We're Confident Anyway

President Barack Obama has authorized the Pentagon to call up reserve and National Guard troops if they are needed to assist in the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

[...]

In announcing the executive order permitting the deployment of National Guard troops, the White House said the additional personnel would not be providing direct health care aid in the countries.

  alJazeera

So Obama’s “much more aggressive way” to deal with Ebola is to call out the guards to bring the hammer down on you panicking, rioting mobs. Will they be guarding hospitals?

Also on Thursday, federal health officials in the U.S. said they still don't know how two Dallas nurses caught Ebola from a patient.

That’s encouraging, isn’t it?

Nevertheless, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said "despite these latest incidents, we remain confident that our public health and health care systems can prevent an Ebola outbreak here," in prepared testimony for the hearing on Capitol Hill.

Confidence is good. Unmerited confidence can be downright deadly.

And perhaps it's time to get a little more pro-active at Kennedy Airport.

A male passenger who died after vomiting on a trans-Atlantic flight from Nigeria to New York sparked panic he could be carrying the Ebola virus. However, initial tests on the 63-year-old man show that he tested negative to the virus.

  RT

So you say. (The New York Post called it a "cursory" exam.) Even if he truly did not have the virus, at this date, his symptoms should have triggered more caution.

[O]nce airborne, the man complained of vomiting during the flight and was sick in his seat. He died sometime before the plane landed at JFK.

[...]

Upon the plane's arrival at the terminal at around 6am local time, the door was left open connecting the plane to the airport building, “which a lot of the first responders found alarming.”

And all the passengers were just let go?

In other Ebola news (and there's lots):

A Dallas healthcare worker who handled a lab specimen from an Ebola-infected man has self-quarantined on a Caribbean cruise ship, according to a report by the Associated Press.

  The Hill

Now THAT’s what you should do when you realize you may have had some chance of being exposed. Not call the CDC with a slight fever and then fly to another city to rummage through bridal shops.

It’s not clear whether the worker has contracted Ebola, but State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki in a statement said the woman had shown no signs of the disease and has been asymptomatic for nearly three weeks.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.