The story of the spread of the Ebola virus into the USA is spreading so fast it is possible that the story may have expanded by the time you read this post. As readers surely know, a man traveling from Liberia to the USA spread the Ebola virus into the USA. Amazingly, when he went to a hospital ER for treatment in Dallas, Texas and told them he had come from a nation in the Ebola hot-zone, they didn’t take his condition seriously and sent him home (to expose more people). It has been reported as I write that a second Texas person may now have Ebola, but it has not yet been confirmed (first link). The second link reports that a third possible US case of Ebola in the USA is suspected in Hawaii. Initially, the Liberian man who spread Ebola to the USA led to health authorities saying that perhaps a dozen people may have been exposed, then the number went to 20…and to 80 and to 100 the last time I saw a news program update. The ambulance drivers who transported the Ebola man are now in quarantine as is the ambulance itself. Other people the man exposed are now quarantined as well.
The presence of Ebola in the USA and the realization that airline passengers could be innocently and unsuspectingly exposed to Ebola has led to stock market fears about Ebola’s effects on the global economy. Airline stocks have, understandably, been hit hard as people may not decide to travel by air until there are strict Ebola prevention protocols in place (third link). As this fear emerged, an article appeared in the 10-2-14 USA Today that sought to minimize people’s fears about being exposed to Ebola on airliners (fourth link). However, the final paragraph in that article was hardly reassuring as it acknowledged the risk of getting Ebola on an airliner, however small right now, is real.
The lack of Ebola-prevention protocols in global travel is appalling. Why aren’t passengers from nations with Ebola outbreaks being quarantined for a set number of days to make sure they are Ebola-free before they are allowed to travel out of those nations? That is a “no brainer” as far as I’m concerned. If such protocols had been in place in Liberia, the infected man there would never have been allowed to get on a plane to Brussels in Europe and then to two other flights to Dallas as his Ebola symptoms would have been caught in time to stop him from traveling. It is possible that this one case of an infected Ebola passenger on an airliner may yet lead to all the passengers on all the flights he traveled on having to be checked for Ebola as well as everyone they had contact with in the last week or so. That total would quickly run into the thousands in many nations. I hope it doesn’t get that bad.
The fifth link highlights the disgust by some in the medical community that the Obama administration and US health authorities are still not taking adequate measures to stop the spread of Ebola. It features a doctor who dressed in a bio-hazard suit at the Atlanta airport to highlight the fact that Ebola security measures are not yet in place. An interview I just saw with health experts on Al Jazeera America a short time ago confirmed that not only the USA but the entire world community is not taking this threat seriously yet. They said the WHO was saying it was not responsible for setting up a global preventative program and that the UN Security Council may have to meet to create global security protocols to make sure there is a global response in place to stop the disease from spreading quickly among the nations via airline passengers and global commerce. Although I could not find the link to a story about it in a web search, I saw a TV interview on either CNN, Fox News or Al Jazeera America that confirmed how lax US authorities are about this growing crisis. It was an interview with a Miami doctor who was returning from one of the Ebola “hot zone” nations in Africa. She said she was expecting to be screened by health officials before she would be allowed to re-enter the USA, but was surprised to see that no screening program existed at all! She was allowed to walk right through the airport back into the USA without any checks or questions. That means lots of other travelers from the Ebola hot-zone nations have also walked right into the USA and many other nations around the world with no checks or questions.
Some experts are warning that the rate of transmission of Ebola within the hot-zone African nations is increasing steadily and that as many as a million deaths from Ebola could be possible by early 2015 if the continued rate of transmission growth occurs. Although the death rate in those nations grows steadily, some media articles have noted that health-monitoring systems are so inadequate or non-existent in those African nations that the actual Ebola death toll is surely much higher than reported. At some point the rate of transmission will grow exponentially if major protective responses are not implemented soon. If the Ebola plague really does get as bad as some health experts predict, it will obviously be spreading to many other nations. Indeed, at some point, residents of the infected hot-zone African nations may flee via the jungle into other nations without telling anyone to save their lives. They may already be doing so. I wonder how many of them are already infected.
Jesus Christ warned that “pestilences” will occur during the latter-day period of time that would immediately precede his Second Coming. Obviously, he did not mean the localized, routine level of pestilences that have occurred throughout human history. He had to mean pestilences (plagues) on a much wider scale than usual for them to be a meaningful sign. This Ebola plague could eventually kill millions…or more…in many nations. Health experts are warning about this danger, but the governments of the world are doing little or nothing meaningful yet to stop its spread. Let’s hope they start doing so soon. If they don’t, the number of deaths could become astronomical at some point, and global commerce will come to as screeching halt. Maybe you might want to call your elected representatives to put some pressure on them for their governments to start acting responsibly instead of sticking their head in the sand about this threat.
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/01/texas-ebola-patient/16525649/
- http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/02/patient-with-possible-ebola-symptoms-in-isolation-unit-at-hawaii-hospital/
- http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2014/10/01/ebola-fears-infect-travel-stocks/
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/01/ebola-flights-screening-travel-airlines/16527697/
- http://www.ajc.com/news/news/doctor-boards-flight-in-ebola-protection-suit-to-p/nhZk8/
