REUTERS
By Joe Page                              Oct. 31, 2014

(FORT PAGE, Maine)  Declaring Ebola fears in the United States "not entirely rational," a judge rejected Maine's bid for a quarantine on a nurse who treated victims of the disease in West Africa but tested negative for it, and instead imposed limited restrictions.

Nurse Kaci Hickox (L) joined by her boyfriend Ted Wilbur speak with the media outside of their home in Fort Kent, Maine October 31, 2014.Credit: Reuters/Joel Page

Nurse Kaci Hickox's challenge of the Maine quarantine became a key battleground for the dispute between officials in some U.S. states who have imposed strict quarantines on health workers returning from three Ebola-ravaged West African countries and the federal government, which opposes such measures.

Maine Governor Paul LePage said that while he was disappointed by the order from Charles LaVerdiere, the chief judge of Maine District Court, the New England state would abide by it.

Hickox, 33, said she was pleased with the ruling and said people need to "overcome the fear."

 REUTERS                                                                                     Oct. 30, 2014

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - Mandatory quarantines ordered by some U.S. states for doctors and nurses returning from West Africa's Ebola outbreak are creating a "chilling effect" on aid work there, the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday.

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                     Oct. 30, 2014
By MARC SANTORA and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

New York officials announced on Thursday that they would offer employee protection and financial guarantees for health care workers joining the fight against the Ebola outbreak in three West African nations.

The announcement was an effort to alleviate concerns that the state’s mandatory quarantine policy could deter desperately needed workers from traveling overseas.

Under the new protections, modeled after the rights granted military reservists, workers could not suffer any pay cuts or demotions for serving in Africa, and the state would make up any lost income if they had to be quarantined when they returned.

NBC NEWS                                   Oct. 30, 2014
By Maggie Fox and Stacey Naggiar

Close to 50 volunteers have come back safe and well from the Ebola hot zone in West Africa, aid agencies tell NBC News, even as states debate whether to force such workers into quarantine.

                                                                                    Denmark / U.S. CBP via Reuters file

A look at the numbers from groups such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Medical Corps shows just about 150 people have gone to help fight the epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Of them, 47 have returned symptom-free.

Discussion of conflicting quarantine guidelines

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWSWIRE                     Oct. 30, 1014
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) issued new guidelines on how states should deal with travelers from Ebola-stricken regions, but a lack of federal authority to mandate such guidelines has led to conflicting strategies, varying from state to state, which includes mandatory at-home quarantine for some travelers. Under current U.S. law, the states have the authority to issue quarantine or isolation policies, and they also control the enforcement of these policies within their territories.

Read complete article
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141030-lack-of-federal-authority-makes-fashioning-coherent-national-ebola-policy-difficult

THREE ARTICLES DESCRIBING DETAILS OF THE EBOLA VIRUS AND OTHER VIRUSES.
(Scroll Down)

Advances in microscopy have allowed scientists like Sriram Subramaniam and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute to look at the workings of tiny viruses. In this case, microscopy was used to illustrate the complex process in which human cells infected with HIV-1, green and blue, are linked to uninfected cells. Credit Illustration by Donald Bliss/N.I.H, from The Journal of Virology/American Society for Microbiology

The research on how the virus spreads is not as ambiguous as some have made it seem

THE ATLANTIC                                                                                                          Oct. 28, 2014

A young man, dressed in a biohazard costume, stands on the corner of 546 West 147th Street in New York City. Bryan Thomas/Getty Images

VOX                                                                       Oct. 29, 2014
By Julia Bellez
As Ebola fears wash over America, some state governors are turning to mandatory quarantines: locking up healthy workers returning from West Africa for 21 days, Ebola's incubation period. The policy in New Jersey made national headlines after it resulted in a nurse who had no Ebola symptoms — and had been fighting the disease in West Africa, no less — being isolated in a poorly heated tent with no running shower or toilet.

USA TODAY                                                                        OCT. 29, 2014
By Doug Staglin
Maine state police were stationed outside the home of Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox Wednesday as Gov. Paul LePage said he was seeking legal authority to force the "unwilling" health care workers to remain quarantined for 21 days.

The 33-year-old nurse, who has shown no symptoms of the deadly virus, arrived in Maine on Monday after being forcibly held in an isolation tent in New Jersey for three days under that state's strict new law for health care workers who have recently treated Ebola patients in West Africa.

Over Hickox's objections, Maine health officials insisted that she stay in her home in Fort Kent for 21 days until the incubation period for Ebola had passed.

"I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," Hickox tells Today show's Matt Lauer. "I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public."

WABC NEWS                                          Oct. 28 2014
By Jim Hoffer

NEW YORK

Report says that when a 5-year-old boy who came back from Guinea was admitted to New York's Bellevue hospital  recently,  city officials stopped the use of a a one-hour testing device although it had received the FDA's emergency approval.

As a result, it took 10 hours from the time he spiked a fever till his parents, medical staff, and the public found out, he did NOT have Ebola.

Read complete article.

http://7online.com/health/new-test-for-diagnosing-ebola-goes-unused/369875/

Direct link - BioFire Defense
http://biofiredefense.com/

CNN                                             Oct. 28, 2014

By Greg Botelho, Jason Hanna and Ashley Fantz,

The release today of nurse Amber Vinson  from the Emory Unversity hospital in Atlanta hospital leaves a single person in the United States now battling Ebola, though MS Vinson and others -- including President Barack Obama -- stressed the fight against the deadly virus isn't over.

Dr. Craig Spencer is now the only person in the United States being treated for Ebola. The 33-year-old was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City after developing a fever on Thursday, six days after returning to the United States and over a week after leaving Guinea, where he worked for Doctors Without Borders.

See complete story
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/health/us-ebola/
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WASHINGTON POST   GRAPHICS 
                        
Seven people were treated and declared Ebola-free; one died.  Here is a look at the nine U.S. Ebola patients:

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/status-of-us-ebola-cases/1406/

WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS CDC GUIDELINES FOR CIVILIANS, EXPLAINS DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR U.S. TROOPS

NEW YORK TIMES                                                              Oct. 28, 2014
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said that new Ebola guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “sensible, based in science” and would help keep Americans safe while not discouraging volunteers from traveling to West Africa to battle the disease at its source....

UPDATE WITH DETAILS OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA MONITORING  (Scroll down)

ROUNDUP OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE QUARANTINE  DISPUTE
NEW YORK TIMES                        Oct. 28, 2014

By SABRINA TAVERNISE, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and HELENE COOPER

The federal government on Monday tried to take charge of an increasingly acrimonious national debate over how to treat people in contact with Ebola patients by announcing guidelines that stopped short of tough measures in New York and New Jersey and were carefully devised, officials said, not to harm the effort to recruit badly needed medical workers to West Africa.

THE WASHINGTON POST                    0ct, 27, 2014
By Joel Achenbach, Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun

The Ebola quarantine controversy has become a chaotic brawl involving politics, science and the law. The rules on quarantining health-care workers returning from West Africa are changing almost daily and varying according to geography and political climate.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Army personnel returning to their home base in Italy from Liberia will be held in quarantine for 21 days — even though none have symptoms of Ebola or were exposed to patients infected with the virus.

The military’s policy does not appear to track new guidelines announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called for “high-risk” individuals and health-care workers without any symptoms to be directly monitored by state and local health authorities.

Discussion of the legal and civil liberties issues involved in quarantines

NEW YORK TIMES                                  Oct. 27, 2014

By BENJAMIN WEISER and J. DAVID GOODMAN

It was nearly 100 years ago that an influenza pandemic led to sweeping quarantines in American cities, and it was more than two decades ago that patients in New York were forced into isolation after an outbreak of tuberculosis.

In modern America, public health actions of such gravity are remarkably rare. So the decisions by New York and New Jersey on Friday to quarantine some travelers returning from the Ebola zone in West Africa have taken public officials into unfamiliar legal and medical territory...