No need to panic yet

This is from the Dallas paper, reminding everybody in the Dallas area there´s no need to panic over Ebola. I´m afraid if they don´t do something to calm the population everybody is going to head out of town.

“As all the news headlines will tell you, Ebola is terrifying; we can’t make light of that. And the recent CDC forecast showing that, if unchecked, Ebola cases could top 1.4 million by January underscores why this outbreak is such a crisis.

But the risks here are not the same. As Smith, the epidemiologist, put it:

Ebola is a terrible disease. It kills many of the people that it infects. It can spread fairly rapidly when precautions are not carefully adhered to: when cultural practices such as ritual washing of bodies are continued despite warnings, or when needles are reused because of a lack of medical supplies, or when gloves and other protective gear are not available, or when patients are sharing beds because they are brought to hospitals lacking even such basics as enough beds or clean bedding for patients.

But that is not the case in Dallas County. The patient who may have Ebola (test results are due today) is in isolation. Health officials are already investigating everyone he or she has been in contact with. Hospitals are trained in how to respond to such diseases and have the necessary supplies.

“This is not Africa,” Dallas County Health and Human Services director Zachary Thompson told The Morning News. “We have a great public health infrastructure to deal with this type of disease.”