What did you expect them to do? How would you do it any differently if you were the Director of the CDC? Should they send the full team for every suspected case? They can't do that. This was the very first actual case in the US. They've been working on protocols, sending out advisories for hospitals to follow and updating the information on their Ebola website pages. In the meantime, they were in communication with the hospital in Dallas and with the labs doing the testing.
They've also been planning exactly what to do when the first case showed up in the US for some time. When it did, they followed the procedure that had been established, and that has been used many times for many different diseases. Whether it was the Marburg Virus case several years ago, or the Lassa Fever case here in Minnesota earlier this year, it's the same procedure.
You may not think it is fast enough or panicky enough, but you're not an epidemiologist and you don't work at the CDC. You also don't know about the communications they had with that hospital in Dallas prior to going there, when the case was just a possible case of Ebola. I guarantee that such conversations took place between the hospital and the CDC. I understand that you want everything to happen immediately, but that isn't how it works.
The procedures have been developed with the goal of providing the most effective response to the situation. Those procedures were followed. As soon as the patient was confirmed to actually have Ebola, the response team was on the way. That's how it works. They don't go before then, because another case might have been identified in Minneapolis and the one in Dallas could have been a false alarm.
Minneapolis has a large population of Liberian immigrants and people travel frequently between the two places. What if the man in Dallas hadn't had Ebola, but a patient in Minneapolis did? They don't have dozens of such teams. There's no budget for that and no continuing need for it. I live in St. Paul, just across the river from Minneapolis. I'm keeping an eye on what happens here. I expect our first case of Ebola here at any time, and our hospitals are having drills and rehearsals for what they will do if and when that happens. They're also consulting with the CDC, I have no doubt.
So, if you think it should have been done differently, why not outline what you think the response should have been?
= new reply since forum marked as read