I think the author is overestimating how prepared the US healthcare system is to handle a real threat if one arises:<p>- The U.S. has been advertising that we're the ones with the cure for ebola, so where is anyone with money going to go as soon as they get exposed? And while most of the victims are among the urban poor, there will be more wealthy people who become infected as the epidemic increases in scale.<p>- Even if we have better technology, the cost of treating each victim here is exponentially higher. The cost for each patient could easily be close to a million dollars if you count 2+ weeks in the ER, licensed biohazard disposal and decontamination, network tracing, quarantining exposed contacts, etc.<p>- Nearly 50M Americans don't have health insurance. If going into the ER risked you getting kept there while waiting for test results, possibly losing your job, and getting getting stuck with a bill for tens of thousands of dollars even if you don't have ebola, it's hard to imagine that many of those people aren't going to just wait a few extra days.<p>- In the US healthcare workers are generally paid well enough that they can just leave their jobs, maybe not comfortably, but with enough money to at least feed themselves and get by. It's hard to imagine that we won't have large numbers of healthcare workers just taking off if this ever gets serious. Especially since US healthcare workers aren't trained to deal with ebola, and largely aren't interested -- notice how most of the people going to west Africa to volunteer in this crisis are missionaries, not doctors.<p>- We have all sorts of religious fundamentalists in the US who think it's god's will that the US be destroyed for condoning homosexuality or whatever who would be more than happy to help the process along, and more than enough people abroad who would gladly sacrifice their own lives to disrupt our foreign/domestic policy.