Now that the President has committed 3,000 military personnel to help contain Ebola in West Africa, it's possible we will hear about more Americans becoming infected and Ebola becoming more visible in the news (not to take anything away from any of the foreigners already on the ground there who deserve a lot of credit). I'm assuming that any service members infected over there will be airlifted back to the US.

It will be interesting to see how the military performs because this is a unique mission. The US military has plenty of experience with humanitarian missions and moving personnel and materiel long distances, but now we're combining that with an almost biowarfare aspect to everything they do over there. Security might become an issue as the epidemic spreads and the fear level rises, and you need security forces that can perform while being protected from infection. Paper surgical masks just aren't going to cut it in this case.

Although it would be wonderful if we had a civilian response rather than a military one, the US military is probably the only organization that could do all of this on such a scale on short notice. I just don't see the UN or WHO being able to organize and recruit a similar roster and size of civilian people and assets for such a difficult working environment in a similar time frame. And which would remain on the ground for an extended length of time necessary to try and slow or halt the spread.