Show me the meat one epidemic stopped at a border.
Couple points come to mind:
Just because an effort is unlikely to have perfect results, doesn't mean you don't make the attempt.
Why there aren't specific restrictions on those traveling through or from any of these 3 or 4 countries that currently are HOT is beyond me. Anyone that has one of these countries stamped on their passport needs to have special screening. Kind of like any traveler that currently travels to the US from Syria or Pakistan or shows on their passport to have traveled to one of these countries. But in this instance, people who have been in the HOT zone should be screened medically and profiled for their potential to be a vector.
Why we are providing any visas to anyone who is from the HOT zone is beyond me. Why we aren't restricting travel to the HOT zone for any US citizens except for medical personnel is also beyond me. If US citizens want to travel there, no problem, but they should be forced to quarantine themselves 3 weeks prior to their return.
As to your question Miles, the BSE epidemic that took place in Canada, Great Britain and various countries in South America was mostly stopped in its tracks by severe travel restrictions.
Granted, this is an animal disease, but that is the interesting thing. Our country attacked that problem more aggressively with regards to restrictions of cattle movement and movement of people than they are this outbreak of Ebola.
If you had traveled to a HOT zone during the BSE outbreak, you were screened at multiple levels, required to answer direct questioning multiple times, forced to discard gear that could potentially be a vector, forced to wash and clean your shoes and other gear under the watchful eye of customs agents.
This is why it's hard to keep a straight face when discussing something like Ebola with people who have no idea what they are talking about.
BSE is not transmissible in the normal sense of infectious disease. Prevent the ingestion of the prions whether in fecal matter or in processed feed and there is no transmission. That's why it is so effectively controlled without medication or vaccination.
BSE is transmitted by feeding animals (cows) "parts" from other animals rendered at temperatures inadequate to killing the prions that cause BSE. First, feeding cows other animal "parts" is just more than a little aberrant and asking for trouble. Second, feeding them sheep by products (parts) is begging trouble. Scrapie is the sheep version of BSE. Scrapie is not a new disease. Scrapie is near impossible to eliminate as we've found out in our wild cervids.
Lastly, BSE was not stopped by quarantine. It did make it to Europe and it did manage to infect people there. Granted, the people ate beef from the UK. But it was not stopped by barricade. It made it to Canada and the US. I do not know if the source was ever proven in US cattle to be traceable directly back to UK, but it matters not for this discussion since it did not get stopped in England and did make it to Canada and to Europe and a few other places if I remember right.
Ebola quite possibly could be prevented as effectively as BSE if as we suspect it is initially acquired by eating a carrier host species. BUT...once Ebola DISEASE is acquired by a human it becomes contagious to humans and some other primates who make the connection between body fluids of the infected human and ingestion/mucosal/blood contact to themselves.
I would very strongly suspect Ebola is transmissible well before a person becomes symptomatic, contrary to what CDC/WHO is saying though. I would surprise me greatly that it was not transmissible earlier in precisely the same way HIV is transmitted. It seems to be pretty clear that casual contact is sufficient for transmission which would indicate a low viral particle count is all it takes. That Ebola can incubate in as little as two days and produce severe illness in that time, is compelling argument that longer incubation would produce virus particles in blood and semen like with HIV and when combined with a low count needed to infect, that it probably would do so.
The evidence of HIV like transmission would be less obvious since Ebola produces severe illness and kills so quickly, and just physical contact is all it requires once symptoms begin. This is something that we'll probably learn out of this epidemic and that will just fall into the "yeah, that makes sense" category.
