Ebola: Don't Forget Nigeria And Houston

The Ebola outbreak has spread to Nigeria, and they are quite worried about it:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-07/nigeria-declares-state-emergency-everyone-world-risk-ebola-cdc-issues-level-1-all-ha

Unbeknownst to most Americans, there are quite a few Nigerians in Texas (Houston especially) who are in close contact with relatives back home. During the last big disease scare (SARS), I saw passengers from China wearing those cheap paper "masks" stumbling off flights at Bush International Airport and entering the US unimpeded. The same thing will happen this time, and it would not surprise me to learn someday soon that Ebola has come here from Nigeria and established a foothold in Texas.

Here are what appear to be three reasonable assertions from the above report:

#1 "Even in the United States, out of all the various hospitals I have worked at, there is no hope of containing anything like this. One of the largest hospitals I worked at only had two reverse flow isolation rooms. TWO, let that sink in for a minute."

#2 "Patients only show up to the hospital when they go symptomatic. So by the time they get there, they've already infected their entire family, their work group, and anyone they got within a few feet of on the way to the hospital. When they get there the ER nurses would treat it either like Flu, or Sepsis. But the whole time the patient is infecting all of them. And all of them, in turn, begin to infect everyone else in the exact same way. If this is as virulent as the WHO thinks it might be, by the time people realize what is going on, there will be more sick people than there would be beds available at every hospital in the US combined."

#3 "So don't expect miracles from front line hospital staff, we don't have the tools, and we certainly do not have the manpower. Ask anyone in the medical field how much overtime they could work if they felt like it, don't even get me started on how thinly stretched people in the industry are. Though I suppose if this does turn into something, that will become apparent very, very fast."

There is no way in the world that our medical professionals are going to be able to handle a full-blown Ebola pandemic. This definitely is a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure ... and there is no cure. What the hell are we doing being so cavalier about this whole thing?