MelindaMoore

Vaccines are just about the most cost effective intervention in public health!

In the case of flu vaccines, they are typically at least 90 percent "efficacious" in preventing disease altogether, and certainly in limiting the severity of flu infection.

Every year, hundreds of thousands if not millions of persons around the world are infected by flu. In the US, up to 49,000 or so flu deaths occur each year. You can find more details here: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9572/index1.html ... including reasons why some people choose not to get vaccinated.

Have you all gotten your flu shot/mist yet?

Great question, wcrp73!

We need a package of interventions to stop the outbreak in Africa, limit international spread of disease, and protect Americans. These aims are obviously linked to one another. And we are already implementing a package of interventions.

Those interventions include airport exit screening, new airport screening at 5 US airports where 94 percent of people from those 3 countries arrive, and stepped-up measures in our medical and public health system to identify cases, manage them medically, and trace their contacts to limit spread here.

My impression, though no one has said as much, is that this may be an interim measure until hospitals around the country ramp up to be fully prepared to manage an Ebola patient safely and effectively.

In the case of the two nurses moved from the Dallas hospital, I believe that the staffing levels have been compromised because so many medical personnel who cared for Mr. Duncan are under quarantine.

OMG! Of course we do! We are a global community. Not only are problems sometimes global, but so are the solutions, and the people who benefit from them. That is what we mean by global health security!

I actually wrote about this movie when it first came out. Take a look at http://www.rand.org/blog/2011/12/heed-film-lessons-on-outbreak.html

Just a couple points from that:

Mother Nature can be as dangerous as a bioterrorist. Laurence Fishburne, who plays the CDC director, has one of the most important lines in the movie. When asked if the new virus could be a "weaponized version of bird flu," he snaps: "We don't need to 'weaponize' bird flu. The birds are doing that.”

Panic can be as deadly as disease. The movie's depiction of roadblocks at state lines, and the widespread societal breakdown that follows, could easily happen. This was precisely the scenario public health officials feared during the first days of the 2009 flu pandemic.