CIDRAP Director: Airborne Ebola 'Single Greatest Concern' of My Career

The director of the University of Minnesota’s prestigious Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) tells CNN that the possibility of airborne Ebola is the sum of all fears.

In a piece by CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen titled, “Ebola in the Air? A Nightmare that Could Happen,” CIDRAP Director Dr. Michael Osterholm said nothing compares to the threat of airborne Ebola. 

“It’s the single greatest concern I’ve ever had in my 40-year public health career,” Dr. Osterholm told CNN. “I can’t imagine anything in my career–and this includes HIV–that would be more devastating to the world than a respiratory transmissable Ebola virus.”

As Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, CIDRAP has advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.”

Dr. Osterholm said the way the Ebola epidemic has been managed has been “largely dysfunctional.”

“Nobody’s in command, and nobody’s in charge,” said Dr. Osterholm. “It’s like not having air traffic control at an airport. The planes would just crash into each other.”