Gen. Dempsey: ‘I’ve Been Worried About Ebola Globally for About 90 Days’

 “I’ve been worried about Ebola globally for about 90 days and I have had some on my staff that were probably a little more worried than I was, even a few weeks or months before that ... I’m worried about it because it — because we know so little about it. You’ll hear different people describe whether it could become airborne. I mean, if you bring two — two doctors who happen to have that specialty into a room, one will say no, there’s no way it will ever become airborne, but it could mutate so it could be harder to discover.

It actually disguises itself in the body, which is what makes it so dangerous and has that incubation period of about 21 days. Another doctor will say, well, if it continues to mutate at the rate it’s mutating. And if we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow the opportunity to mutate and become airborne, and then it will be extraordinarily serious problem. I don’t know who’s right. I don’t want to take that chance so I’m taking it very seriously ...

Ebola is a — to use a sports metaphor, this needs to be an away game and that’s why the United States military is involved. We want to help them keep this in isolation inside of those three countries. But I have studied this thing and there is risk that the rate of reproduction, the ability of one patient to affect first two and then four and then eight and then it becomes exponent — so we’ve really got to be aggressive about the isolation and treatment matters that we’re taking up.”