I don't get to post whenever I like ; I only get to post when I've got an internet connection.

I wonder what proportion of Slashdot users today were conceived while we were posting? I bet it's not 0%, and I bet the number is increasing.

I remember someone here shared the notion that x white people had to get the disease to get a vaccination underway.

Leaving aside the "x white body count" shit (remember, most of the work so far has been on the basis of fears of weaponised EBV), you do realise that before you can have a vaccination programme, you firstly need to have a vaccine that works, with a reasonable degree of safety and efficacy (so trials are unavoidable) ; then you need to produce large quantities of the vaccine (GSK estimate that this step is going to take a year ; this is their business, so I accept their estimate of the timing) ; and then you're going to need to ship it and distribute it, which is also going to take weeks to months.

However many white bodies we are from an effective vaccine, we're also on the order of a year from a vaccine.

Is there actually a law of nature that requires there to be a vaccine for a particular virus. I don't see that there is, of necessity.

Catholicism is Christianity in entirety - it has essentially two main branches, Roman Catholic, and Protestant (or Church of England based Christianity, and also includes most other non-Roman Catholic Christian branches such as Baptists, Methodist etc, which are all offshoots of the CoE branch). But both sit under the label of Catholicism.

So, there's no Coptic church? No Orthodox church? And they're just the ones that there is no doubt about them being Christian. You could have a slightly longer discussion about whether Mormons are Christian or not - only a thin condom rubber between the two from where I sit.

You need to retake religious studies

Someone needs to re-take their RS exam, but I think you're in that remedial class too.

Well,if you think that will make you impervious, enjoy.

EU to UK is the exception, being an island. The rest of (mainland) Europe sees no reason to monitor the movements of people. Hostile borders (eg EU to south) generate more information. But to assume that all movements generate the same amount of data as an air flight does is false. Dangerously false.

Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.

Beyond one degree of separation, border controls are not effective.

If you are an American and you want to move to Canada, you need to have a job offer first,

Yes. I went through that when I was last working in Canada. And the employer has to prove to the Canadian government that they've advertised the job adequately in Canada.

You've got good skills, I take it? So, this isn't a problem.

and then you still need to take the entrance exam to determine if you will be allowed to emigrate.

Skills, languages, income ... again, this isn't a problem. They waived the languages tests for me (and my colleagues) because we weren't looking for settlement, just employment, but that wouldn't have been a problem anyway. My French is adequate, my Spanish workable (not that I need either very often). My Russian isn't worth much, but I can navigate my way around the country without getting lost or shot, so it's not useless.

Might be worthwhile getting some of those useful rarer skills.

The information is stored in the computer system.

You're missing the point. In some countries (not, I take it, America ; assuming you're American, I think we've had this conversation before) your entry and exit of the country is not recorded. Not on computer, not in stamps in anyone's passport, not in face recognition at non-existant border posts. It's simply not recorded.

For starters, I did (counts ...) 10 border crossings in my recent vacation. Only the ones into and out of the UK generated a border crossing datum. The rest, at best, recorded the movements of a hired car. And at least two of those crossings were in someone else's car. And that is in high-tech modern Europe. Go to most of Africa and there is still negligible border security if you're a person. (there's a bit more security if you're a 30-tonne truck, due to being rather more conspicuous and needing a reasonable road surface).

The beautiful thing will be if a vaccine is produced.......watching the cognitive dissonance in all those anti-vaxers who also are posting hysterical things about ebola. Will they risk the autism?

Just hold onto that thought for .... at least 14 months.

GSK are not expecting to have a vaccine in production lines before 2016.

Ebola has been around since the 70s

Ebola virus has almost certainly been around for a lot longer than that. It was identified and characterised in the mid-1970s.

It's entirely possible that, for millennia, whole villages or towns have been wiped out by Ebola at 10 yearly intervals. But with no survivors, nobody knew what had killed them.

I believe

I think I'd rather rely on published journal papers, thanks.

that's the airborne strain that doesn't affect humans.

Yet.

Except for that one very specific symptom of traveling to Western Africa!

Don't worry, that won't be a helpful symptom for much longer.

I hope the vaccine makers and distributers are successful and that my expectations are not met.

GSK-Beecham were putting out an item to the UK's morning TV news (I'm watching at the moment) that they don't think they could be shipping an effective vaccine before 2016, at the earliest.

Well, I'd think with today's computer systems, it would be pretty easy to keep track where someone is flying from.

"Com-puter sys-tems" .... sorry, but haven't you flown on hand-written tickets this year? I have. In (well, from) West Africa.

I'm not 100% sure if all of the countries in question have a US embassy. For certain, many of them simply don't have direct flights to the US, nor do they have US-airlines flying in or out. So why would they have US-compatible systems? (I don't recall seeing a single US operator on any of the boards over the last year, but I wasn't looking for anything other than my flight)

I don't think there are any direct flights from that area into the US. Thomas Duncan came through Brussels. It's probably impossible to totally quarantine such a large area.

Most of the flights I saw when travelling through the area in the last year were to and from other African countries, or to and from France (they don't call it "Francophone West Africa" without reason). But I was in Abidjan one day (I think - they blur one into the other after a time) and ISTR there was a flight to Rio de Janeiro.

But, so what about the lack of direct flights? I can get anywhere in the world with the possible exception of Antarctica within 24 hours and probably 3 flights. The door is open.

with our flight systems, can we not pretty readily track anyone flying OUT of that area

Because your (USA's) flight systems extend as far as the origin points of flights that terminate in your country. What happens outside that, you're dependent on other countries (or the traveller themselves) reporting information to you. (Of course, the NSA are probably perfectly well aware of the full flight history of anyone leaving the area, but they can't admit to that without being jailed.)

Better than have it reach pandemic proportions

It may have reached that point already. The WHO are expecting that, by Christmas/ New Year (when there will be a global surge of travel, intranationally and internationally) essentially every country in the world will have had several cases arrive from West Africa (albeit via third countries). The likelihood of secondary cases from those primary cases is high ; whether there are then tertiary cases is going to depend on local responses.

Which doesn't mean that we're fucked - just that global vigilance is going to have to increase and efforts at containment will have to increase rapidly too. So ... maybe every international airport in the world is going to need the nearest hospital dedicating to isolation cases. And if that means that no operations which are not urgent get carried out in the remaining hospital beds, then that may be the price.

For what it's worth, it's plausible that the number of deaths from the economic disruption caused to the three core countries is already exceeding the number of deaths due to the virus.