<p>Thomas Duncan is now in critical condition.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/04/us-health-ebola-usa-patient-idUSKCN0HT0MZ20141004”>http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/04/us-health-ebola-usa-patient-idUSKCN0HT0MZ20141004</a></p>
<p>Meanwhile, the CDC says a travel ban will not bring the risk to zero. I won’t pretend to understand why better isn’t better. But that’s what they say. Seems to be all or nothing. </p>
<p>I don’t know how super powered the different Afrin types really are, but they have one that says, “severe congestion” and a sinus one. I don’t know if it’s just marketing or formula, but those sound better to me than just “original”. An important thing is to take it preventively if you’re feeling congested, as opposed to waiting until you have a problem. How awful about the eardrum rupturing, that must have been so very painful until it did. Never heard of the styrofoam cup trick, but I always use the valsalva maneuver as a first resort.</p>
<p>busdriver, a US ban of West Africa flights would not necessarily stop a Liberia passenger from coming to the US. What would prevent them from flying first to Europe, then to the US? Maybe we need a 21-day worldwide ground stop. Of course, even that wouldn’t stop it entirely. People travel by ship too.</p>
<p>How did he get a tourist visa? Maybe, we could start there. He quit his job and came here on a tourist visa. Is that odd? I think, yes…</p>
<p>For those who are worrying about the contagiousness of Ebola: I found this post on the NPR site to be interesting. It compares the R naught of several infectious diseases. Maybe we should be more worried about measles:</p>
<p>“No, Seriously, How Contagious is Ebola?”
<a href=“No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola? : Shots - Health News : NPR”>No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola? : Shots - Health News : NPR; </p>
<p>True about banning whole flights not being effective really at all, but could we not exclude from any flight destined for the US a passenger who had been in one of the affected African countries within the past 21 days?</p>
<p>Mathilda, and how would we do that? Research the travel history going back 21 days for every single passenger coming into the US? Who’s going to do that, and how, and who would pay for all that investigative work? And how do we make sure those systems, procedures, and personnel operate vastly better than the Dallas public health system does; i.e., how do we make sure mistakes aren’t made, computer systems are well-designed and operate flawlessly, people don’t overlook obvious important facts, no one slips through the cracks?</p>
<p>Or would we simply rely on every single passenger to be truthful when asked the question? </p>
<p>Not really feasible, I’m afraid.</p>
<p>Not a lot of ships leaving Liberia to the US. I wonder if there are many from Liberia to anywhere. I’d think that if some Europeans start getting sick, it would be easy to get them onboard with a travel ban to Europe. In fact, after awhile, I’ll be surprised if there are any airlines willing to fly into Ebola affected nations at all. We don’t have to make it easier for people, we can restrict people from purchasing a ticket in Europe if they recently came from an Ebola affected country. People do have passports, and they can track this. Of course you can’t stop everyone, but if they know they will be arrested, it will stop some people.</p>
<p>What are the odds that these two people who became sick on a flight didn’t know they were ill before they got on the flight? How coincidental that they both are sick. Wonder if the tickets were very recently purchased. If you make it easy as possible for people to come over here and get treatment, I’d imagine you’ll have far more people who know they are sick or were exposed, buying tickets as quickly as possible to get over here and get treated. With the last care on their mind of all the other people they are exposing.</p>
<p>Do passports not usually have this information? I guess of course people could leave one of these countries by some way other than a flight, but if we checked passports perhaps we could reduce the number of people boarding planes to the US after being exposed to the virus.</p>
<p>The Daily News is reporting that the ill passenger at Newark International has been cleared. That being said, traveling this year during flu season should be even more fun than usual. <a href=“Vomiting passenger cleared of Ebola after 2-hour quarantine and CDC investigation at Newark Airport”>National News - New York Daily News;
<p>And CNN is still reporting that passengers on that plane are still being detained and no mention of man being cleared. This was a Live report at 3:01 ET.</p>
<p>Duncan flew from Liberia to Brussels and Brussels to Dallas. CNN likes to drag out the drama.</p>
<p>“How did he get a tourist visa? Maybe, we could start there. He quit his job and came here on a tourist visa. Is that odd? I think, yes.”</p>
<p>Yes, I find it odd as well. A person applying for a non-immigrant visa to the US is presumed to have full intent to immigrate, unless the person is able to show that s/he has sufficient ties with the native country. No job, no real estate (he rented a place), relatives and a GF in the US… these would constitute a complete NO GO for a visitor visa to a person from, e.g., the Ukraine or Moldova.</p>
<p>Maybe he applied for a fiancé visa? Hmmmm…</p>
<p>I sure hope the people who cleared the passengers were more competent than the ones who Duncan dealt with at the hospital. I can’t imagine how alarmed the passengers sitting near him must have felt.</p>
<p>I would not want to be stomach-sick on a plane nowadays. :)</p>
<p>I wonder how he got a visa also. He’d be an automatic deny if he was from Asia - single, no job, not old, has family in the USA.</p>
<p>I barfed in the back of a military transport once. Probably salmonella or food poisoning, I was so sick, it was awful. Nobody noticed except for my boyfriend, who was very kind about it. Probably why I married him. 
</p>
<p>Awww… Bus, that was so sweet of him. I will be doing a lot of domestic flying soon. Fingers crossed there are no scenes from the Airplane! on my flights.</p>
<p>@busdriver11 I was thinking the same thing. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I thought it took several hours to test for Ebola. They are not yet letting the passengers off the plane, except the sick ones. (Is this just a ruse to stop panic?)</p>