By mid October the west – and America particularly- had conceded that it had completely underestimated the threat of Ebola. After Thomas Duncan, the Liberian national who had travelled to America from his homeland had died at the Texas Presbytarian Hospital Ebola had ceased to be a West African problem and begun to be seen. In America, overnight, it begun to be perceived as a national security issue. As it turned out, America’s response was far from impressive. The country’s medical gurus were insisting that public percerptions of the threat level were being grossly exaggerated.
Those assurances, however, lacked reassuring credentials in the face of evidence in the west as a whole that the disease was spreading