Ebola Patient Coming To U.S.

Ebola hysteria: An epic, epidemic overreaction
When even CNN says people are overreacting, you know it's really over.

You did get a group of physicians criticizing the cdc. Secondly nurses are healthcare professionals. Nursing and medicine are two very different fields, they both are very competent in epidemiology just in different ways.

We will now tune back to our regularly scheduled attempt at making it seem like Russia is being an aggressor and trying to start CommieNazi World War III. Also: Obama is in collusion with this plot, as he's the manchurian candidate. To you, Bob.

Tell that to the Ukraine, or Georgia.

It is amazing how changing a single vowel, precisely placed, can alter the entire meaning of a sentence.

Hi. btw

THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAI....oh wait. You meant the other Georgia ~_~ Damn 'murica Geography

Lets hope Ebola didnt get into Palestine.

Heads of nursing unions =/= nurses.

Which group of physicians?

Your definition of competence must vary greatly from what I consider it to be.

Going to just have to disagree on the last bit.

As for the "criticism" you're talking about: it's scientifically and medically unfounded.

I can assure you that a Doctor of Nursing didn't toil through a doctoral program simply to assist a physician...

Sorry but a federal agency isn't always right. Academics and public health professionals have every right to scrutinize a federal public health agency. The fact that academics and healthcare professionals have come forward criticizing the CDC is pretty significant. It hardly is "unscientific."

However it isn't, and the criticism is unfounded and very unscientific.

Unfounded and unscientific according to whom?

The criticism doesn't match up with the facts of how Ebola spreads, it's ridiculous to assert that a full hazmat suit is necessary for it, when it most certainly is not.

Facts according to who?

The WHO, all the research done on Ebola, everything we know about the virus.

The pandering to the unfounded fear is disgusting and unwarranted.

So what you are essentially saying is that federal agencies are the final authorities on scientific matters. Additionally, academics and other bodies have no authority or basis for legitimate opinions.

Makes perfect sense.

But at least one company — the city’s main supplier of body bags — is ready to pitch in should the outbreak turn into an all-out crisis.

“We have more than 100,000 bags on hand,” assured company vice president Basheer Mahar.

NY doctor back from Guinea has Ebola, 1st in city

NEW YORK (AP) An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, becoming the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday urged residents not to be alarmed by the doctor's Ebola diagnosis, even as they described him riding the subway, taking a cab and bowling. De Blasio said all city officials followed "clear and strong" protocols in their handling and treatment of him.

"We want to state at the outset that New Yorkers have no reason to be alarmed," de Blasio said. "New Yorkers who have not been exposed are not at all at risk."

The doctor, Craig Spencer, a member of Doctors Without Borders who had been working in Guinea, returned six days ago and reported Thursday morning coming down with a 103-degree fever and diarrhea. He was being treated in an isolation ward at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, a designated Ebola center.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will do a further test to confirm the initial results, has dispatched an Ebola response team to New York, and the city's disease detectives have been tracing Spencer's contacts to identify anyone who may be at risk.

The city's health commissioner, Mary Bassett, said Spencer's fiancee and two friends had been quarantined but showed no symptoms.

President Barack Obama spoke to Cuomo and de Blasio Thursday night and offered the federal government's support. He asked them to stay in close touch with Ron Klain, his "Ebola czar," and public health officials in Washington.

In the days before Spencer fell ill, he went on a 3-mile (5-kilometer) jog, went to the High Line park, rode the subway and, on Wednesday night, got a taxi to a Brooklyn bowling alley. Bassett said he felt fatigued Wednesday but not feverish until Thursday morning.

Health officials say the chances of the average New Yorker contracting Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, are slim. Someone can't be infected just by being near someone who is sick with Ebola. Someone isn't contagious unless he is sick.

Bassett said the probability was "close to nil" that Spencer's subway ride would pose a risk. Still, the bowling alley was closed as a precaution, and Spencer's Harlem apartment was cordoned off. The Department of Health was on site across the street from the apartment building Thursday night, giving out information to area residents.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed about 4,800 people. In the United States, the first person diagnosed with the disease was a Liberian man, who fell ill days after arriving in Dallas and later died, becoming the only fatality. None of his relatives who had close contact with him got sick. Two nurses who treated him were infected and are hospitalized.

According to a rough timeline provided by city officials, Spencer felt fatigue Wednesday and when he felt worse Thursday he and his fiancee made a joint call to authorities to detail his symptoms and his travels. EMTs in full Ebola gear arrived and took him to Bellevue in an ambulance surrounded by police squad cars.

Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization, said per the guidelines it provides its staff members on their return from Ebola assignments, "the individual engaged in regular health monitoring and reported this development immediately." Travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone must report in with health officials daily and take their temperature twice a day, as Spencer did.

Spencer, 33, works at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. He had not seen any patients or been to the hospital since his return, the hospital said in a statement, calling him a "dedicated humanitarian" who "went to an area of medical crisis to help a desperately underserved population."

Four American aid workers, including three doctors, were infected with Ebola while working in Africa and were transferred to the U.S. for treatment in recent months. All recovered.

Health care workers are vulnerable because of close contact with patients when they are their sickest and most contagious. In West Africa this year, more than 440 health workers have contracted Ebola and about half have died.

Spencer is from Michigan and attended Wayne State University School of Medicine and Columbia's University Mailman School of Public Health.

According to his Facebook page, he left for West Africa via Brussels in mid-September. A photo shows him in full protective gear. He returned to Brussels Oct. 16.