this ebola thing is not going perfectly well. cnn got the story that no one has cleaned up the dallas guy's apartment at all: sheets and god knows what else, with people still living there who had, let's say, no training in hazmat clean-up. there are many scenarios for a flare, even supposing people suddenly started doing competently now what they've been doing incompetently up to now. i would say that i am not finding the cdc and their echoers as reassuring as they think i should. i am very not clear whether they regard their primary mission as providing accurate information or 're-assuring the public'. sadly you can't always do both. also re-assuring the public and showing how wonderful we here at the cdc are is the very same mission, which could also cause truth-type issues.
so tom frieden and his mirrors (such as the doctor/healthcare reporters on the news networks) have almost scoffed at the idea that we could have a significant outbreak in the states, because of our '21st-century health infrastructure', 'excellent public health system', and so on. oh the entire handling of the thomas duncan case in dallas makes quite the little hash of that. a hospital sent an infectious ebola patient home. the cdc showed no interest in cleaning up the site, and no one else did either, until cnn broke the story.
so: the idea that ebola is extremely difficult to spread and cannot be spread by people who are asymptomatic: how absolutely actually certain are they about that? to what extent has the transmission of ebola been very carefully and systematically and widely studied before now, in those tiny sporadic outbreaks? because tom frieden and co are betting their lives on it. if we're not certain on that, who counts as a contact is so very very much larger. the problem is so very much larger. i find the difficulty of transmission a bit difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to square with the idea that ebola is increasing 'exponentially' in africa, or projections of a million or more infections in the next few months.
