Uh-oh, even Chris Matthews is questioning Dear Leader’s veracity ~

On MSNBC’s Hardball tonight, host Chris Matthews argued with Obamacare architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel about President Obama saying it was “unlikely” that an Ebola case would strike the U.S.
 
“Obama said it was unlikely. It has happened. It’s here,” Matthews said.

 
Yes Chris – it IS here ~
 
“Texas patient has deadly Ebola virus” ~

A Texas patient who recently traveled to Liberia has the first confirmed case of the deadly disease in the US — and investigators are trying to figure out if he infected others, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.
 
 
The patient was diagnosed with the deadly disease at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, where he is being kept in isolation.

Source: New York Post

 
“Isolation.” Don’t you just feel so relieved?

The “critically ill” person arrived in the U.S. from Liberia on Sept. 20, but did not exhibit suspicious symptoms until four or five days later, Friedan said.
 
On Sept. 26, the patient sought care, but was not placed in isolation at the hospital until two days later.
 
Health officials are now looking to, “identify all people who may have had contact with the patient while he could’ve been infectious,” Friedan said.
 
Those people will be isolated and monitored for 21 days, until the incubation period is over.

Source: New York Post

How many more “critically ill” people might just be flying into the country? How many more individuals might they have been in contact with this guy? How long before the whole country has to be quarantined??!
 
OK. OK. Let’s not panic. Afterall, we’re assured that the virus isn’t transmitted through the air ~

Health officials insisted that because Ebola can only be transmitted through bodily fluids after symptoms start showing, the virus posed no threat to other passengers on the patient’s airplane.

Source: New York Post

 
But I heard Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) – who just happens to be a medical doctor – being interviewed on a radio show last week, and he said that everything he had seen to date was inconclusive; that airborne transmission could not be ruled out.

Early last week WHO (World Health Organization) issued a sobering forecast ~

World Health Organization researchers issued a dire new forecast for the Ebola epidemic Tuesday, one that sees 20,000 cases by November, much sooner than previous estimates. And 70 percent of patients are dying.
 
That’s a big increase over the previous estimates of a 50 percent fatality rate.
 
“These data indicate that without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from Ebola virus disease are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months,” the WHO Ebola Response Team, led by Dr. Christopher Dye, wrote in a report rushed into print by the New England Journal of Medicine.

This particular article, at NBC News, seems to contradict itself with regard to how contagious the disease actually is. First ~

It remains clear that close contact with an infected person or their bodily fluids are needed for infection to happen. There’s nothing mysterious about how Ebola spreads, and it’s not as easily transmitted as influenza or measles.

 
But a few paragraphs later, these words aren’t very comforting ~

Caregivers and health care workers have a high risk. More than 300 health care workers have been infected, and half of them have died.
The most common first symptoms are fever and fatigue. Hemorrhage — the most feared symptom — is seen in fewer than 5 percent of patients, although about 18 percent had unexplained bleeding, the WHO team said.
 
“There will be more epidemics and outbreaks of Ebola and other new or re-emerging infections.”

And this headline is downright chilling: CDC WARNS FUNERAL HOMES IN U.S. TO PREPARE FOR EBOLA VICTIMS ~

The Centers for Disease Control is advising funeral homes in the United States on how to handle the remains of Ebola victims, although officials are keen to stress that the development is not a cause for alarm.
 
A three page list of recommendations instructs funeral workers to wear protective gear while handling Ebola victims, as well as warning them not to carry out autopsies or to embalm corpses.

 
 
So there you go. No “cause for alarm” at all.