Worst Case Scenario: The international response is perpetually behind the curve. Every response action is 8 to 12 weeks too late. Statistics from the WHO become volatile and are unreliable as the lack of deployed personnel make hard numbers impossible to pin down. As more people become infected, a significant mutation arises that allows for a longer asymptomatic but infectious period, increasing the R-0. Globally, cases continue to double every 16 days, contact tracing infrastructure outside the West becomes saturated, and hospitals are overrun, says this report, Ebola 2014 is Mutating as Fast as Seasonal Flu, from Operon Labs.

From the field - "I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running tests. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing. It may be that the virus burns hotter and quicker."

Peter Jahrling, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, via zerohedge.com

Gag order - An FDNY memo instructs all personnel to use more vague terms when discussing the deadly disease, which is threatening to become a global pandemic. “At no point shall a dispatcher transmit over the radio any message containing the word ‘Ebola’ or related terminology,” according to the advisory.

Cohen, Schram and Italiano at nypost.com

Patients being "disappeared" to prevent panic - Doctor Lawrenzi said that shortly after the arrival of patient zero–Thomas Eric Duncan–in the United States, he was told by a doctor at Truman Lakewood Medical Center in Kansas City they had taken in a possible Ebola patient who had a high fever and was bleeding out of all his orifices having recently returned from West Africa. The following day, Lawrenzi was told by the doctor that the patient had “disappeared” against medical advice, but that he wouldn’t have been able to leave on his own given his medical condition... “These patients are disappearing, they’re doing something with the patients and God knows where they’re going,” said the doctor.

Paul Watson at infowars.com

Illegal aliens with illnesses being secretly quarantined - “The agents are telling us that they’re seeing some people who are obviously sick, with shivering type illnesses, with possible dehydrating illnesses like diarrhea and vomiting. Those people are disappearing, we don’t know what they have, where they’re going, where they’re taking them – surely they’re being quarantined somewhere we just don’t know where and even the agents don’t know what the diagnosis is of these illnesses.”

Former Border Patrol Agent Zach Taylor, at dcclothesline.com

DC adopts the WHO/Nigerian model of not reporting cases - With the Obama administration's long track record of imprisoning or threatening journalists, soldiers, and whistle-blowers along with intimidating its enemies using the FBI, DHS, and IRS, it is little wonder that the United States has had five days without any new Ebola cases reported. I would not expect anything until after November 5th if then; and look for the sudden bouts of illness to be reported as seasonal flu or a new type of pneumonia, not the pandemic threatening our nation now.

John Galt at johngaltfla.com/wordpress

Africa First - The Obama administration has sent—not 3,000, as they originally claimed, but 4,000—U.S. troops to assist in efforts against Ebola in Liberia. This will include 700 members of the 101 st Airborne. They were supposed to be tasked with building special Ebola field hospitals to compensate for the inadequate facilities there. Recent reports, however, state that they will be in direct contact with patients. Despite this, they are not being issued any hazmat suits, just gloves and masks. Now Obama has called for the National Guard and Reserves to pack up for Ebola country.

James Simpson at aim.org

Death panels - The care of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, who received dialysis and intubation and infected two nurses caring for him, is spurring hospitals and medical associations to develop the first guidelines for what can reasonably be done and what should be withheld... "This is another example of how this 21st century viral threat has pulled us back into the 19th century," said medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan.

Steenhuysen and Begley at reuters.com

'Nuther one - A New York City doctor who was working in Africa with Doctors Without Borders has tested positive for Ebola. He is being treated in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.

myfoxny.com

Oops 1 - Dr. Mary T. Bassett, commissioner of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, claimed in a press conference last night that the latest Ebola patient had self-isolated since returning from Africa. Later, she admitted that in fact the patient had spent a lot of time in public and with other people.

Daniel Halper at weeklystandard.com

Oops 2 - With the news that the first confirmed case of Ebola has hit New York City, all attention now turns to how equipped the densely populated metropolis is to deal with the deadly virus - and if the city really is as prepared as they claimed to be in a press conference Thursday evening. Perhaps throwing things into doubt are photos taken outside the Harlem apartment of Dr. Craig Spencer, who was admitted to the hospital with a 103 degree fever earlier today. They show police officers tossing their gloves, masks and the caution tape used to block off access to his apartment in a public trash can.

Chris Spargo at dailymail.co.uk

It begins - An extraordinary number of Bellevue Hospital staffers called in sick on Friday rather than treat the city’s first Ebola patient—and those who showed up were terrified to enter his isolation chamber. “The nurses on the floor are miserable with a ‘why me?’ attitude, scared to death and overworked because all their co-workers called out sick,” one source said.

Schram and Celona at nypost.com

What scares this ER doctor - I love emergency medicine. I love helping people and saving lives and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I am also a person and I have a wife and three children that I love and want to see grow up. I also am keenly aware that not a damn thing I do will have any real impact on the survivability of a patient with either the Spanish flu or Ebola. Fluids, rest and prayer is about all there is to offer... The battleground of this problem can't be in the hospital. It is unwinnable in our emergency rooms. I think I might just call in sick..

http://www.operonlabs.com/?q=node/20