My God, I almost can't believe it!

[Savannahmann]

45. Ivory Coast closed their borders to the infected nations.

They are still sending what little help they can, but they are not letting anyone in. They closed their borders back in August.

First, isolate those who have the disease, or may have it. Public health lesson number one. You try not to wait until they are symptomatic, you do it immediately. But today, we have science that tells us that it's simply not possible that two caregivers could get the disease.

Honestly, I"m about ready to give the hell up on the Administration. Shutting down travel to the affected areas should have been response number one. It was for Mexico, and Belize.

Science tells us that the risk of infection is one in a thousand, or perhaps one in ten thousand. The math would seem to indicate that we have little to fear. But the results of that risk even if it is one in a hundred thousand are catastrophic.

By Catastrophic I mean people die from preventable causes. Right now, someone is researching the lawsuit. Right now, someone is sitting at a desk and has the gleem in their eye of massive payday. The Hospital is going to get sued, and so is the CDC. Two nurses got infected, and now more than 800 people are being notified that they have a slight, almost miniscule chance of getting sick too.

Risk and reward are calculations that belong in some things, but not public health. Every day that the insane course of action charted by the administration continues, the worse the Party will do in November. Republicans are on the populist side of yet another issue, with more than two thirds of our citizens wanting a travel ban. We sit on the crumbling edge of the cliff and tell everyone that science says that we're all totally safe, not to worry.

When events turn out that it wasn't totally safe, the first thing we do is blame the victim, like we're asshole sexists who blame victims for being raped.

Then when we point out that nobody has talked to the Nurse who got infected, then we admit it was a bit presumptuous to blame the victim, but we continue, she must have done something wrong, because she got it, and you can't get it unless you do something wrong.

To say I am disgusted is an understatement. Do you realize that all the Republicans have to say to get elected is that they believe we should institute a travel ban? FFS when the President says it's not an outbreak, when everyone knows it is, then we look like idiots.

So what are the definitions of the words? http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/d24.html

What is the difference between an outbreak, epidemic, and a pandemic?

An epidemic is a disease that affects many people at the same time, such as the flu. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's official definition of epidemic is: 'The occurrence of more cases of disease than expected in a given area or among a specific group of people over a particular period of time'. A pandemic is a very extensive epidemic, like a plague, that is prevalent in a country, continent, or the world. There is also the word endemic, which is a disease native to a people or region, which is regularly or constantly found among a people or specific region. The term outbreak describes the sudden rise in the incidence of a disease, especially a harmful one. An outbreak is characterized by a disease's bypassing of measures to control it. Often, the difference between these terms is determined by the percentage of deaths caused by the disease.

So out of curiousity. How many deaths do we need before we decide to categorize it as an outbreak. Because it looks to me like we have an outbreak when it bypassed the measures to control it and the Health Care Workers got the disease in a modern hospital.