It's time to prevent public travel from western africa and those originating from there.

[Violet_Crumble]

147. I don't think yr a racist, but I can see why the thread wandered down that path...

It was kicking off the OP with 'I'm sure I'm not a racist, so save those snide allegations for someone else, please.' It's like starting something with 'I'm sure everyone will call me an anti-Semite/homophobe/Islamophobe/sexist/racist'. Sometimes it's followed up with stuff that shows they are indeed what they think everyone will call them, and sometimes not, but it's pretty much an invite for people to label you. If you were a conservative, my suspicion would be it's borne of racism, but yr not, and I know you well enough to know racism's got nothing to do with yr views on this. What I'm seeing is frustration at what does appear to be an inept official response to what's grown into a pandemic in Western Africa...

I don't have a dog in this as I'm lucky to live somewhere where it's highly unlikely even one case of Ebola will happen, and just like the US have an advanced health system and other stuff that Liberia and Sierra Leone don't have, like infrastructure, sanitation, customs that don't help the spread of Ebola, and all that stuff.

But having said that, I do think there's a need for countries to take realistic precautions against it spreading. I don't know if imposing travel bans would be effective or necessary, though. I would have thought other countries stepping in and doing what those countries haven't got the resources to do and supplying that state of the art airport stuff that screens peoples body temperatures, as well as people who know how to use them. And some sort of quarantine period once people land at their destination.

I can sort of see both sides of it with the idea of travel bans. British Airways has already suspended flights to and from Liberia and Sierra Leone, and aid organisations have complained that it's made it difficult for them to get their staff into those countries. But British Airways also have the well being of their staff to consider, as they can't guarantee their safety during layovers.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/07/british-airways-hampering-ebola-aid-effort-west-africa-agencies

This following one's probably already been posted at DU but I missed seeing it. It's a really long article, but it details the incredibly slow international response to the outbreak and how out of touch with reality the high level planning by WHO can be in a situation like this one...

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/how-the-world-let-ebola-spread-20141007-10rh8r.html

The most important thing that goes hand in hand with preventing the spread of Ebola is that the outbreak is contained in those two countries, because that itself will stop the spread. I don't usually like what the US military's used for, but in this case the US is doing something really good by using the military, because with the size of the outbreak now, aid organisations just don't have the resources to even make a dent in it