strong sense of group identity and clarifies both core values and obstacles that prevent a group from moving in its valued direction. It also helps to create a social environment that is maximally favorable for cooperation and guards against behaviors that undermine the goals of the group.

PROSOCIAL is a new method, still under development, and the Commit and Act team in Sierra Leone is starting to use it in their regular work, which is to bring psychotherapeutic support to traumatized people in areas of conflict. This means that they have a network of facilitators working in communities already in place that can be used to address the Ebola epidemic. Here is a progress report from Commit and Act’s facebook page:

We can hardly post as quickly as Hannah is training people how to prevent Ebola. She went through the PROSOCIAL process … again today, with another 300 people in Bo, close to our center. Our wonderful, courageous Commit and Act women’s group and the families of the desert flower project we are supporting to prevent female gender circumcision of the girls were present too. Due to Hannah´s successful efforts, Commit and Act has been identified as the leading agency in the district by the District Health Management Team to give psychosocial support to the families affected by Ebola and to support medical teams etc. As there is hardly any additional funding available for this, please donate every amount possible to Commit and Act and mark it with the purpose “Ebola”, then we will use it for that. Thank you so much!

I have donated and urge everyone who reads this post to contribute what they can. Here is the link to Commit and Act’s donation page. It would be hard to imagine a more noble and worthy cause to support, especially by those who are trying to develop a science of intentional change.

utah, honolulu, and toronto all clear, chocalate city gets a live one though...,

WaPo |  But before an Ebola case was confirmed in Dallas this week, there had not been a single Ebola diagnosis in the United States.

Potential Ebola patients who were evaluated in New York, California, New Mexico and Miami all tested negative for the virus.

People with Ebola are not contagious until they begin showing symptoms, which include a fever of greater than 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit, severe headache and vomiting. And you can only get Ebola through contact with a contagious person's bodily fluids.

Several Ebola patients have been transported from West Africa to the United States, including three Americans who were in Liberia — doctors Richard Sacra and Kent Brantly and missionary worker Nancy Writebol — who have already been discharged after they were successfully treated here. A Liberian American, Patrick Sawyer, fell ill after traveling to Nigeria and died of the disease.

The NIH in Bethesda recently admitted an American patient who had been exposed to Ebola.

On Thursday night, NBC News announced that a freelance cameraman working for the network in Liberia has tested positive for Ebola and will return to the United States for treatment.

In Maryland, all health providers and labs are required to report suspected Ebola cases to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene immediately, said spokesman Christopher Garrett. The state agency works with local health departments to ensure that proper procedures, including isolation, are followed; information has been distributed to hospitals, nursing homes, labs and other providers.

the establishment put out its cover story weeks ago...,

NYTimes |  There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night.

The first possibility is that the Ebola virus spreads from West Africa to megacities in other regions of the developing world. This outbreak is very different from the 19 that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. It is much easier to control Ebola infections in isolated villages. But there has been a 300 percent increase in Africa’s population over the last four decades, much of it in large city slums. What happens when an infected person yet to become ill travels by plane to Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa or Mogadishu — or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City or Dhaka?

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

Why are public officials afraid to discuss this? They don’t want to be accused of screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater — as I’m sure some will accuse me of doing. But the risk is real, and until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.

In 2012, a team of Canadian researchers proved that Ebola Zaire, the same virus that is causing the West Africa outbreak, could be transmitted by the respiratory route from pigs to monkeys, both of whose lungs are very similar to those of humans. Richard Preston’s 1994 best seller “The Hot Zone” chronicled a 1989 outbreak of a different strain, Ebola Reston virus, among monkeys at a quarantine station near Washington. The virus was transmitted through breathing, and the outbreak ended only when all the monkeys were euthanized. We must consider that such transmissions could happen between humans, if the virus mutates.

to keep it from spreading - tell the truth about it being airborne...,

dailybeast |  But what about Ebola? The Dallas case is breaking some of our ironclad assumptions. The CDC has a well-considered algorithm that places those returning from the three endemic West Africa countries—Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia—into a measure of extra vigilance if and only if the person has had exposure to a known case of Ebola. Per the press conference, the Dallas case had no such exposure. He was not a health-care worker treating patients, nor was he from a family battling active disease. Of course, more facts may emerge that contradict today’s story—but today’s facts, if they hold up, mean that yesterday’s assumptions are no longer correct. Liberia may indeed be enough of a hotbed of Ebola that anyone arriving from the area will need to be considered for extra vigilance.

More disturbing, though, is this: Infections follow basic rules. That’s what informs the confidence of public health experts. TB, for example, is spread when I inhale the exhaled breath of a person with active disease. Cholera and typhoid fever are transmitted when I ingest contaminated food or drink. And blood-borne infections like HIV, hepatitis B, and Ebola are spread after contacting infected blood or having sex with an infected person.

But even according to these basic rules, Ebola is slightly different in a way that remains obscure. HIV is not spread easily: The per-sexual exposure with an infected person is on the order of 1 in 100; a needlestick with blood from an infection person sustained by a health-care worker transmits infection in only 300 exposures.  Hepatitis B plays by the same rules, though the rates of transmission are about 10 times more frequent. In other words, the likelihood of catching HIV or hepatitis B from an infected person, even with a blood or sexual exposure, is quite low.

Exposures to Ebola, however, seem to leave no room for error. Although we lack carefully performed studies, Kent Brantly, the physician who developed the disease and was airlifted to Atlanta, seemed to have no gross exposure to the disease, though he worked on an Ebola ward. Ditto for Nancy Writebol the other American flown back in that dramatic first wave. According to reports, they were mighty careful at every step, but just not careful enough.

In contrast, it is said that absolutely no one working for Médecins sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, has come down with Ebola, though they have been and are working cheek by jowl with the same patients, presumably because they are perfectly and methodically garbed and attentive 100 percent of the time, not 99 percent. So Frieden’s message to America surely is correct—we are 1,001 disasters away from an alarming national outbreak; our health-care systems are indeed quite sturdy.

But his message to those caring for the Dallas patient both in his home and now in the hospital needs a bit of punching up. For once, all those rules about assuring that masks fit and gloves (two pairs) are snug and gowns are tied and all the rest are deadly serious, as is the mechanical sequence of doffing the disposable garb, then washing hands carefully. This time, even in the freewheeling city of Dallas, the rules must be followed carefully, as if one’s life depended on it—because when dealing with Ebola, it does.

how would you like to live in denial of what goes on under the stairs?

thiscantbehappening |  On Thursday, a reader who is an MD contacted someone he knew at Tulane, Vice President for Research Laura Levy, asking her to explain what Tulane was doing in Kenema. He later sent me her response, which was a link to a web page on Tulane's website. It seeks to debunk "myths" about Tulane's work in West Africa. In that article [3], it states that it is a "myth" that Tulane has been ordered to leave Sierra Leone. But no one is saying that. Tulane was ordered to shut down it's Ebola lab in the town of Kenema, not to leave Sierra Leone altogether. The article also states that it is a "myth" that the University and its researchers are "collaborating" with the military in Sierra Leone. It goes on to say that "Tulane is working with Harvard University and others in the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium to develop diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for Lassa fever and Ebola. Support for the consortium has come principally from the National Institutes of Health."

But actually the consortium's own website [4] says that Tulane is the leader of the consortium. It lists a number of partners, including Harvard University, Scripps Research Institute, and a company called Corgenix. No government "partners" are listed. Yet Corgenix, on its company site [5], lists USAMRIID, the Pentagon's bioweapons research unit, as a "member of the consortium." 

Curious indeed that Tulane Research VP Levy omitted that important bit of information.

Here's what Coregenix had to say about USAMRIID:
 

USAMRIID (U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases), located at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is the lead medical research laboratory for the U.S. Biological Defense Research Program, and plays a leading role in national defense and in infectious disease research. The Institute’s mission is to conduct basic and applied research on biological threats resulting in medical solutions (such as vaccines, drugs and diagnostics) to protect the warfighter. USAMRIID is a subordinate laboratory of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command.

Corgenix and USAMRIID are members of the Viral Hemorrhagic fever Consortium, working to develop state of the art diagnostic products for biothreat agents and emerging pathogens./em>
 

Navy Times, hardly a den of conspiracy writers, published an article about Ebola [6] and the US decision to send 3000 troops (not doctors!) to the impacted countries in west Africa, back on August 1. That article states:
 

Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon since the late 1970s, mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates — in the current outbreak, roughly 60 percent to 72 percent of those who have contracted the disease have died — and its stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) have sought to develop a vaccine or treatment for the disease.
 

Boyle’s contention is that ever since the US signed onto the Geneva Convention outlawing germ warfare, it has used research into defense against germ weapons as a cover for US research into germ weapons themselves. 

It’s interesting that Navy Times is reporting that Pentagon-funded researchers at USAMRIID have been trying to develop a vaccine for Ebola for decades, yet how does that square with a report on Oct. 23 in the New York Times [7] that Canadian and US researchers had developed an Ebola vaccine that was 100% successful in monkeys a full decade ago, long after the Pentagon began “seeking to develop a vaccine” and several years after the NIH began a campaign to develop one. And yet, as the Times article states, the promising vaccine “sat on the shelf” for years without being tested in humans, because it encountered a “biotech valley of death” with no drug companies willing to pay for human testing.

So where was all that public US Defense Department and NIH funding, given the promise that this vaccine was showing? 

Maybe it was just bureaucratic bumbling, nationalist prejudice (the vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, for god’s sake!, a concept that is toxic to the US drug industry), or just Washington stupidity. But then, if Boyle is right, then the Pentagon may not really have been all that interested in finding a vaccine, but rather was focussed on doing covert research on bioweapons, including Ebola. 

It may seem hard to swallow the idea that your government could be contemplating such awful weapons, but let’s remember that the US is the country that continues to insist on its right to strew highly toxic and carcinogenic depleted uranium dust all over countries it invades or bombs, like Afghanistan, Syria and especially Iraq (according to a new report by David Swanson [8], the Obama administration is sending DU-armed aircraft to the Middle East again, evidently for use in its attacks on ISIS in Syria and Iraq, as if it hadn't spread enough of the stuff across the desert already). 

As well, the US stands credibly accused of having deployed germ weapons in Cuba, Nicaragua and East Germany over the years, and perhaps in other places too. 

And there was one other article in the New York Times [9] -- this one pulled, oddly, after it made it into the first edition of the paper on October 17. It reported that President Obama, “Prompted by controversy over dangerous research and recent laboratory accidents,” had announced that he was temporarily halting “all new funding for experiments that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous.” He asked those scientists already doing such government-funded research to “voluntarily halt” their work during this moratorium. Could this be a backhanded admission, or at least hint, that something like that might have been done to the Zaire Ebola strain that is circulating now in west Africa?

Got that? Your government has been paying researchers to do genetic modification of dangerous pathogens like avian or pandemic flu strains, SARS...and hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola, to make them more deadly and/or more easily transmitted! (Of course the government and its apologists insist that they and the researchers they fund in this work are only trying to see if it could be done, either by some nefarious enemy, or by nature itself.)

even the hittites used "cursed rams" against their enemies...,

ibtimes |  If latest reports are to be believed, the Islamic State militants might be conspiring to deliberately infect jihadists with the deadly Ebola virus and send them to America in order to spread the disease in the US – an event that could see America being attacked in a new pseudo-war.

The Israeli News Agency, a site which claims to be Israel's first online news organisation has confirmed the authenticity of the report saying it "clears all news items relating to Israeli security with the Israel government press office."

The agency said, citing "Israeli security sources", that dozens of ISIS fighters in Syria have fallen ill and had symptoms of Ebola. This news quickly ignited a new conspiracy theory claiming that ISIS is planning to send Ebola-infected militants into the US to spread the disease.

"While Western nations fighting the Islamic State might consider this reported Ebola outbreak among radical jihadists to be welcome news, there is a very big, very dangerous downside to Islamic terrorists being carriers of the virus," Norvell Rose, the winner of numerous journalism honours, writes for WesternJournalism.com.

The article also cites the Israeli News Agency (INA) for inference into why the news could prove dangerous for the Americans. The INA in its report quoted a source it identified only as "AVi", who is "a global anti-terrorism consultant" as saying: "We know that ISIS has training camps in Africa and it is highly possible that this is where contact with the virus was made.

"This would add new meaning to the US stating that no boots would be on the ground as both missiles and Ebola penetrates one of the worst evils that the world has ever known."

The theory was further bolstered by reports of a direct threat from the ISIS militants who said they would spread the Ebola virus to the United States and its allies if they continue to wage war on the organisation inside Syria and Iraq as reported by Shoebat.com, a website created by Walid Shoebat who was a radicalised Muslim until 1994 when he converted to Christianity.

Shoebat quoted a statement from ISIS published in another website called Vetogate.com. The statement reportedly said: "Followers and soldiers of the Islamic State are mostly suicide bombers and all of them are ready not only to carry Ebola, but to drink Ebola if they were asked to carry and spread it in the United States. This is not difficult but we need a decision from the leaders jihadist (sic)."

The statement further said: "The process of spreading disease is not difficult. It can easily be transported in a bottle in your bag from Africa to America. The contents of the bottle can then be released in an air-conditioning duct or put it in the public drinking water."

charles ellison again: why the military and not medicine to ebola stricken africa?

theroot |  The Take turned to UCLA African American studies and Black Diaspora experts Dr. Peter James Hudson and Dr. Jemima Pierre to offer some expert insight into how effective that strategy is, whether it’s too militarized and if pharmaceuticals are calling the shots.  Hudson’s dissertation Dark Finance: An Unofficial History of Wall Street, American Empire and the Caribbean, 1889-1925 is under review and Pierre is author of The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race.

Jemima Pierre (@BLK_DIASPORAS): No matter the scale or severity of the outbreak, the Cuban response should be contrasted with that of the US and Europe. The Cubans have announced that they are sending an additional 300 doctors and nurses to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia to combat the spread of and to help those infected with Ebola. In total, the Cubans will have 461 healthcare professionals in West Africa combatting Ebola. This needs to be contrasted with, on one hand, the military response of the US government, and, on the other, the commercial response of American corporations like GlaxoSmithKline who are fast-tracking approval of what will become, undoubtedly, an extremely profitable vaccine.

Peter James Hudson (@darkfinance): For those who have been paying attention, the militarization of the Ebola response is not surprising. What’s not talked about much is the U.S. militarization of the African continent long before Ebola and the presumed threat of Boko Haram. The U.S. established AFRICOM (U.S.-Africa Command) under President George W. Bush back in 2008 for a number of reasons – not least of which to be prepared for the “threat” of China as it positions itself in the continuous scramble for African resources. But under Bush, few African countries wanted to host a U.S. military base, with the notable exception of Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Under Obama, AFRICOM’s presence on the African continent expanded exponentially, and the U.S. has a military presence (often under the cover of “humanitarianism”) in just about every African country.

Pierre: We honestly think the Western response is racist and that the U.S. is acting in bad faith. The consistent privileging of white U.S. and European health care workers and missionaries needs to be seen as part of a broader context of racist practices around Africa in general, and the Ebola epidemic in particular. In the first case, one could accept the excuse that ZMapp is experimental and manufacturers didn’t want to give it to Africans for a number of historical and ethical reasons, including the long history of medical experimentation on people of color.  But, then, we find out that Dr. Sheikh Umar Khan, ­a highly skilled and respected Sierra Leonean medical practitioner [who succumbed to Ebola], ­was not even told about the experimental vaccine or given the chance to make a decision on taking it. It must also be noted that the one U.S. citizen that was said to have died of the disease was a black man, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American who had been working as a consultant to the Liberian government. 

Hudson: Even if we put aside the discussion of a lack of “infrastructure to facilitate vaccination,” when it comes to dealing with Africa, ­ especially around epidemics, the optics look bad because the operations, quite simply, are racist. Given the history of U.S. racist representations of Africa, their cover was egregious. But then you see highly skilled African professionals ­like Dr. Khan and Dr. Olivet Buck ­ allowed to die, and white missionaries are saved.

Pierre: We find it dishonest when those in the west withholding vaccinations for Africans are claiming that they do not want to “experiment” on black African populations. There’s documented proof of experiments on African populations by western pharmaceutical companies. Africans are well aware of this history. And that history, along with the white west’s actions around Ebola, may also explain why many are questioning why this disease just suddenly emerged, and why there was already a secret vaccine in the works.

nurses not having it...,

nationalgeographic |  In a poll of 400 National Nurses United members released Wednesday, 60 percent said their hospital is not prepared for the Ebola virus, and more than 80 percent said their hospital had not educated them about Ebola or communicated any policy regarding potential patients infected with the virus.

Nearly one-third of the nurses said their hospitals lacked sufficient supplies of face shields and fluid-resistant gowns needed to protect them against the virus.

The union, which staged a "die-in" Monday on the Las Vegas strip to call attention to their Ebola concerns, blamed a lack of information and proper systems—rather than human error—for the decision last week to let Duncan leave the hospital when he first turned up complaining of fever and abdominal pain and mentioned his recent trip to Liberia. He was sent home but was readmitted on Sunday, much sicker.

It's not clear why the information about his recent travels did not raise a red flag in the emergency department, and why he was not suspected of having Ebola.

In a prepared statement in response to questions about the nurses' concerns, the American Hospital Association released a statement from Ken Anderson, the chief operating officer for the organization's Health Research and Educational Trust.

"We strongly recommend that hospitals follow CDC guidance in identifying potential Ebola patients," the statement said. "While in the Dallas case the hospital has acknowledged that it had a regrettable lapse in communication, the AHA is redoubling our efforts to make sure hospitals are aware of the latest CDC guidance, including checklists and screening criteria."

Frieden described the missed opportunity to catch Duncan's disease earlier as a "teachable moment," and said the CDC is redoubling its efforts to provide clear and useful information to hospitals about the Ebola risk.

"Essentially, any hospital in the country can safely take care of a patient with Ebola," he said, by providing a private room and bathroom, and by "rigorous, meticulous training" of staff. But Frieden acknowledged that the CDC is still working through the challenge of how to safely dispose of medical waste from Ebola patients.