It's almost as if the administration is doing everything in its power to spread a panic (come to think of it, when is the last time there was any Ukraine civil war coverage, or ISIS for that matter?).
While one of the big Ebola updates overnight, in addition to Obama being open to appointing an Ebola czar [5] - because clearly the CDC is unable to handle the epidemic, best to have one on top of it all -is that some schools [6]in Ohio and Texas are closed today after students’ potential exposure to a nurse with Ebola furthered fears of the disease spreading, this is nothing compared to the just released revelation [7]that a health care worker who may have handled a specimen from the Liberian man who died from Ebola in Dallas is on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.
Just in case an Ebola-infected nurse traveling coach cross country doesn't do it?
From USA Today [7]:
Industry giant Carnival says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified it late Wednesday that a passenger on the Texas-based Carnival Magic was a lab supervisor at the Dallas hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan died from the disease earlier this month.
Carnival says the unnamed woman has been placed in isolation on the ship and has shown no signs of illness.
"At no point in time has the individual exhibited any symptoms or signs of infection, and it has been 19 days since she was in the lab with the testing samples," Carnival says in a statement sent to USA TODAY. "She is deemed by CDC to be very low risk."
The Carnival Magic is one of the largest cruise ships in the Caribbean with a capacity for more than 4,000 passengers. It sails with more than 1,000 crew members.
Carnival says it in close contact with the CDC, and "at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board."
So here's hoping for the best. If, however, the worst case scenario unfolds, here is where the next Ebola hotspots may well be, deep inside Latin America:
The Carnival Magic is on a seven-night cruise to the Western Caribbean that began Oct. 12 in Galveston, Texas. The ship called at the island of Roatan, Honduras on Wednesday and Belize City, Belize on Thursday. It's scheduled to visit Cozumel, Mexico today and return to Galveston on Sunday morning.
Finally we get the Breaking Bad joke:
Belize's 7 News reports the Belize government refused a U.S. request Thursday to let the Dallas health care worker disembark in Belize so she could be flown home by air ambulance from a local airport.
How long until Americans, of which half already announced they would not fly international due to the ongoing Ebola scare, also decide to delay that holiday cruise until next year?
