The Dallas case is the first diagnosed Ebola case in the world outside of Africa.

[pnwmom]

I hadn't realized that.

Weren't we lucky.

[MineralMan]

1. It probably won't be the last.

Planes fly out daily from countries with active Ebola outbreaks. Most make a stop at some other airport outside of the United States, where passengers connect with flights to other places. Brussels, for example, is the stop for many flights from Liberia. In fact, a man and child with Ebola-like symptoms were just removed from a plane that arrived in Brussels from Liberia. There's a thread in GD about that.

Odds are high that other isolated Ebola cases will appear in many countries, including the United States in the near future.

[HockeyMom]

4. Connecting flights

See that is the problem. Actually, how do you know where every person in Europe coming to the US has traveled to previously? You don't and cannot know that. Stop ALL overseas travel? Quarantine every flight from overseas? Impossible.

Just with that Dallas Ebola man. Did he fly directly from Africa to Dallas, or had a connecting/stopover flight someplace else in the US?

[MineralMan]

8. Yup. I posted a list of common stops for flights from those WA countries

to the US in another OP:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025621026

[MineralMan]

10. His plane stopped in Brussels. Most flights to Liberia

stop in Brussels, and people connect there for all sorts of destinations.

[HockeyMom]

12. True, but

he also could have had another connecting flight INSIDE the US like somewhere on the East Coast before flying to Texas.

When my husband had to fly to Geneva for business, he could not get a direct flight there from Miami International. He had to fly to Newark or JFK to get a connecting flight to Geneva.

It isn't just connecting flights from Africa to Europe. There can be connecting flights inside the US also.

[kiva]

9. The man and child were removed from a plane that landed in Newark,

coming in from Brussels, so they did land in the U.S. Someone in the comments thread from the article said that many flights from Africa go to/through Brussels, and I imagine that Belgian authorities are looking at changing their security policies.

[MineralMan]

11. Yes. Brussels is the connecting airport for flights

from Monrovia, Liberia, as far as I've been able to determine.

[PSPS]

2. To be accurate, it wasn't contracted outside of Western Africa.

[pnwmom]

7. It was the first in the world diagnosed outside of Western Africa.

[SidDithers]

3. There's a strain of Ebola named after Reston, Virginia...

Which, thankfully, didn't jump from monkeys to humans.

Sid

[magical thyme]

5. the 1st case from this epidemic diagnosed outside Western Africa.

We and the UK were given the highest odds of having cases arrive here with it. Iirc, they're odds were a little higher based on their Liberian demographics.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. The first in this outbreak; previous outbreaks have been in different parts of Africa

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/history/summaries.html

DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, Gabon (you might push the definition and put Gabon in West Africa, but normally it's called central Africa)

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. From this particular outbreak

They've had Ebola cases (under similar conditions) in Europe.

[pnwmom]

16. Not according to Wikipedia. All the outbreaks till now have been in Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

[cwydro]

14. I do think it odd

that Europe hasn't had any problems. Huge West African population in the UK.

[MineralMan]

15. There may be. Could already be cases that

have not been recognized yet. I don't know.

[cwydro]

17. Kick

[Chan790]

18. Not strictly true, but true enough for journalism.

The virus we think of as Ebola is actually just one (Zaire ebolavirus, EBOV) of five varieties of ebolavirus. It's the most common of the five ebolaviruses and the most-deadly. All five were originally named for their site of first detection, but are now named by alphanumeric codes. Z. ebolavirus is now EBOV. This is the first detection of EBOV outside Africa. (It helps to think of them like Influenza. Swine flu is different from Avian flu or Spanish flu...but all are influenza.)

One of the other four varieties of Ebola is R. ebolavirus, RESTV, named after its site of first detection...Reston, VA. It fortunately only occurred in a lab-group of crab-eating Macaques and never made the jump to a human patient in that outbreak. RESTV has however been diagnosed outside of Africa...a Filipino hog-farmer was diagnosed with Reston ebola in 2008. (He survived. RESTV has no attributed fatalities in humans and only the one known infection.) RESTV is difficult but not impossible to infect humans, it infects primates and swine more-easily. Because of all this, it's actually a strong candidate for potential use as an infective agent in possible future Ebola vaccines.

You can read about Reston ebola on Wikipedia. http://www.wikipedia.com/en/Reston_virus

[pnwmom]

19. True for humans. But thanks for the info about the Macaques. n/t