Ebola News is Topic A

With the Ebola outbreak now reaching the United States, news reports of confirmed, suspected, and possible cases of the deadly virus have made the virus Topic A.

From serious medical journal articles to bizarre postings on Twitter, Ebola news was everywhere.

In Princeton, NJ, Ebola panic resulted in some residents tacking up “wanted” posters for NBC News Correspondent Nancy Snyderman, who was under state orders to stay home because she may have been exposed to the virus during a reporting trip.

Snyderman, 62, a physician, was caught breaking the terms of a voluntary quarantine. The posters have been placed throughout the town warning people to be on alert for Snyderman and members of her family. The quarantine was made mandatory after the story that she was violating the agreement first broke and the posters reportedly give not only the Snyderman’s information but also her phone number and that of the local police and health departments.

While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have maintained that any hospital can properly treat possible Ebola patients and maintain the safety of health care professionals, some doctors and nurses are not quite so sure.

In New Jersey Richard Ridge, Chief Executive Officer of the New Jersey State Nurses Association, is quoted in an NJ.com story as saying diagnosed patients should only be sent to specific locations. Hospitals across the state were scheduled to hold Ebola drills this week to prepare for a potential case coming through their doors.

A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Hospital Association said in the story that “Our hospitals’ job is to be ready to care for all patients. We’ll continue to do so until those public health authorities provide a different directive.”

While Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in this country, was treated and eventually died in the Texas hospital to which he was admitted, Nina Pham, seen here thanking her caregivers from her hospital bed, one of the nurses who contracted the disease while treating him was reportedly flown from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to a federally designated biocontainment unit hospital at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. A second nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, was transferred from Texas to a similar unit at Emory University in Atlanta.

The Texas Department of State Health Service has issued a travel ban for any medical personnel who came in contact with Duncan, which includes using public transportation or being out in public places like supermarkets and restaurants, for 21 days. The order comes after Vinson had reportedly flown while showing signs of the virus and a health care worker who may have handled specimens from Duncan was reportedly on a Caribbean cruise.

Meanwhile in Connecticut,reports are coming from Yale-New Haven Hospital that a one of a pair of graduate students who were in Liberia and had shown potential symptoms of Ebola had test results for the virus come back negative from the Connecticut Department of Health.

And in what may be good news for everyone getting Ebola overload, the Associated Press announced today it would no longer write any stories about suspected cases, just confirmed ones.