Why is Omaha the go-to place to hospitalize everyone exposed to the deadly Ebola virus these days?

The Ebola virus is back in town, and Omahans are welcoming it with open arms

By now, it's becoming very clear to anyone who reads the news that Omaha, Nebraska is the go-to place where U.S. government health care officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) prefer to send anyone suspected of either having or being exposed to the world's most deadly infectious diseases around the world, such as the deadly Ebola virus, when infected Americans come back to the U.S. for possible monitoring and/or treatment.

Just this Saturday, an unnamed U.S. health care worker, who may have been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus while treating patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), arrived back in the U.S. and was put in immediate quarantine at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, NE.

The medic, who has yet to exhibit any symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, will remain under observation under tight quarantine in the Nebraska Bio-containment Unit for up to two weeks at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, until which time it is determined he is safe to be release to the general public.

Can we at least build a wall for these deadly foreign viruses coming to our borders?

The DRC, where the medic was exposed to the virus, is currently experiencing the second worst known Ebola outbreak on record, killing some 356 out of 585 people infected since the epidemic began some six months ago, according to the World Health Organization.

In the past, UNMC has cared for three patients infected with the virus in 2014 and monitored several others for suspected exposure to the virus during the worst known outbreak of the deadly virus on record in West Africa from 2013 to 2016  with more than 28,000 confirmed cases.

For some unknown reason, U.S. officials prefer to place more people exposed to the Ebola virus in Omaha than anywhere else in the U.S.; however, that doesn't necessarily mean that Omaha is better prepared than anywhere else in America to handle these kinds of rare, high-level, bio-safety level 4 (BSL-4) infectious diseases.

There are currently three other BSL-4 medical containment units across the country—apart from the University of Nebraska Medical Center—that can safely contain and treat anyone who is infected with the world's most dangerous infectious diseases. Those facilities are: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, GA, St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, MT, and the NIH itself in Bethesda, MD.

Omaha has become the go-to place to hospital most Ebola cases brought in from
abroad because it's 'expendable' compared to other population centers across the
country

So why is Nebraska Medicine chosen more often than not over these other BSL-4 medical bio-containment hospitals when it comes to quarantining and treating people brought back to the U.S. who have either been exposed to or contracted these very deadly infectious diseases from abroad?

It's not because UNMC is any better than these other facilities, but the reason may have more to do with the current geopolitical climate of having deep reservations about containing these deadly infectious agents near vital population centers around the country.

You see, U.S. health care officials have quickly learned through past mistakes during the Dallas mini Ebola outbreak in 2014 that it's not prudent to hospitalize any of these patients near a vital and important population center.

At that time, the NIH and NIAID were foolishly and very naively way over-confident in their thinking that any hospital in the U.S. would be well-trained and prepared to contain the Ebola virus, should a patient with the virus be discovered on U.S. soil.

The mini-outbreak in Dallas in 2014 pretty much proved that hospitals in the
U.S. are no better in containing deadly infectious diseases than third-world
African clinics

How woefully wrong they were! It turned out that, not only can't U.S. hospitals contain a BSL-4 virus like Ebola, but they can't even seem to contain any lower-level run-of-the-mill infectious agents—even the common cold and common staph infection epidemics—from spreading ward to ward, patient to patient like wildfire inside their own doors.

Clearly, the problem in dealing with any infectious disease by U.S. hospitals is that they are far too overconfident in their abilities to deal with infectious agent they can't even see or have no experience in dealing with. (See the USA Today video below on how naively overconfident many hospitals are in their preparation in dealing with Ebola during the Dallas outbreak.)

This situation of competence led to near disaster when a nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, who treated Thomas Eric Duncan at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, TX, boarded a Frontier Airlines flight while she herself was infected with the deadly Ebola virus and exhibiting early symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever.

Thus, we were that close to having a major Ebola outbreak on U.S. soil, across several states. So going forward, Atlanta, GA and Bethesda, MD were ruled out to hospitalize any Ebola patients. But isn't Omaha, NE just as important a population center to prevent a major outbreak from occurring? Apparently, not, according to the NIH and NIAID.

Government officials consider Nebraska a politically safer and the people more expendable to bring infected patients should one of these deadly infectious diseases one day break containment and spread to the general population, much like a scenario in the horror fantasy post-zombie apocalyptic TV series, The Walking Dead.

Thus, the NIH and NIAID are referring all these Ebola patients to Omaha because, if a deadly viral outbreak were to occur in the U.S.—it may just be a question of when and not if such an event like this occurs—it would be much more preferable for such a disaster to occur among a bunch of "rednecks" out in the boonies, rather than anywhere else of any importance where it might matter. Nice!

Nebraskans should only be so grateful that their own government thinks so highly of them in this manner to deserve such an honor! And of course, UNMC just goes along with this plan without asking any questions.

Sources: 

• CNBC—US medic quarantined in Nebraska for possible Ebola exposure (12/29/18)
• KETV—Nebraska Med Center monitoring patient potentially exposed to Ebola (12/29/18), with video
• Medicine of Omaha—Officials designate Omaha, NE as possible flashpoint for the next impending zombie apocalypse (11/21/16)
• Medicine of Omaha—5 U.S. aid workers monitored and quarantined for Ebola in Omaha released (5/31/15)
• Medicine of Omaha—Patient exposed to the Ebola virus hospitalized in Omaha (1/5/15)
• Scientific American—Inside the 4 U.S. Biocontainment Hospitals That Are Stopping Ebola (12/24/14), with video
• Medicine of Omaha—The second patient treated for Ebola at the UNMC in Omaha has been released after testing negative for the virus (10/23/14)
• Medicine of Omaha—Dr. Rick Sacra back home after leaving Nebraska Medical Center (9/26/14)