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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Better get your ebola shots

Better get your ebola shots

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Welp, looks like we are all going to die.

A patient in a Dallas hospital has been confirmed to have the deadly Ebola virus, News 8 has learned.

That person has been held in “strict isolation” as he or she was evaluated for possible exposure to the virus.

This is the first case of Ebola confirmed in the United States.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas said the patient was admitted based on symptoms and “recent travel history.”

On second thought probably not. Advanced countries have good protocols to fight diseases like ebola. We can track his or her contacts to identify everyone we need to watch, we have no tradition of handling messy corpses with bare hands (yech), there is lots of trust in the medical establishment and most major hospitals have good resources for isolating infectious patients. My only concern is that some idiot will get the anti-vaxxers riled up like Jude Law in Contagion, or the virus mutates in some crazy way. Otherwise this first case of ‘wild’ ebola in the U.S. should be one of the last.

If the patient was symptomatic in the airport then tracking back every contact will be hell, but authorities can still do it. Just about every square inch of an airport is monitored by cameras and passenger manifests are easy to check.

Reader Interactions

151Comments

  1. 1.

    PhoenixRising

    Don’t panic. DOD and the public health service are on this, at the other end of the pipe, and CDC has a plan.

    As my friend who I dropped at the airport just now–whose orders say “Report with your go bag for 60 days in sunny West Africa”–explained to us last night, cynicism and broken politics are about to reap the whirlwind. This is one of those times when you wish that trust in government programs weren’t lower than the favorable rating of syphilis. Because we’re going to need cooperation to stop this thing.

  2. 2.

    Belafon

    Hey Christians. I recommend you call congregate in churches and pray to make this go away. If someone starts bleeding, just pray harder, it means it’s working.

  3. 3.

    Someguy

    Yep, nothing to see here, move along.

    Thank goodness that all the people coming into and out of the U.S. only come through our well-policed, heavily monitored airports.

    Otherwise, we might be really fucked.

  4. 4.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Just a thought…we do have the ability to cancel commercial flights in and out of the afflicted countries until this stops. No need to cancel aid or military assistance flights, just commercial.

    With that in mind, WHY THE FUCK HAVEN’T WE?

    ETA:

    If the patient was symptomatic in the airport then tracking back every contact will be hell, but authorities can still do it.

    In America they can, maybe, if all the stuff is working. In Africa? You ever been in a African airport? Last time I was there I walked through a metal detector that was alerting at full volume and they arrested me…oh wait, that never happened because there was nobody staffing it and I just kept walking and boarded my plane.

    Sweet Jesus, just close off flights already.

  6. 6.

    Belafon

    @Someguy: Yeah, look at all of those people swimming from Africa into Mexico before coming across the border into Texas. We’re lucky the guy made it to the airport so that he would know to be checked out.

  7. 7.

    Violet

    I thought one of the concerns was that the virus could morph somehow into an airborne version. Is that possible?

  9. 9.

    Botsplainer

    I am NOT going to look at Free Republic – those candyasses are probably already squealing for shootdown interdiction of commercial flights originating anywhere overseas, just in case some drawling piece of trailer trash might ever get a sniffle.

    My wife is flying to South Africa in a month for some dives in Mozambique and some safari stuff in RSA. Her return flight is coming through Dakar and she’s already nervous.

  12. 12.

    burnspbesq

    And of course no frequent travelers are hoping that Karma pays a visit to some TSA personnel. Oh no, no siree. Don’t want anyone to die. Scaring the bejeebers out of them, on the other hand …

  13. 13.

    Josie

    It would be helpful to know his “travel history” – which flights and which airports were involved. I’m sure that he will be sufficiently isolated once in the hospital. It’s the prior contacts that are worrying.

  15. 15.

    Tommy

    @PhoenixRising: My parents worked for the DoD. If things went sideways I can assure you would want them in command. Other people I know now work for said, again I have faith in them.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    @Violet:

    From what people were saying in the previous thread, it’s possible but not very probable. One of the issues right now is that people tend to misunderstand what “airborne” is — people who are coughing can send the virus up to 10 feet away, but that doesn’t count as airborne, from a scientific standpoint. (IIRC, it’s because the virus is carried in microdroplets of the sputum/bodily fluid, not by air particles, so it’s not truly “airborne.” Or something like that.)

  18. 18.

    The Other Chuck

    @Violet:

    I thought one of the concerns was that the virus could morph somehow into an airborne version. Is that possible?

    The amount of change such a mutation would require to the basic structure of the virus would be akin to a lizard hatching out of its egg and having fully functional wings. It’s never been seen before. A more plausible mutation could be a less immediately lethal version of the virus or one with an even longer incubation period (ebola’s is already pretty long on the high end).

  19. 19.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I thought one of the concerns was that the virus could morph somehow into an airborne version. Is that possible?

    @Violet: Reston variant already did. So far limited to monkeys. Of course, at one point Ebola itself was limited to monkeys.

  20. 20.

    Botsplainer

    @Josie:

    It would be helpful to know his “travel history” – which flights and which airports were involved. I’m sure that he will be sufficiently isolated once in the hospital. It’s the prior contacts that are worrying.

    Happily, skeeter season is nearly over.

  23. 23.

    Morat20

    Ebola is transmitted through fluids. Thanks to HIV, Americans have internalized things like “Don’t stick your bare hands into someone else’s blood” and “don’t handle corpses with your bare hands” and “don’t provide medicine with your bare hands”.

    TSA guys wear latex gloves, EMT’s wear latex gloves…..transmitting Ebola at all in the US is pretty chancy.

    It’s as hard to catch as HIV or herpes. Frankly, it’s the fact that dead people are still contagious and third world corpse handling doesn’t tend to involve gloves. Add that in to needle re-use, and that’s why it’s a problem in Africa and more of a medical curiosity here.

  26. 26.

    boatboy_srq

    @Hawes: I’m waiting for some wingnut to call ebola a weaponized pathogen inflicted on Good Right-Thinking Caucasian Heterosexual Xtian Ahmurrcans™ by the WH because Voter Fraud™ wasn’t thorough enough.

  30. 30.

    mai naem mobile

    I am not surprised. Theres a lot of west africans in the Metro Phx area. I figure its just a matter of time till there’s a case diagnosed here.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    If the person is a Hispanic Muslim, the wingnuts will go crazy. Actually they are already crazy, so not sure how much worse, it will be.

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    If the person is a Hispanic Muslim, the wingnuts will go crazy.

    The wingnuts went crazy a long time ago. This may amp up the crazy by a small amount, but it’s basically beyond measurement already anyway.

  41. 41.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Someguy:

    Ebola is nasty, but your risk of contracting it is extremely low (at least until it goes airborne, which as others have pointed out is possible but unlikely). Anyone bringing it in by wading across the Rio Grande will probably be dead before they can reach a major population center. The rest of us just have to be sure we don’t go around hugging people bleeding from random spots on their bodies.

    I’m less worried about it going airborne than I am about it reducing its virulence enough to not kill its victims so quickly, so that it has time to build up a reservoir in the population. To me, that’s the thing to worry about.

  42. 42.

    Anoniminous

    @Violet:

    It’s possible, in the sense that’s what organisms “do,” i.e., evolve. It’s highly unlikely with this outbreak since, at the moment, Ebola isn’t under environmental pressure to evolve to in that direction, it’s doing quite nicely at the moment.

  44. 44.

    catclub

    @Baud: When the deaths from the latest ebola were about 600, someone noted that 72 hours gets you about the same number of measles deaths worldwide.

    Not sure what the equivalence is now. Maybe two weeks to equal the total of all ebola deaths.

    Still rare.

    The thing that scares me is how worried US citizens are. Something like 40% have death from terrorist attack as a top worry. Bites from rabid sharks is probably more common.

  46. 46.

    monkeyfister

    Time to seal that Texas border, and let them secede. I demand a fence! Here’s our one chance to be rid of that Texas problem once and for all.

    Clearly, Obamahitler will use this to stop the elections, declare Martial Law, and put them all in FEMA camps to face Death Panels.

  47. 47.

    Corner Stone

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    The rest of us just have to be sure we don’t go around hugging people bleeding from random spots on their bodies.

    It seems to me like you’re trying to make some kind of moral judgement on necrophilia. Why all the hate? Dead people are people too, my friends.

  49. 49.

    shortstop

    @monkeyfister:

    Time to seal that Texas border, and let them secede. I demand a fence! Here’s our one chance to be rid of that Texas problem once and for all.

    I like the cut of your jib.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Corner Stone:

    You know, there are so many guys killing college co-eds, I thought you were referring to the one who was killed in L.A. You were probably referring to the one in Virginia who was just arrested, weren’t you?

  57. 57.

    shortstop

    @Baud: It’s all about a false sense of control, isn’t it? The classic example is people who are afraid to fly but confident in their cars. What they’re really scared of is having no participation in flying the plane.

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    Did the CDC really just state that “We will control spread of ebola in US” like the MSNBC chyron is saying they did?
    Do they want people rioting in the fucking streets?

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @shortstop:
    It’s a particularly ridiculous criticism, too. It’s not as if this is one of the people we sent to help deal with the Ebola outbreak who brought it back, so the only connection to us sending people to Africa is that Ebola is involved in both. It’s typical wingnut “reasoning”: Obama tried to do something about X, X is now a bigger problem than it was before, therefore Obama caused X to get worse.

  62. 62.

    RaflW

    I blame Rick Perry. This terrible, threatening outbreak is happening on his watch, right there in the most excellent Republic of Texas that he’s so smartly and nerd glasses-ly leading.

  63. 63.

    Violet

    @shortstop: I think it’s also that the plane is in the sky and if something goes wrong it falls out of the sky. Humans aren’t built to fly so doing so is kind of outside our comfort zone in general.

    If it’s only about control, those folks are going to have a hard time with self-driving cars.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I think they’ve already started calling it the eboma virus.

    @shortstop:

    I can sympathize with the idea of having a sense of control. But there’s not much difference in sense of control between dieing from flu and dieing from ebola (or shark attack or lightening or whatever). Yet many people still can’t calculate risk accurately.

  66. 66.

    Violet

    @Corner Stone:

    Did the CDC really just state that “We will control spread of ebola in US” like the MSNBC chyron is saying they did?
    Do they want people rioting in the fucking streets?

    The CDC probably did not say that. But yes, MSNBC wants people rioting in the streets. Good for ratings.

  67. 67.

    Anoniminous

    @catclub:

    True. However measles is embedded in the human population and has reached accommodation with humans and humans with measles. When measles made the jump to humans, possibly in the Antonine Era of the Roman Empire, it is estimated to have killed 30% of the population. The big concern, among the people I talk to, is preventing ebola from becoming endemic to west Africa. If it does then preventing a global outbreak becomes almost impossible.

  69. 69.

    PhoenixRising

    @Corner Stone: It’s not inaccurate for the CDC to claim that we can contain the spread of Ebola in the US.

    Now, whether the black helicopters can gather up everyone on the flight from Lagos to DFW (this is speculative on my part, not data from a source) PLUS everyone who used that restroom at DFW PLUS the cabs they got into PLUS their families…and put all those people under a 21 day quarantine…without a political crisis? That’s another question.

    We know what works: geographic analysis of dispersal, quarantine and good nursing care.

    Just don’t lick the inside of the urinals at major airports, and you’ll be fine.

  71. 71.

    Morat20

    @Anoniminous:
    Based on what logical reasoning? It’s not airborne. It’s quite hard to transmit, as diseases go.

    How is it going to go global? Is there going to be an outbreak of bare-handed corpse handling? If Ebola becomes endemic to West Africa, will the rest of the world start re-using needles and forgoing latex gloves?

    You could plop a guy with Ebola down in every major city in the US and Europe, and the odds of each ‘patient zero’ successfully infecting even ONE person is pretty freaking low, because medical professionals wear gloves and masks (especially if the patient is randomly bleeding), and everyone who handles the body AFTER it dies until it goes in the ground or gets burned wears latex gloves.

    We’re not facing an HIV epidemic, and people are contagious with HIV for a LOT longer than they are with Ebola.

  72. 72.

    shortstop

    @Violet: @Baud: Yep, part of it is a sense of familiarity, I guess. Flu is white-breadish and ebola is exotic. But even then there’s a control factor: I can go down to the drugstore and get a flu shot right now, and tell myself every little thing gonna be all right. I’d be wrong, but I could do it.

  74. 74.

    shortstop

    @Roger Moore: Plus, when did they go — last week? Why isn’t this under control!? It should be completely eradicated by now. These troops clearly are mirroring Obama’s lack of work ethic, probably under direct orders from him.

  76. 76.

    Texas Dem

    I live in Dallas, and you wouldn’t believe how quickly panic spread through the office when the news hit this afternoon. Widespread lack of trust in government (of the kind I often hear at work) is going to feed the panic. A significant number of folks just won’t believe anything the CDC (or Obama) tells them. A few more cases and you’ll start seeing panic buying. Things are about to get r-e-a-l ugly folks.

  77. 77.

    Botsplainer

    @Josie:

    Oh goodness. I hadn’t even thought about mosquitoes. Thankfully, cold weather will soon be our friend.

    The WHO Yellow Fever list is pretty instructive as to travel in tropical areas with skeeters. There’s some places that will want to do medical quarantines on travelers with documented travel to those regions.

  78. 78.

    Violet

    @PhoenixRising: The TV just told me that the Ebola patient in Texas wasn’t exhibiting symptoms while on the flight or in the airport so that the number of people he or she came in contact with is probably a bit lower than feared. And less dispersed, as people on planes go on to various places.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    h/t to a random Reddit commenter:

    You guys freak out if your president hold a cup of coffee while saluting. You guys will freak out about this.

  80. 80.

    another Holocene human

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: it’s Ebola not influenza so take a fucking chill pill

    Patient was non symptomatic on/off the plane.

    Rate of Ebola survival is much higher with basic saline drip. H1N1 not Spanish Flu epidemic.

  83. 83.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Josie: He wasn’t symptomatic at the time he was traveling, which means he wasn’t infectious at that time, but I understand people wanting to double and triple check.

    Frankly, if Senegal and Nigeria, with one/one-thousandth the resources of Texas were able to contain Ebola, the US as a whole easily will.

  84. 84.

    Corner Stone

    @PhoenixRising:

    Just don’t lick the inside of the urinals at major airports, and you’ll be fine.

    Always trying to tell us Real Americans what to do. Screw you!

  85. 85.

    D58826

    ALL part of Obama’s plan. First Ebola gets a good percentage of the population. That makes it much more practical for ISIS to come in and kill most of the rest of us. Obama, Bill Ayers, the new black panthers and his extended family from Kenyan will then have the entire country to themselves. Truly brilliant. I wonder why Trump and Rove didn’t see this coming

  90. 90.

    Anoniminous

    @Morat20:

    The world is bigger than North America, Europe, and Japan. Plop enough vectors into Haiti or the slums of Brazil and the disease has every chance of becoming endemic in those locations. Ebola spreads by contact with bodily secretions, meaning at-home care givers are at high risk for contracting the disease.

  91. 91.

    shortstop

    @PhoenixRising:

    Now, whether the black helicopters can gather up everyone on the flight from Lagos to DFW (this is speculative on my part, not data from a source)

    Because so much of West Africa is francophone and/or ex-French colonies, most flights to the U.S. go through Paris or Brussels. I’d bet that’s true of flights out of Monrovia, too, even though Liberia’s not French-speaking. I’d guess the route of the plane(s) will all come out soon. Maybe it has already and I didn’t hear it?

  92. 92.

    Morat20

    @Anoniminous:
    Only if they make a habit of licking their patients.

    Again, Ebola isn’t the flu. It needs a sizable amount of liquid to transfer, and it has to hit an orifice. Latex gloves, eyewear and a mask will cover 99.9% of all possible transmission cases. Including having the patient cough blood right into your face. Even in Africa, 2/3rds of the transmission is through burial practices. Our morgue folks wear gloves.

    Of the remaining third, a sizable amount is needle re-use.

    Which is why, again, this is not a disease the First World will have to worry about. It will not become an epidemic in any country with any regulation of funeral homes or mortuaries, and whose medical practices involve routine use of gloves and disposing of sharps properly.

  100. 100.

    Violet

    I read today that Ebola in West Africa may disrupt chocolate supplies. Now that’s something people are going to be upset about.

  102. 102.

    Anoniminous

    @Morat20:

    WHO – Frequently asked questions on Ebola virus disease

    Infection occurs from direct contact through broken skin or mucous membranes with the blood, or other bodily fluids or secretions (stool, urine, saliva, semen) of infected people. Infection can also occur if broken skin or mucous membranes of a healthy person come into contact with environments that have become contaminated with an Ebola patient’s infectious fluids such as soiled clothing, bed linen, or used needles.

  104. 104.

    shortstop

    @Josie: I strongly doubt there’s a nonstop between Monrovia and DFW. There probably isn’t anything with fewer than two stops.

    The only nonstops to Africa from the US tend to go from JFK, Dulles and Atlanta, and they go to Johannesburg or Cairo. Even Nairobi usually requires a stop in Europe or the Middle East.

  105. 105.

    gogol's wife

    I’ve been too busy to read this blog for a few days, but I’m glad to return and find out that you guys can make me laugh about Ebola. It’s really quite amazing.

  106. 106.

    Corner Stone

    @monkeyfister:

    This shithole will never go blue.

    Well, once the ebola kills off all the gay and lesbos in the big cities, all of TX will remain hard core red for decades.
    Electoral college may not mean quite as much at that point. But at least we’ll rid ourselves of the deviants and perverts!

  107. 107.

    Ripley

    Just don’t lick the inside of the urinals at major airports, and you’ll be fine.

    Fence builder….

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    For fuck’s sake, Tweety opens his show with “It’s here!”. I hit mute, but based on the footage of people in hazmat suits, he’s gonna fear monger the shit out of this.

  110. 110.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tommy:

    Right, but you can be 5 or 10 feet away and still have “direct contact” with bodily fluids occur, say by the person coughing/spitting fluids that float over to you and land in an unprotected spot on your skin. That is not the same thing as the virus being able to spread through the air, aka being airborne.

  112. 112.

    D58826

    @Anoniminous: Tweety is going all chicken little over Ebola. Why did Obama say that it is unlikely for Ebola to arrive in this country. BUT ITS HERE!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone run for the hills. Tweety was spinning lots of theories but there are not a lot of facts at the moment.

  113. 113.

    The Dude

    Now wingnuts will blame Obama for NOT putting them in FEMA camps.

    Peak wingnut may be on the horizon, friends!

  114. 114.

    shortstop

    @Howard Beale IV: Even that was just bopping between Monrovia and Accra, right? Assume there are no direct flights between Ghana and the US?

    Nice to meet a fellow Africa lover here.

  115. 115.

    Felanius Kootea

    @shortstop: Besides Delta and United, which fly direct to several West African countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal), there are two African carriers that fly direct between West Africa and the USA: Arik Air (JFK to Lagos), South African Airways (Washington Dulles to Dakar en route to Johannesburg).

    ETA: Arik air shut down travel between Liberia and Nigeria in July.

  116. 116.

    Howard Beale IV

    @shortstop: Delta has a nonstop from Ghana to JFK. Kenyan Airways (a SkyTeam partner with Delta and KLM) has stopped flights out of ROB.

    Delta’s former flights was going to JFK with a stop in Accra on a 767 thrice a week until they pulled the plug.

  117. 117.

    shortstop

    @Felanius Kootea: Thanks, I was unaware of Delta and United still flying direct to Accra and Lagos. Besides flying from Dulles, SAA also goes from JFK to Joburg via a fueling stop in Dakar, and Delta goes direct to Joburg from ATL with no stop for fuel.

    So where did this plane go from Monrovia? Or did the patient actually travel overland to another city in West Africa and fly from there? I know it doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious now.

  120. 120.

    Violet

    @Howard Beale IV: @shortstop: There are other air travel options that aren’t on commercial airlines but are used by regular people (ie, not military or whatever). Like the “Houston Express” that goes direct from Houston IAH to Luanda in Angola. Goes three times a week. It’s mostly oil related travel. Angola’s not Francophone West Africa, but it’s not all that far either.

  122. 122.

    shortstop

    @Howard Beale IV: BA service between London and Freetown/Monrovia has been suspended since August, I see.

    I apologize to everyone I’m boring into senselessness. For no good reason, I’m just really wondering how this flight path went down. I’ll stop now.

  123. 123.

    Felanius Kootea

    @shortstop: I think KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa all fly into Monrovia (don’t know whether they suspended air travel with the outbreak). I’m Nigerian American, so if there’s a flight into Nigeria from the US, I’ve probably been on it.

    I also fly to Cape Town, SA quite a bit and it is hell doing that from Los Angeles (flights usually stop in Cape Verde or Dakar for refueling).

  126. 126.

    D58826

    Tweety played the clip of Obama talking about Ebola. What he said was it is unlikely that there will be an Ebola ‘outbreak’. He never said that someone infected outside the country would not get sick on arriving here. Tweety seems to be in full ‘war of the worlds’ mode. He is also upset because we don’t have all of the answers to all of the questions. CDC only made the announcement at 5:30et. for heavens sake.

    Hopefully CDC will have daily briefings and release information as it becomes available. NTSB does a pretty good job of getting the ‘what we know’ rather than what we ‘speculate’ out to the public after a plane crash.

  127. 127.

    Violet

    @shortstop: The flight or flights could have gone any number of ways. Tons of flights are still operating in and out of African countries. People go there for all sorts of reasons.

  128. 128.

    shortstop

    @Felanius Kootea: Ouch. That is painful. It’s 17 hours from Dulles to Johannesburg (19 coming back), including the Dakar refueling and (required) Senegalese Geek Squad stop to fix the broken SAA entertainment system. Another two hours (plus layover) between DC and Chicago. Support socks are a must and I have to get into a zen mental mode. But it’s worth it.

    The first time I really took in the sheer size of Africa was the moment I realized that the distance from Dakar to Johannesburg was greater than the distance from Washington to Dakar.

  129. 129.

    Felanius Kootea

    @shortstop: No – I’ve been wondering the same thing about the flight, given that a large number of airlines have suspended service to Liberia. Looks like Royal Air Maroc still flies into Liberia.

  130. 130.

    shortstop

    @Violet: Yes, I get that people go to many African countries for all sorts of reasons. My musings were limited to the fact that very few international flights seem to be going in and out of Monrovia right now, and yet this patient is being reported (perhaps erroneously) as having flown out of Liberia.

  131. 131.

    Violet

    @shortstop: Maybe they visited Liberia and the media turned it into “flew out of Liberia”. That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Although it’s not hard for someone to fly from Liberia to another African country and then onward from there. When you say “very few international flights” are you including pan-African flights or did you mean Western airlines to/from Europe/North America?

  132. 132.

    chopper

    @The Other Chuck:

    i don’t think it’s that crazy. after all, there already exists one strain which is much more able to infect via the airborne route among primates (reston virus, which so far as we know doesn’t sicken humans but OTOH the n is quite low). among pigs, regular ebola is also much more airborne transmissible and let’s be fair, pigs are not that different than us when it comes to a great deal of zoonotic infectious organisms.

    it’s not likely but we’re not talking about HIV magically going airborne here.

  133. 133.

    Howard Beale IV

    @shortstop:

    yet this patient is being reported (perhaps erroneously) as having flown out of Liberia.

    Specifically, on a nonstop flight into the US, which is highly unlikely.

  135. 135.

    scav

    When my friend was flying to and from Lagos a lot (late 90s), he always seemed to be going through Belgium, maybe Switzerland a few times. I that still a pattern? Or have I misremembered. Airline space is so intriguing.

  137. 137.

    Violet

    @shortstop: I’m finding that something called Brussels Airlines is flying between Monrovia and New York. Link. That could be the direct flight to the US. Then connection to wherever–Dallas, maybe?

  140. 140.

    Anoniminous

    @D58826:

    I don’t “consume” Main Stream Infotainment specifically to avoid the hysteria-of-the-moment and derpity-derp cranked to twelvety. The fact is: the average American has a better chance of being hit and killed by four tons of falling guacamole than by Ebola. But that doesn’t sell eyeballs so Tweety, et.al., have to do their usual schtick of Making Shit Up.

  143. 143.

    Violet

    @shortstop: Well, yeah, but the flight is listed as Monrovia-New York. Like most “direct” flights, they stop somewhere–or multiple somewheres. But if the CDC guy or whoever is saying it’s “a flight from Liberia to the US” it can be that, while also going through other airports.

    The difference between “direct” and “nonstop” is really annoying.

  145. 145.

    monkeyfister

    @chopper: I gave four plants to my buddy Tommy down in Guntersville, Alabama (former neighbor), this year, and he and his wife have their pantry full of canned tomato stuff already. Says they are still loaded. I planted four, and same story– freezer and pantry full, and giving them away. A couple in Northern Ireland grows them in her hot house until mid-october– now 5th generation, and still unruly. We’ve both been trying to cross it with one of its parent– Mortgage Lifter, but those stout old Roma genes just keep winning out. They are huge plants that I would like to see a bit more tame in time, perhaps slightly larger fruit, but an enormously productive, fast-growing indefinite, bearing fruit from very early until killing frost. Heading down to Tommy’s this weekend or next for fishing and to save some seeds for next year. Show them how. Might try cloning and grafting this year as a fun thing.
    From 2010 for those who don’t know: http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/search/label/Monkeyfister's%20Marvel%20Tomato

  148. 148.

    Alice

    The first news reports on the Texas case said that the guy went to the doctor within a couple of days after coming from Africa because he was sick. Doctor sent him home. He went back a couple of days later & was diagnosed with ebola. That has mysteriously disappeared from the more recent reports. Sure doesn’t boost my confidence in our medical system.

  150. 150.

    jonas

    It appears he didn’t start getting sick until after he had arrived in the US — the incubation period for ebola, the time when you’re exposed to when you actually show symptoms, is about 21 days — so there’s no chance that he actually infected anyone on his flight or at the airport. If you follow proper hygiene protocols, like not hugging corpses of people who died from it, ebola is *not* that infectious. People need to just calm the fuck down.

    But, this being the land of Fox and CNN, there’s little chance of that happening.

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