I hope those of you that are convinced Ebola is not a significant threat in the US if it does get here have taken into consideration all of the illegal (and even many legally here) migrants (from countries all over the world) that continue their third world sanitation habits even though they live here.
I had a conversation with a man that supplies porta-johns this morning. He supplies many to farm fields where many of the workers are not even illegals but have work permits and are living here. He said legal requirements for farmers is that they provide the porta-johns, hand wash stations, antibacterial soap, the works for sanitation for field workers. The man told me few workers use the porta-johns, most use them for cover and go to the bathroom behind the porta-johns instead of inside them. The workers are using only small amounts of antibacterial soap- what would last a day in many locations will last a month or more. They use small amounts of toilet paper and water as well. He said worse than that the farmers still have problems with the employees simply going to the bathroom in the field where they are harvesting crops...
We have many pockets of third world sanitation in this country. Many migrants live in such crowded housing conditions there is no possible way sanitation is what we would consider standard. I am not just speaking of the Hispanics from Mexico and Central America that get all the attention- I have read about Chinese workers living clumped together in third world slums in New York City and other locations. This will not just be a regional issue, there are third world living conditions in pockets in most large cities.
We might be a developed country, but not every part of this country is what you are considering developed when it comes to sanitation and most of our third world neighborhoods are within cities.
You've described great conditions for spreading cholera or E. coli O157H7, and probably a few other bugs--people do, in fact, get sick from eating raw produce frequently--but not Ebola. With an upper incubation period of 21 days, and average of 8 days, the chance that an illegal immigrant would be able to travel from Africa to a field in the US before becoming symptomatic is almost nil. They would probably die in the desert as soon as the coyotes bringing them abandon them for signs of illness.
I recently had a job in down town San Jose where I saw what to now was the largest amount of human excrement I’d ever seen in an urban setting. You couldn’t walk 2 steps in a 1 block area there without seeing multiple piles, along with what passed for wiping material scattered around.
A few years back I was sampling a creek in the bay area for e-coli et.al. and needed to obtain upstream samples for the control (spill recordation/cleanup). The upstream samples still had gobs in it from all the indigents that bathe/defecate in the stream...
Fomite transmission of Ebola is a terrifying threat to America. The two are NOT the same.