Ebola outbreak in Virginia?

What if the reston ebola strain that was imported through monkeys to the Hazleton Lab in 1989 at Reston, Virginia, was in fact, pathogenic to Humans and the staff at the laboratory became infected? Would it have spread before people became aware? Any quarantines? How would the goverment have handled the situation?
 
People were infected I believe, 4 was the number I think. The thing about Reston is that it is about as virulent in humans as the common cold, at least I think so, I only vaguely remember some stuff from reading The Hot Zone in December. I think the place was Quarantined in any case so it would not spread. Still there is a very good chance I am wrong, I have not read that book in ages.
 
People were infected I believe, 4 was the number I think. The thing about Reston is that it is about as virulent in humans as the common cold, at least I think so, I only vaguely remember some stuff from reading The Hot Zone in December. I think the place was Quarantined in any case so it would not spread. Still there is a very good chance I am wrong, I have not read that book in ages.
No one actually got sick from it. They were very scared though because it was airborne.
There's a few other types of ebola that aren't very bad which is what I think you're remembering.

If this type of ebola was as deadly to humans as it was to the monkeys and remained airborne, you would see a mass panic and a citywide quarantine. Reston had a 100% kill rate amongst the monkeys and seemed as easy to catch as the flu.
Expect countries to react to it like they did to SARS. And if the infection spread throughout the city, or left the city borders would likely be closed for a short period.
 
No one actually got sick from it. They were very scared though because it was airborne.
There's a few other types of ebola that aren't very bad which is what I think you're remembering.

If this type of ebola was as deadly to humans as it was to the monkeys and remained airborne, you would see a mass panic and a citywide quarantine. Reston had a 100% kill rate amongst the monkeys and seemed as easy to catch as the flu.
Expect countries to react to it like they did to SARS. And if the infection spread throughout the city, or left the city borders would likely be closed for a short period.



the reaction to SARS to the reaction to Ebola would be like Justin Bieber to the Beatles.

maybe "structurally" there'd be some commonalities, but I think the screaming involved would be much more intense.
 
There was already a quarantine set up by the Army Infectious Diseases Research program (or whatever it was called). It will be bad, but probably less than a dozen casualties. They took this really seriously. Chances are the disease won't spread more than 1 jump beyond the workers at the monkey facility. They knew who worked there and were already paranoid about ebola and had the needed resources to Quarantine on hand. It would be worse than OTL but not horrible, there will be panic but it will not be lasting more than a month once it is shown the Quarantine worked.
 
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Ebola has a high mortality rate and kills fast, but that's exactly why it has not spread not from its origin. SARS, on the other hand, has a death rate about 10%, but the latent period is much longer (weeks) thus a infected person may have arrived traveled to the other side of the world.

A Ebola outbreak in Virginia will cause mass panic, but the no. of deaths may be close to the SARS outbreak.
 
the reaction to SARS to the reaction to Ebola would be like Justin Bieber to the Beatles.

maybe "structurally" there'd be some commonalities, but I think the screaming involved would be much more intense.

I should have explained better.
They would treat it like SARS at first when only one or two people are infected. If it is successfully contained to a few lab workers and no one else they won't go further. If it spreads from there then things will kick into overdrive.
 
This will probably be a textbook example of a good response to a disease outbreak. There will be panic but everything was set up so that a worst case scenario would not spread and cause maybe a dozen dead tops. Anyways IRL Ebola Reston will give humans a bad headache in its standard form, that is about it.
 
from my layman's perspective, it's a damn terrifying disease.

so devastating, that the only built-in "safety feature" is that no one in a given area survives long enough to spread it elsewhere.

my limited knowledge tells me that a victim essentially liquidates, bleeding from every conceivable place. I could have it confused/overlapped with a different disease, of course.
 
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