Weaponisation of Ebola by Muslim terrorists

[Aoi Magi]

1. I think you overestimate the quality of the average medical facilities and personel in countries like the US. The US has some of the world's best medical facilities, yes. But most common facilities are understaffed, overwhelmed, poorly trained, poorly coordinated. The fiasco with first Ebola case in the US amply demonstrates that. 1 patient grossly mishandled more than once, and is now dead. 2 nurses, supposedlyt protected, are infected. CDC, hospital and the nurses union are accusing each other. CDC said nurses did something wrong. Nurses say there was no consistent guideline on what is the right thing to do, the hospital say it is the only side that bears no fault. There turn out, announced only 3 weeks into the fiasco, that only 4 facilities in the entire country are thought to be adaquately equipped to properly handle ebola cases. The hospital in which the first ebola patient in the US died is, guess what, not one of them. The foresight and coordinatiion is such that no one thought to involve them in the first Ebola case in the US.

You are right but you are also overlooking the fact that it did get recognized and a possible outbreak was prevented. It is bad, but could've been a whole lot worse.

2. I believe in case of a serious outbreak of Ebola in the United States, a far higher than expected proportion of people who may have been infected, but who have yet to show symptoms, would break containment on the theory that they personally would have a better chance by leaving the infected area, even if they would thereby expose uninfected areas to infections. The bottom feeding tea partiers like Sarah Palin would undoubtedly say any coordinated effort to prevent people in infected area from leaving would consititute a "death panel".

Yes humanity is stupid, but the western nations do have the resources to put proper containment strategies in place, a lot quicker than the African nations can.

3. Ebola may not fit the criteria of the best biological warfare agent that could be designed, but it has a attribute superior to the best biological agent that can be designed - it already exists. One does not need the backing of a major state, a state of the art lab and dozens of PhDs from the best research universities to create it

...but there are better alternatives for causing mass panic and terror.

4. It is not all together clear how close Ebola is to mutating into a strain that could be transmitted by air.

It presently doesn't have a reason to mutate in that direction, but then again I am not really someone who can predict such things... but if it does mutate that way, and if we don't have a proper cure, then it won't really need terrorists to weaponize it anymore.

5. It would appear it is quite infectious enough without being transimissible by air. WHO estimate 10000 new infections a week by year's end. That means 5000-9000 deaths a week. That would like a World Trade Center collapse, every week, for the duration. Or one Iraq war, every week, for the duration.

The infection has spread so far and so much mainly due to geopolitical and socio-economical reasons, not because of it's own infectiousness.