OK so the gentleman who travelled from Monrovia to Brussels to Dulles, to Dallas while infected with Ebola is now in an isolation ward in Dallas.
Government says not to worry, everything is OK.
My take: We are probably OK, however the disease is only infectious with the onset of symptoms. So no symptoms at Dulles where he shared airspace with worldwide and nation wide travelers...and that's a very good thing.
Then onto Dallas. As a former airline and military pilot, I can tell you jets are one of the most diseased places on earth. I can pretty much guarantee that if you flew, you sat on a seat that was vomited on, urinated on, or defecated on. Some pretty good blood trails as well...I've seen it all. I even had a Hollywood movie star, name withheld...who was as high as a kite on Cocaine, I believe...fall on my plane and broke his nose. He bled all over people and the seats...nasty! Very large people are the greatest offenders followed by the sick and children.
When I flew jets I got sick every other month from breathing all that infectious air...and I was working out all the time to try and fight it. Sadly even though the cockpit has a dedicated AC unit, the airflow is pulled down and through a cockpit and belly full of hot electronics to cool all that stuff a bit. So when someone in the back has an issue, you get sensory overload up front...yea, not fun.
The air all comes through the engines, no ram air thing, all processed by a hungry compressor section(s) then cooled a couple million degrees and fed through gaspers to you. And you should see the insides of those bacteria farms called air lines...
With an infected person, infected with anything, depending on the size of the aircraft, a lot of people will be rebreathing whatever his lungs just processed.
So with respect to the Ebola man on his way to Dallas, on the United flight, I am not so sure things are rosy red. Shortly afterward he went to the hospital. People do not go to the hospital at the onset of symptoms, but generally when they start getting really sick. That suggests to me, that for some time before he was seen and released by the hospital in Dallas for the first time the man was pretty sick.
Since the man was travelling from Africa, and an African, my bet he was in much better shape than most fat Americans who because of their walking poor condition get sick much faster than a fit man used to walking 5 miles a day and eating a healthier diet. I'm suggesting the man might have been sick longer than we consider normal, but because of his physical conditioning, able to accommodate it.
With all that said, I think it is fair to suggest he likely had contact with hundreds of people in the Dallas area before he was finally placed in isolation.
I think we possibly now have active colonies of Ebola here in the United States. The government is in no way ready to respond, heck there is no real vaccine in any quantity.
I'd suggest you limit contact down there or with anyone or anything you think might have been a part of all of this but also watch what unfolds, and what you are being told.
And I hope and Pray that I am very, very wrong about all of this!
