Concern spreads

As Ebola Spreads, Asia Senses Vulnerability

America's initial happy-talk deceived them.

American nurses in Texas getting sick undeceived them.

China, India, and others wising up.

Per the story,

An analysis published online last week by The Lancet, a medical journal, reviewed International Air Transport Association data for flights from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31 this year, as well as data from 2013, out of the three countries in West Africa with the biggest outbreaks of Ebola virus: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

It found that six of the top nine estimated destinations for travelers from these countries were elsewhere in Africa. 

The others were in Europe: Britain, France and Belgium.

But the 10th-largest destination was China. 

India was 13th. 

Mali, a West African country that reported its first Ebola death on Friday, was 11th, and the United States was 12th.

No other Asian countries appeared in the top 20, and there have been no publicly confirmed cases of Ebola yet in Asia.

. . . . 

“The first thing at the top of their minds now is Ebola,” said Malik Peiris, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, after meeting on Friday with senior Chinese doctors and officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Peiris, who is best known as a leader in the fight against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003, said that flight and trade patterns between Asia and West Africa meant that five cities in the region would be at the front line in preventing Ebola from spreading: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in mainland China; Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory; and Mumbai in India.