Ya they are both at specialized facilities in Atlanta and Maryland now which is what Nigeria did (treating at specialized facilities only) to contain it over the summer successfully. We could all take a lesson there: 22 cases, 900 quarantined and all nonessential travel restricted when it arrived Lagos mid July. Pretty drastic but they wiped it out before it spread. And they boarder Liberia.
I do feel for the nurses too (obviously). They did follow the instructions given to them and the chain of command unfortunately failed. The thing that erks me is that dumbass reporter who just came back from Liberia and was ordered to self-quarantine then left the house to go get her favorite soup from a local diner.
The prediction is around two dozen infected in the US when all is said and done so not very many. The incubation period sucks for sure and is the one of the main sources of anxiety. Personally, I'm very comforted to know that his family is almost out of the woods. Which means transmission in the earlier onset of signs is very containable.
It seems that the last days are when it is so highly contagious that you can actually get it from the droplets of the person's body fluids coming into contact with any vulnerable spot on your body or if you touch a surface with droplets and then touch a vulnerable spot on yourself (which they are officially calling "airborne and contact" transmission but its not as serious as it sounds since it is only in the most severe, final stages of infection).
Its such a complicated infection considering it lives in the semen for weeks but that the blood and plasma have antibodies immediately available to donate to other who are fighting the infection. It just adds the anxiety and uncertainty of it all.
What I DO NOT think is that it is going to used as a bio-weapon. Its too slow and containable for medically advanced countries. However I do think our enemies are watching America's response and behavior right now very closely and looking for the weak links should they manage to gain control of a real bioweapon.
This ebola scare has been a good practice run for the US as far as future possibilities of outbreaks down the road. And then specifically for the hobby, its been a good reminder to be more aware of sessioning when you aren't feeling very well. As has been said, cold and flu kill many more people per year than Ebola but Ebola has made us all more cognizant of how illnesses are transmitted. Just because you may not have a family or children to worry about getting sick doesn't mean that others don't. I think that is a really important concept to take away from all this: keep your cold, flu and/or ebola to yourself. Lol
That and that people can have disagreements without losing their cool.