Former FDA Official: Larger Ebola Outbreaks Coming to American Cities

Authorities could be forced to quarantine hundreds of citizens

Former FDA official Scott Gottlieb M.D. warns that larger and more frequent Ebola outbreaks will inevitably hit American cities in the near future and that hundreds of people could be forcibly quarantined by health authorities.

In an op-ed for Forbes, Gottlieb, who previously served as Director of Medical Policy Development for the Food and Drug Administration, writes that the imminent onset of the flu season will make it harder to keep tabs on potential Ebola victims in the United States.

Sometime in January or February – as the Ebola epidemic explodes out of West Africa – we’ll start experiencing larger, more frequent outbreaks in American cities. With the flu as a background to confound suspected cases of Ebola, public health departments will be hard pressed to “track and trace” all of the potential “contacts” when perhaps dozens of Ebola cases pop up in their cities.

Unable to pinpoint who might have come in close contact with Ebola, and be at risk of contracting the virus, they will reach for their most absolute tool – forced quarantine – as a way to mitigate threat amidst uncertainty. The number of people who will be placed into forced quarantines could easily number in the hundreds.

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