It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled.
In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled.
The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems.
Yeah, it's just a total coincidence that any time now the Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence will have 0 Ebola patients, because they've done such a bang up job with their first 2. And that right now (this very minute if they're not late), Dallas County is discussing declaring a state of emergency. And the public lead in this, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is lying through his teeth just about every time he's at a microphone, in one telling case contradicting himself from one sentence to the next: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-ca...
Believing things are serious does not equal "border[ing] on panic". Neither panic nor Panglossian bromides are called for right now.
OK, bromides may be uncalled for. However, declaring a "State of Emergency" is hyperbolic.
There have been cases of Ebola in the UK and France, which were contained without causing the national panic that appears to have gripped the US.
One concern I have is that if this panic is allowed to gain enough political headway it will lead to expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions, mirroring those that created the TSA.
Not Duncan "Ebola Tourist" cases. In those two countries, plus Norway and Spain, they are all medevacs, along with 4 of the US cases. I.e. the hospitals knew ahead of time they'd be receiving a case and the people were sent to specialist wards.
And yet Spain's isolation failed, perhaps because the government closed the infectious disease ward some months earlier, and only restarted it on an emergency basis when the first missionary became sick. All we know is that their PPE protocols were not up to snuff if the stories about closing gaps with adhesive tape were correct.
I also just notice on Wikipedia as of today there's a nurse who treated the French patient who "developed a high fever and was transported to the same hospital for treatment for suspected Ebola" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_A...).
"expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions"
Specifically what? I'm not aware of any that would be "ineffective", or ones that would necessarily be "expensive" to the US. This is of course assuming "panic" enhanced by more Dallas failures, or other imports from West Africa does not grow massively.
How many Americans have to get and die of Ebola before "oppressive" policy decisions happen---as if the current clowns running the show at the national level would continence them?
It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled.
In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled.
The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems.
Keep calm and carry on.