The war on Ebola has finally begun

It is past time -- but hopefully just in the nick of time -- for the U.S. and the world to ramp up a fight against the rapidly spreading Ebola virus in Africa.

In a matter of weeks, Ebola cases and deaths have doubled in five West African countries. There are now 5,000 cases and 2,500 deaths. The illness has spread from rural areas to cities.

The death toll is expected to reach 10,000 before six months from now, and some experts believe it will reach 500,000 before it's over. Hardest hit by the outbreak are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus, spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, also has reached Nigeria and Senegal. Liberia, population 4 million, has only 250 doctors.

Four Americans, including three doctors, have been or are being treated for the virus in the U.S. because doctors and nurses are especially vulnerable to contracting the virus that has no vaccine or approved treatment.

Experts say the world hasn't seen an Ebola epidemic like this one. This is unparalleled.

In an op-ed for The New York Times less than a week ago, Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, acknowledged that the premise of Ebola mutating to become transmissible through the air is a possibility "that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private."

Osterholm noted: "There has been more human-to-human transmission (of Ebola) in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years." He said this epidemic "has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done."

So as President Barack Obama unveiled new plans to send 3,000 troops to Liberia to build 17 mobile hospitals with about 100 beds each and train 500 health care workers a week, he made it clear the action is humanitarian, but also a matter of national security. This is serious not just because of potential mutation, but also because the disease threatens fragile governments in Africa and that could lead to more safe havens for terrorists.

The request falls under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon because the military has the capacity to set up quarantine camps. Pentagon officials say they can shift $500 million of currently not-yet-obligated funds toward the Ebola effort.

The U.S. also will be setting up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts; providing 400,000 home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will deliver to Liberia this week; and carrying out a home- and community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle exposed patients.

To date, the U.S. has committed more than $100 million in the effort to combat Ebola, according to the USAID, and Obama plans to call on Congress to approve an additional $88 million as part of a bill to fund the federal government. Experts say $988 million is needed.

Talk of this and any Ebola outbreak is scary stuff, especially in a nation that beat plagues like smallpox and polio decades -- even generations -- ago. This also is a nation that was set on edge just this week by headlines that a supertough respiratory and common cold virus, known as enterovirus D68, is sweeping the nation and sending asthmatic children in 27 states -- including Georgia and Alabama -- to the hospital.

Enterovirus D68 is not to be slighted, but it is not Ebola, either.

We know we can contain Ebola -- as long as we don't dally.

Even Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican who normally is never quick to jump on board an idea of President Obama's, has said he would support the $88 million addition for the CDC and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in an upcoming bill.

Alexander, the senior Republican on the Senate's health committee, said Monday that the U.S. must take the Ebola threat as seriously as it does the Islamic State terrorist group.

"This is an instance where we should be running toward the burning flames with our fireproof suits on," Alexander said in a statement. "This is an emergency. We need to recognize it, and we need to find and work with other countries in the world that recognize it."

What already has been the largest CDC response in history is about to get bigger, both for humanitarianism and self-interest.

And it's not a day too soon.

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