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Pentagon Builds Units To Transport Ebola Patients
First time accepted submitter halfquibble52 writes As more U.S. troops head to West Africa, the Pentagon is developing portable isolation units that can carry up to 12 Ebola patients for transport on military planes. The Pentagon says it does not expect it will need the units for 3,000 U.S. troops heading to the region to combat the virus because military personnel will not be treating Ebola patients directly. Instead, the troops are focusing on building clinics, training personnel and testing patient blood samples for Ebola.
Sadly predictable response from US. And, if history (recent and farther past) is any indicator, it will not be to build clinics, but to perform crowd control / protect US interests in natural resources of the area (ahem, "spreading democracy"). Hopefully, this time will be different -- but then, the US probably would not be sending soldiers.
Hehehehe it says UNIT. Your mom enjoyed providing a nice warm wet place to slide my unit in last night.
It'll take a slap in the face for dimwit politicians to realize it - only then will it be too late to stop Ebola and we'll have to wait it out until the epidemic is over. For now it's not "PC" to quarantine, else the poor nurse goes batshit crazy.
Given the current political environment in our conflict with ISIS, I think resources should probably be put into preparing to counter a potential terrorist-weaponized version of Ebola. There seems to be a reasonable chance that with ISIS' newfound financial resources, the attempt could be made to create a weaponized genetically-modified version of the Ebola virus, perhaps even rendering it airborne-transmissible. If we encounter such a thing in the population, preparation for a military response to the perpetrators seems called for, if we can determine it is indeed engineered and what its origin is.
Oh wait. Attempts to determine design in biological structures are impossible and pseudoscience. They proved that in court in at Dover. The lawyer in the black robe said so.
(Hmm... couldn't resist)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Was bennett haselton there?
Hermetically sealed coffins
Why didn't they have something like this already, after all these years of talking about bioterrorism? You'd think that something like that would've been a good idea a while ago.
Anyhow, at least it seems like a decent idea, so it's better than a lot of things they spend money on.
Why is big government always in the news for combating ebola? Surely there are free market forces at work that are also fighting to save impoverished Africans.
Liberal media at work again!
Oh look, a freaking moron came out of the woodwork. I love how you skipped over mass exploitation, aparthied, segregation, slavery, and all the other shit that caused the issues you highlight so.....offensively
The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms. New cases don't announce themselves with a face-up card and a cube on a map. They arrive with aches and nausea, just like a thousand other ailments. If someone's at risk and starts feeling symptoms, are they going to voluntarily lock down their life for a week until a more accurate (and benign) diagnosis arrives? Of course not. They'll lie, say they're feeling great, then go out in public anyway.
Early and accurate detection is the key, not panicking every time someone gets a cough. If someone's at risk, encourage every report, but don't cause panic. After basic screening ("No, sir, erectile dysfunction is not a symptom of Ebola"), tell patients to be cautious and avoid contact with others. Make the patients feel like their conduct is the most important factor in protecting their neighbors. They're not just one of this week's overreactions. They're the center of attention, until their case is ruled out, like almost all such things are.
Ultimately, outbreaks like this only stop when there's either an effective vaccine/treatment, our when people can not or choose not to spread the disease to others. In the absence of the former, we must rely on others' good judgement to enact the latter. Panic is not conducive to that end.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"never let a good opportunity go to waste" - Pentagon. Not surprised that there are forces at work to use this epidemic as a chance to bring US one step closer to a military state. Good to know they have support on /. too.
Now all your kids can hold awesome Ebola parties ;)
Nobody gives a flying fuck...
That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
get Uber or Lyft to transport them?
That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
Convert Larry Ellison's island back to it's historical use, when we had no effective treatments for Hansen's Disease (Leprosy)?
Historically, Ellis and Angel Islands managed quarantine just fine for massive numbers of immigrants. It's a solvable problem to run a rolling quarantine.
Airstream had a solution a short few years ago:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/splendid-isolation-2482597/?no-ist
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" - R. Heinlein
It seems like a few decades ago people knew how to get things done. Here's how Medicare rolled out. Now consider Obamacare and all the web-site follies in the various states. It's a bit early in the game, but so far the world of typewriters, carbon-paper and rotary phones is making us look stupid.
Also, people were quarantined all the time back then. It was effective and non-controversial.
Ellis Island processed a maximum of 11,747 immigrants per day. One terminal of JFK International airport can handle over three times that many.
This is not a solution that scales easily. Quarantining 3,150 people isn't a big deal in itself, but they're scattered among millions of passengers traveling from everywhere else in the world, coming into a few hundred terminals across the country. Back when all immigration came in by ships to New York or California, there were convenient locations to put such facilities. Today, the scale of the problem is far larger than you seem to imagine.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Yeah, you put your "unit"(who the fuck calls it that btw) in her mouth. And then she chomped on it so hard your blood sprayed all over the room and you had to call an ambulance. I'm just surprised you can access WiFi and slashdot in the hospital. Lucky you.
Look, if it upsets you that much, post your address and I'll be glad to mail you a hankie. A nice pink one to go with your politics.
Maybe people are starting to figure out that the racists are on to something.
The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms.
So you're saying that people are so egotistical and self-centered that they don't care about anyone but themselves. Strange how not even 50 years ago we had mandatory quarantines and they worked. Sounds like to me we have a more serious problem then just "people not wanting to report symptoms" they're just hell bent on damning everyone else.
Om, nomnomnom...
They wouldn't spend money to save people ....
Time and a stable employer is needed for such stuff. Saddam had a few of his nuclear experts executed for taking too long and that sort of thing is going to be taken into account in the real world outside of Tom Clancy novels.
So don't rely on people to accurately report symptoms. Take a sample of their blood, regardless of how well they claim to have been feeling. You can tell from passport records whether they've travelled to or from one of the highly affected countries, so you don't even need them to honestly report where they've been recently, and if they've been there in the past three weeks, require a mandatory blood test. I've heard that a fairly recently developed test for this can be performed in under 15 minutes, requiring only a couple of drops of blood that can be obtained simply by pricking the person's finger.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
>How come they weren't the ones inventing modern techniligies abd colonizing Europe?
Well, first off - they did. At least twice. And Asia too - everyone on the planet is descended from the Africans who colonized the planet millenia ago.
More recently... My guess would be differences in the significance of warfare.
Medieval Europe was repeatedly conquered and reconquered by Christians and Muslims expanding from the Middle East, the so called cradle of civilization. Harsh, desert cultures forged in a world where they were perpetually on the knife-edge of survival, where losing a battle against raiders meant risking starvation, and as a result warfare was a serious kill-or-be-killed endeavor with survival always on the line. Whoever waged war best had the food, and everyone else obeyed them or starved.
Africa meanwhile was primarily tropical - food and water were always at hand, and raiding parties were an inconvenience rather than a serious threat to survival. Hence warfare could remain a primarily ritualistic endeavor. You raid me, I raid you, and so long as we don't die in the battle or have our favorite woman stolen, by next week it doesn't actually matter all that much who won - everybody still has plenty to eat and drink. The only real threat to your tribe is disease.
Now, put those two cultures into conflict, it seems pretty obvious that the desert culture will win - their warfare technology is centuries ahead of the competition. Now maybe you are inclined to rate a culture strictly on how well it wages war, me I tend to think that an aptitude for war doesn't necessarily reflect well on a culture.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But how many of those passengers are coming from nations fighting an Ebola outbreak?
Redirect all international flights from risky nations to a small number of quarantine zones (after all, if there's one Ebola patient on the plane they may all be infected). Then, once passengers are screened, they may proceed to their destination. If we have a sufficiently fast, cheap, and reliable Ebola screening test we need not even land the plane - just require all "at risk" incoming planes to carry a screening official who tests everyone on board in-flight before the plane is allowed to land. If a case is found then you'll know in plenty of time to redirect the plane to a quarantine zone.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So don't rely on people to accurately report symptoms. Take a sample of their blood, regardless of how well they claim to have been feeling. You can tell from passport records whether they've travelled to or from one of the highly affected countries, so you don't even need them to honestly report where they've been recently, and if they've been there in the past three weeks, require a mandatory blood test. I've heard that a fairly recently developed test for this can be performed in under 15 minutes, requiring only a couple of drops of blood that can be obtained simply by pricking the person's finger.
Blood tests don't detect Ebola reliably before symptoms manifest.
...since 2002, and the they are currently deployed into ebola outbreak areas. http://www.nyteknik.se/teknikn... (Article in swedish)
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
So these quarantine containers won't be needed by our troops being sent there, because they won't be working with people directly, just handling their bodily fluids. That's a relief!
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
That isn't how you deal with plagues.
Nigeria is the model currently for dealing with this disease. They quarantine people. Not only do they do that, but they quarantine everyone they came in contact with... period.
Your method of dealing with a virulent disease has worked... never.
Just fyi.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Really?
I would have thought that they would have had at least a couple since the Reston introduction in 1989 if not prior to that based on intelligence related to Soviet biowarfare research. Or during some of the concern about smallpox over the last 15 years.
Echoing MSM claptrap about `panic' is not `insightful.'
"because military personnel will not be treating Ebola patients directly"
Not all of the patients were treating prior patients. They contracted the disease when an infected person vomited on them or coughed on them or shook their hand. Yes, these are for the military troops. Who else will you be transporting 12 at a time back to the US?
Go back to Failbook, n00b.
"No, sir, erectile dysfunction is not a symptom of Ebola"
Good to know. My uhh friend can leave his 20+ year self-quarrantine now.
That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet. The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
I guess you missed the "travel ban" part.
The filters and suits have to work perfectly every time in the heat over days, weeks, months.
Thats the kind of work best left to experts or teams in place that have to learned to get to right over time.
Any break in needed skill set will allow for a NBC ready team to face some real issues.
Mix back in with people at home after 21 days? What about that small percentage that show an incubation longer than 21 days?
Thats a nice number to have to work out over time while been tested and re tested.
Perfect filters, cleaning and suits every time. Got that incubation isolation time perfect for all members returning too?
Lets hope the US sends its NBC expert teams with years of intensive training and the best equipment.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So you're saying that people are so egotistical and self-centered that they don't care about anyone but themselves.
Is this supposed to be some sort of surprise? This is basically the capitalist ideal. Always look out for number one. It's the example they get from the most successful members of our society, so why wouldn't they emulate it? The world's richest man is a convicted career criminal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Defense Department .. Elzea said the cost of the units couldn't be provided as the final contract for the project is still under negotiation .. Phoenix Air, which currently offers the only medically approved means of carrying Ebola patients at a cost of $200,000 a flight" ref
"The Pentagon says it does not expect it will need the units for 3,000 U.S. troops heading to the region to combat the virus..."
Haha, what? That line cracks me up.
"Open fire on the infected. Our magic guns that heal all wounds will solve this!"
Redirect all international flights from risky nations to a small number of quarantine zones
When I flew to and from Ghana, I went through London. Is Great Britain considered a "risky" nation? Should my flight of 100+ people be diverted because one person came from a place where a rare disease is somewhat less rare? If so, then you must also divert thousands of other flights. Soon the logistics of scale creep in, and you're processing a ridiculous number of passengers through this "small number" of quarantine sites.
Let's not discuss the cost of diverting so much travel and disrupting so many plans.
If we have a sufficiently fast, cheap, and reliable Ebola screening test...
...but we don't. We don't have anything remotely like that. Reliable testing takes a few days to get results. Faster screening is asking "do you have these symptoms", but since symptoms don't appear for a week after infection, it's often inaccurate.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"The washing, touching, and kissing of these bodies — typical in many West African burials — can be deadly. But prohibiting communities from properly honoring their dead ones — and thereby worsening their distrust in medical professionals—can be deadly, too. ref
Ghusl Al Mayyah (Washing the Body)
The Difficulty of Burying Ebola's Victims - Smithsonian
Ebola cremation ruling prompts secret burials in Liberia
Makes me wonder what the local governments in the region are doing to combat the outbreak, they do have governments in that part of the planet? If Ebola broke out in Texas for instance, a state of emergency would be declared then quarantine imposed on anyone within a ten miles of an Ebola victim. The situation would have been resolved within months. They do have governments in that part of the planet?
Or take the judgment away and you say, "You have been to the hotzone; therefore you have to go thru quarantine". We can't tell ebola symptoms from those of other things until its to late. We have already had cases were virtually asymptomatic people have arrived and than gotten sick at least once. So what type of error do we control for false negative or false positive. The consequences for a false positive are small we inconvenience someone for a few weeks. A false negative could have disastrous or at least expensive consequences (clean up, destruction of contaminated property, etc).
The entire thing is insane. The only conclusion one can reach is someone has a political agenda. Already we have arguably suffered more harm for persons arriving by air with ebola or persons arriving and later being suspected of possibly having ebola triggering huge costly efforts to identify all the others possible exposed, than any post 9/11 terrorism harms with air travel as a vector. Yet we are willing to run a huge dragnet and put people on secretive no fly lists for far more arbitrary individual liberty infringing and less predictive reasons than, hey this guy/gals has been in the ebola hot zone for the past month.
Its a little hard to listen to this public officials defend the NSA and TSA actions as necessary; while handing visas to folks from the epicenter of an terrible virulent disease outbreak and let citizens just come and go from their as they please on nothing more than a promise to call someone if they feel sick. It simply is not possible both of these policies can be rational and beneficial for our society.
Let me see if I got this straight. You are arguing that as we as a society have moved away from a capitalistic economic system, we have started to behave more according to the ideals of capitalism?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Hardly a 'Capitalist ideal' - the leaders in the Communist countries had the dachas and the teams of masseuses while the masses fought over the potato scraps... greed is independent of political BS
The Declaration of Independence sums it up best - Americans demanded the right to '_Life_, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness'. Threat to life precludes threat to liberty or pursuit of happiness.
Yes, as soon as the big government let loose on the reins of the FDA slowing down drug delivery it was revealed that 20+ private companies currently have Ebola drugs in the works... How many treatments for how many diseases are being held up until an FDA bureaucrat gets his back scratched real special?
His method worked great to stop the SARS outbreak in Toronto.
And SARS was much more difficult to contain than Ebola since you were infectious before showing symptoms.
Hardware:Take a small micro with BLE, add a temp sensor, put in a wristwatch style case with some batteries.
Software: once an hour it reads your temp and pushes it to your smartphone.
Emails your temps to public health every hour so they know it is working.
If the temp goes too high the email is flagged if it goes to low aka the watch is not on the person.
Give them two so they can recharge one at night when they sleep and one during the day.
No need for locking up health care workers that are not sick.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
I guess you missed the "travel ban" part.
How well is our travel ban on mexicans working?
If SARS was contagious before symptoms, and people weren't quarantined, it seems much more like dumb luck stopped the outbreak, rather than relying on people to report symptoms and self-isolate, or whatever.
You're forgetting outbreaks also stop when all the hosts are exhausted. So if people cannot be trusted to act prudently, then revoke their travel privileges.
Seriously, fuck that lunatic nurse in NYC and the MSM for giving her a spotlight.
That's fine... but as was concluded above, people would lie about their symptoms anyways if they thought they might be quarantined. The point of the blood test would be not to find people who aren't symptomatic, it would be to find people who *HAVE* had symptoms, but do not necessarily yet realize they might have contracted the illness because the symptoms haven't seemed particularly bad to them yet, or would lie about their symptoms because they don't want to face quarantine. As I said, this test could take only about 15 minutes per person. If you are only doing this as you go with people who are traveling from countries where it is epidemic (which you can tell from their passport, even if they are not directly travelling from that country), then it should be entirely manageable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It makes more sense to restrict travel into those countries first of all. All personnel wishing to volunteer should consider the potential risk they may pose to a healthy ebola free country upon return.
What the hell is the Pentagon doing transporting victims back into our country? No one in the federal government is doing what makes sense according to the science at least as being reported. Because its unclear as to when the virus actually becomes contagious, it makes all the sense in the world that we must quarantine all of those who have put themselves at risk and fail to act intelligently upon return to a healthy country as demontrated by Spencer and start restricting travel into those western African countries. PERIOD.
Your method of dealing with a virulent disease has worked... never.
Meh. Virulence (severity of effects) is only one of two relevant factors when trying to figure out how to manage a disease. The other is communicability, and that, in fact, is the variable that matters most when you decide to what extent quarantine is necessary or appropriate. The more communicable the disease the more important it is to isolate those that have it, unless its virulence is so low that you just don't care.
Ebola, however, is one of the least communicable diseases possible. Literally. If it were much less infectious it would just die out on its own.
Infectious disease modelling uses several values to describe communicability, but the most important one is basic reproduction number, called R0. Diseases with an R0 of <1 will die out on their own because the number specifies the average number of new infections that will arise from an infected person in "normal" society. The exact value of R0 is society-dependent. Measles, for example, has an R0 of between 12 and 18, lower in societies with greater personal space and higher in societies with less personal space, because measles is transmitted via aerosols.
Recent studies put R0 for Ebola in the 1-2 range, in Africa. Given the way in which it's transmitted, the highest infection rates are in societies with poor sanitation infrastructure and/or practices, like Liberia, and even there Ebola is barely able to reproduce enough to grow. This is why it's been hanging around with only periodic, mostly small, outbreaks for 40+ years. The same recent studies say that all that's necessary to stop the outbreak completely is to reduce the new cases by 50%. That's all, and Ebola's poor communicability will mean that the outbreak will collapse.
I posit -- though we'll never have the numbers needed to evaluate it statistically -- that Ebola's R0 in developed countries with good sanitation infrastructure is <<1. Notice that so far the only infections that have occurred in the US were of health care workers treating the ill, and doing so with inadequate care. None of the family members or other people the infected individuals have come in contact with have contracted the disease, in spite of the fact that there have been hundreds. The sparse data so far argues for an R0 of ~0.01 in the US.
This means that quarantining people who may have come into brief contact with an Ebola patient is unnecessarily restrictive and -- as the GP explained quite clearly -- very likely to be counterproductive.
It doesn't make sense to use the same response for every disease any more than it makes sense to give the same medicine for every disease. Let the professionals who know what they're doing devise the protocols for limiting the spread. And what they -- very sensibly! -- recommend is simply to quarantine those actually diagnosed, and to have their caregivers take appropriate precautions against infection. Barring a mutation that dramatically increases the communicability of the disease, that will be perfectly adequate.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What is their goal here?
To transport folks who are already for sure sick,
or to transport a mix of known and questionable cases.
It would be unfortunate to turn the later into all are certainly infected.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
- Rahm Emanuel
http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...
for Apollo astronauts, when paralytic fear of Mutant Space Alien Disesases!! ruled, the returning astronauts were hustled into Airstream campers aboard the recovery ships for several days.
never did hear how they selected the third guy to sleep on the convertible table...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet. The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
I guess you missed the "travel ban" part.
How well is our travel ban on mexicans working?
We haven't ever banned travel from México. There are lots that come to the US legally every day. We just have a half-hearted response to catch those who are here illegally. More are moving from the US to México than the other way around anyway since their economy is doing better than the US'. Also, it is a bit difficult to walk or drive from Africa to the US.
"testing patient blood samples" The only way to get more direct is to kiss the patients.
Governments should be in charge ultimately protecting the public. If they don't want to stop this ebola before it turns into a global pandemic, then they should let each individual decide for the rest of us. Also, they shouldn't care who ventures out to go into these countries as health care volunteers or care when or in what condition these people return to the country in.
Balls to the walls though, they should quarantine every cowboy and cowgirl who goes to these stricken countries voluntarily or not, putting themselves at risk and then who seem to cry out about rights violated when the public wants to feel safe when they return to this country, albeit, maybe we should feel proud of their careers' new accolades, but shitfire dude.. this is not the common cold we are talikng about here.
That is also why it is important that these people be screened before they are even allowed into these infected countries to be certain of their motives for national security sake. GOOD GOLLY> How not to stop an ebola outbreak: [ Have screeners telling patients who may in fact be infected with ebola to be cautious and go on their way, just avoid contact with others??] doesn't surprise me that this is even on the table these days.
If it was really a problem that Obama wanted to stop, then Obama SHOULD shut down the border, and stop planes from flying in from Ebola countries.
If it's not really a problem at all, then why do we need a Ebola czar? A task force under the control and authority of the Pentagon?
Too many odd things going on.
and now youre spreading your ignorance on Ebola.
What, global warming denialism wasnt enough for you, now you gotta chime in on infectious diseases?
So now you doubt the disease experts too?
One Ebola patient on the plane will infect precisely nobody unless he or she is symptomatic. Even if he or she is, any infection will be limited to the next seat or two. How many people did the Dallas guy infect, considering he was sent home after he had symptoms? Two health care workers who had had inadequate protection. That means he infected precisely nobody he encountered under normal conditions.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Bullshit. Nigeria quarantined people who had already been identified as potential victims. They were on a plane with someone who was suffering from ebola, or had been in contact with one of the people from the plane. Your method doesn't do squat for unidentified victims.
The travel bans to Cuba never worked, why would you think they'd work here?
Learn to love Alaska
Granted it seems the odds of a minimally symptomatic person infecting people in passing is low - but it's not zero. And if your only effective tool in fighting a contagion is quarantine, you need to weigh the risks carefully. For now drastic measures are unlikely to be necessary, but as more people become infected it becomes increasingly important to lower the odds that the disease will spread. An average infection rate of one additional person per patient is acceptable so long as there's only a handful of patients - but contagions spread exponentially, and the more people who have it the more important it becomes to make sure that the base of that exponent is as small as possible.
That said it seems like Ebola is probably not going to be a major threat this time around - provided we stay on top of it. But sooner or later we're going to get hit by something truly nasty, and Ebola makes for a good not-quite-dry run of quarantine considerations.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And what have you said in the past? Oh that's right...no one knows because you're too much of a fucking coward to put even a fake name of your posts. And from that position you presume to judge me?
Find something high to jump off from.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms. New cases don't announce themselves with a face-up card and a cube on a map. They arrive with aches and nausea, just like a thousand other ailments.
Then quarantine anybody who is coming from West Africa, or from any country that doesn't also quarantine anybody coming from West Africa. Problem solved.
Or, forcibly quarantine anybody who self-identifies as being at risk and give them a check for $1M for their inconvenience at the same time. Now there isn't incentive to avoid detection. Obviously that amount can be adjusted to whatever amount is effective.
If Ebola gets loose the costs will be astronomical. It doesn't make sense to make saving money a priority when preventing it from breaking out. That means R&D into a vaccine, treatments, as well as caring for people who are potential carriers. They shouldn't be treated as if they're being punished for something, but that doesn't mean that it is wise to just trust everybody to not ride the subway.