In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, Don’t Panic.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced on Tuesday evening that a patient undergoing treatment in the United States does, indeed, have the Ebola virus. Nearly two weeks ago, the traveler left Liberia, one of the West African countries at the center of the current Ebola outbreak, and flew back to Texas – asymptomatic at that point. This is key, because Ebola spreads when a person is exhibiting symptoms. At the time of that flight, the patient was not ill. And when the patient later reported to a hospital in Dallas, doctors there quickly suspected it was Ebola and put the patient into isolation. Those who came into contact since the patient’s arrival are being traced as a precaution and will be watched for symptoms for three weeks – the incubation period of the virus. Odds are good those contacts do not include you, and your odds of dying of Ebola in the US are lower than your chances of dying on a rollercoaster.



It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ll see other cases here in the US, but, seriously: relax. We got this.



Ebola is already here in the United States. It’s existed in labs for decades, among researchers and experimental primates and other animals with no spread out into the open. And based on models of travel patterns published earlier this month, we already knew that an imported case of Ebola might make its way here. Hospitals across the country have been busy preparing, and there have been a few suspected cases that ended up testing negative, so we’ve already had test runs in Ohio, New York, California and other areas.

We saw it coming. We have great infection control officers in our hospitals who have been watching the outbreak unfold from afar. Our hospitals are trained better than ever. Your cousin from Dallas is not going to turn your town into a scene from 28 Days Later.

Of course, we’ve also brought medical workers home to the US for Ebola treatment, at Emory near CDC headquarters in Atlanta, and in Nebraska, where a physician was released on Thursday and is doing just fine, thanks. Despite the initial public outcry, no medical staff or other hospital workers have become ill after caring for these patients, and no one else in their communities has been put at risk. The Ebola virus is easily controlled with the prevention measures and healthcare infrastructure we have in developed countries like the US.

Be concerned for those in the affected areas of West Africa and Central Africa, but, really: do not lose sleep about the potential for Ebola to spread across the US. It’s not going to.



Even if this new Dallas case hadn’t been suspected and diagnosed as rapidly as it was, the risk was still low for spread in the US. We already had one imported case of another filovirus – an Ebola “cousin” called Marburg – back in 2008, in Colorado. That patient wasn’t surrounded by an entire nation’s preponderance of precautions; that patient didn’t even receive her definitive diagnosis until a full year after it was resolved – and that was only because she herself had read about another traveler who had visited the same cave in Uganda. After multiple trips to an outpatient clinic and to her local physician, the Marburg patient was finally admitted to a community hospital with a fever of unknown origin.



Even when someone in the US suffered from almost-Ebola – even when they weren’t in isolation, even when they didn’t get a CDC press conference – no one else ended up infected.



The situation in Africa is quite different. The medical infrastructure there can be poor to non-existent. Organizations such as Doctors without Borders have been leading the fight against the virus, but they’re exhausted, overworked, understaffed and working in incredible heat and generally miserable conditions. They’re turning away patients because they lack beds and are begging for an infusion of cash, supplies and personnel. In the US, we have all of that in spades.



It’s natural to dread death and to fear the exotic, the unknown. But we can’t let our fears – particularly when they’re not rational – overwhelm the global response that is so necessary, right now. That response requires calm, for patients here in the US and abroad. What we need is the opposite of panic. ​