Posted on 10/03/2014 5:53:35 AM PDT by KeyLargo
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United Airlines contacting passengers who flew with Ebola victim
By DAVID KOENIG The Associated Press Published: October 2, 2014
More than 80 people in Dallas are being monitored for symptoms of Ebola after coming into contact with patient Thomas Eric Duncan or others who Duncan had met, health officials said.
DALLAS — United Airlines said Thursday it is notifying passengers who were on flights with a man later diagnosed with Ebola and telling them how to contact federal health officials.
United said it is also telling passengers that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention think the man could not have spread the disease during the flights because he was not showing symptoms and was not yet contagious.
On Sept. 19, Thomas Eric Duncan flew from Liberia in the heart of western Africa's Ebola outbreak zone to Belgium on a Brussels Airlines flight, according to Belgian officials.
United said it thinks Duncan flew the next day on United Flight 951 from Brussels to Dulles International Airport near Washington and connected to Flight 822 from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
United officials declined to say how many passengers were on the flights. The Brussels-to-Dulles flight was on a Boeing 777 that has 266 seats, and the flight to Dallas used an Airbus A320 with 138 seats.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
And in other unrelated news...
American cameraman for NBC News diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES Fri Oct 3, 2014
(Reuters) - An American freelance cameraman working for NBC News in Liberia has tested positive for Ebola, the network said on Thursday, making him the fifth citizen of the United States and its first journalist known to have contracted the virus in West Africa.
Thinks???? Wow, I feel so much safer now. I can't look at cowboy boots online without getting ads for cowboy boots on FaceBook, but United thinks?????
So potentially, between passengers, people he bumped into at Brussels and Dulles...could be a thousand people total? Consider each rest-room visit, and the possibility that a dozen carriers of the disease now exist as a minimum.
The girlfriend and her kids are quaranteed at home. Cops there now because they violated the quarantine. Nice people....right??? NOT!
Stop worrying...nobody gets past the screeners. /s
An international flight from Brussels to Dulles and they're not even sure he was on it?
Hi, This is Janice Fitzsimmons calling from United. Is this Neil Pennington? I just wanted to let you know that the nice gentleman sitting and hacking directly behind you in seat 23B on your flight from Liberia has been diagnosed with Ebola. We’d like to go ahead and offer you a voucher to fly anywhere in the continental U.S. as a way of saying sorry! By the way, you may want to mosey on down to the Doctor for a checkup. Bye.
If the government is going to dither & twiddle its thumbs, maybe the airlines (under public pressure) will step up and refuse to board anyone who has been in West or Central Africa in the past 60 days.
WHEN the ALCU protests, hopefully a sane Federal judge will tell them to PERSONALLY travel to Africa to get affidavits from the aggrieved parries they claim to represent.
If the airlines refuse to screen passengers, perhaps the other passenger will insist on doing it themselves. Governments were invented to replace vigilante action. When government is ineffective or incompetent then the citizen must be vigilant.
Minorities, women and children impacted the most! Vote Democratic!
Are they going to bother to tell the unfortunate soul who happened to sit in the Ebola victim's seat on the NEXT flight? Or the flight after that? Or the next one?
Joshua Krause
The Daily Sheeple
August 4th, 2014 
"It looks like the Virus almost died out by the end of April, before making a huge comeback in May and June. It was almost under control, and probably would have burned out shortly thereafter. It was almost a non-event, no more serious than any other historical outbreak, but instead the virus surged into uncharted territory. We’ve never seen this many deaths spread out in so many countries. It appears to have fully escaped the ability of any government to control its spread, and is growing by leaps and bounds. We can only speculate as to how bad it’s going to get."
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/the-bizarre-growth-of-the-ebola-outbreak-this-graph-says-it-all_082014
United probably knows EXACTLY the flight and seat number he was on from Brussels to Dallas. What they do not know are his previous flight into Brussels and the duration of his stay in Brussels. Both are out of their purview.
And then I would start advertising this fact. "We are concerned about your safety. With our planes, our crew, and who just sat in your seat."
Preventive Medicine Expert: Obama ‘Underplaying’ Ebola Risk
on Breitbart TV 2 Oct 2014
Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a preventive medical specialist who practices in Texas and Arizona, who has served as Adjunct Associate Professor in Family Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Assistant Professor in Family Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Medical Director for the Women’s Program at Maryview Hospital accused the government of “underplaying the risk” of the Ebola virus, and seemed to argue that flights from countries with large Ebola outbreaks should not be allowed into the US on Thursday’s broadcast of “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
Dr. Vliet said that the government is not doing everything it could to protect Americans from the virus. Speaking on the prospect of a flight ban and the contention that only individuals who are showing symptoms of the virus can transmit it, she said “viruses mutate and change, and so to say anything with 100% certainty when you are dealing with viruses that change is medically irresponsible.” And that “no one can say with 100% certainty” when someone becomes infectious, and this is the reason why European nations have halted flights from countries like Liberia.
She further wondered why the American recently diagnosed with Ebola was not stopped, asking “why wasn’t he stopped at customs, why wasn’t he screened then, why wasn’t he quarantined as they’re doing in other countries?”
Dr. Vliet also declared that President Obama is “underplaying the risk to Americans, and I think when we have evidence going back to the Reston lab accident in Virginia a couple decades ago, of potential airborne transmission, the Canadian government has said that airborne transmission was strongly suspected [we should be more cautious].”
She reported that Canadian health advisories on the virus scrubbed their mentions of the potential for airborne transmission of the virus even though the data did not change, “I printed out the Canadian public health advisory back in June. There is a statement in their report that airborne transmission was strongly suspected based upon the 2012 Canadian study with a transmission between two species [pigs and monkeys] that were not in physical contact…I just re-printed the Canadian advisory this week, lo and behold, that statement has been taken out…the medical data did not change,” she said.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now... you’re in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft.”
Joe Biden, 2009
Here are the 35 countries one flight away from Ebola-affected countries 
Written by
Gwynn GuilfordDavid Yanofsky July 30, 2014
"The Ebola virus outbreak of 2014 is unlike any past pandemic. With more than 670 West Africans dead, it has already killed 50% more people than the first—and, until now, deadliest—outbreak in 1976. That may be because this year’s involves the most lethal strain of the five known Ebola viruses. But its mysterious arrival in bustling West Africa also marks Ebola’s urban debut; past outbreaks have been confined to the remote jungles of central Africa."
http://qz.com/242388/here-are-all-the-35-countries-one-flight-away-from-ebola-affected-countries/
Sounds like United is doing the job that the CDC is refusing to do. They’re passing along that the CDC “thinks there is no chance of transmission”, but out of concern are still contacting people which our government refuses to do for some reason.
I wonder if there would be grounds for legal action by infected passengers/crew had United not taken this step though. It’s a shame to be cynical, but altruism is rare.
Ted Cruz Sends Letter to FAA Demanding Answers to These Five Questions About Precautions Taken to Prevent Ebola From Entering U.S.
Oct. 3, 2014 1:28am Oliver Darcy
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter Thursday to the Federal Aviation Administration demanding answers to five questions about how the U.S. is working to prevent additional Ebola cases from entering the U.S.
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