The panic begins: Parents pulling children out of school in Dallas where Ebola 'patient zero' was just discovered

Thursday, October 02, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: patient zero, Ebola outbreak, schoolchildren

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(NaturalNews) The Dallas Star-Telegram is now reporting what might be the greatest fear of any parent with a child in public school:

At a news conference at noon Wednesday, Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said students attending four different Dallas Independent School District schools possibly have been exposed to the Ebola virus.

He said the district was informed the five students were in contact with the Ebola patient over the weekend. They have been in school since, but are now at home and likely will be kept there for 21 days. [1]

The Ebola patient, who has now been identified as Thomas Eric Duncan, reportedly interacted with several children. At least one of those children attends the L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary School at 6929 Town North Drive.

The school has since sent a letter to all parents, saying:

This morning, we were made aware that one of our students may have had contact with an individual who was recently diagnosed with the Ebola virus. This student is currently not showing any symptoms and is under close observation by the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department.

What parents have already figured out, of course, is the sobering fact that this child has been in school for several days following exposure to the infected Ebola patient. Exposure does not automatically mean an infection took place, of course, but it clearly presents precisely that risk.

The virus can replicate in a human host for up to three weeks before symptoms appear

Ebola has an incubation period of 2 - 21 days, meaning a child or adult can carry the virus for up to three weeks without showing any symptoms. Government officials currently claim a person is not infectious until symptoms begin to show, but myself and many other investigative journalists have good reason to remain skeptical about the government's claim on this.

The Ebola victim, Thomas Eric Duncan, visited the hospital for the first time on September 26, but was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics (which are useless against Ebola). The fact that he informed medical staff of his travel origination in Liberia did not seem to set off any red flags, for some reason. This was a critical mistake on the part of hospital staff who should have immediately isolated the patient.

He was hospitalized again two days later, after exposing an unknown number of family members, paramedics and medical staff to Ebola.

The CDC is frantically chasing down anyone who came into contact with the patient and keeping them under observation for 21 days. The list of those being monitored by the CDC has now grown to 80 people.

Pulling children from school is only the beginning

It is my belief that health officials will be able to contain this first outbreak. The bigger question, however, is whether they can contain a second outbreak, or a third, or a fourth and so on.

How many people will carry Ebola into large U.S. cities over the next 12 months? If the spread of Ebola continues to rage across Africa, how can any nation protect itself from the spread unless it rejects all air passengers originating from affected nations?

Even then, it wouldn't be difficult for Ebola victims to fly to Mexico, Central America or South American nations and cause the spread to begin there. Once Ebola is established in any nation that's connected by land to the United States, it is very difficult to imagine how it could be stopped while the current federal government demands an "open borders" policy of allowing unlimited illegal immigration into U.S. states like Texas and Arizona.

Ebola might already be spreading through an elementary school in Dallas. But the more concerning scenario is what happens if it begins to spread through other workplaces such as office buildings, paramedics and hospitals. In Africa, hospitals quickly became Ebola infection hubs that caused more infections than they prevented. Doctors and other medical staff were among the very first victims, and those who were not infected or killed by Ebola have largely fled, leaving medical facilities virtually unmanned.

How many isolation rooms are available in U.S. hospitals? Not nearly enough...

There are possibly a few hundred thousand hospital beds across the United States (I'm estimating). On any given day, perhaps 75% of those beds are already occupied. There is little to no excess bandwidth for U.S. hospitals to take on large number of patients all at once.

That is exactly why any pandemic outbreak in the USA will quickly overwhelm hospital capacities and lead to people being turned away and told to go home.

This is what has happened in Sierra Leone, where 82% of Ebola victims are now being turned away by medical facilities. (That percentage will get even larger as the outbreak grows.)

Parents of young schoolchildren in Dallas are doing exactly the right thing by removing their children from the risk of exposure in that school, but most parents have not seriously thought about how they might care for an infected family member if all the hospital beds are full. That scenario, sadly, is simply "unthinkable" for most young couples with children, and relatively few of them have seriously pursued preparedness activities for a runaway pandemic.

That may be about to change, however. The arrival of Ebola in America has suddenly awakened many people to the reality of the pandemic now at our doorstep. The question of whether Ebola can spread in America is now answered: Yes, it can.

Can Ebola be stopped once it spreads beyond a few thousand infections in a country? That question has not yet been answered.

Stay safe. Get prepared now with the FREE audio downloads at www.BioDefense.com

Sources for this article include:
[1] http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/10/01/6165...
[2] https://www.naturalnews.com/047060_ebola_hosp...