As news erupted Sunday morning that a female nurse in Texas had been infected with Ebola, perhaps the most frightening part of the story was the revelation that she came in contact with the first U.S. Ebola patient during his second hospital visit — meaning she didn’t catch the virus unawares, before health workers knew the man had Ebola.

Rather, she was fully dressed in a protective suit — gown, gloves, mask and shield — when she interacted with the man who since died of his Ebola infection…

The important question: Why do these protective suits keep failing?

“We’re deeply concerned about this new development,” [CDC head] Dr. Thomas Frieden said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “I think the fact that we don’t know of a breach in protocol is concerning because clearly there was a breach in protocol. We have the ability to prevent the spread of Ebola by caring safely for patients.”…

Frieden said the CDC is taking four steps going forward: making sure the worker is cared for safely and effectively; identifying the worker’s contacts; treating all health care workers who cared for Duncan as having potentially been exposed; and conducting a full investigation of the procedures in place to protect health care workers who treat Ebola patients.

“Infections only occur when there’s a breach in protocol,” he said. “We know from many years of experience that its possible to care for potentials with Ebola safely without risk to healthcare workers but we also know that its hard, that even a single breach can result in contamination and one of the areas that we look at closely are things like how you take off the gear that might be infected or contaminated.”

Q: Any idea how you became infected?

N.W.: I don’t know how I became infected and how I contracted it. There are some thoughts about how I might have gotten it. Nobody is really sure, least of all me. I never felt like I was unsafe and I never felt like I walked into a situation where I was being exposed. I was on the low-risk side of things. I never was in the crisis or the Ebola center. I was always on the outside. I made sure doctors and nurses were dressed properly before they went in, and I decontaminated them before they went out. We kept a close check on each other about whether people felt safe.

We had an employee who was doing the same job that I was doing. He got sick and I didn’t know he was sick. He didn’t tell anybody. He actually thought he had typhoid. The day that I started having symptoms, at least a fever, was the last day I saw him. He did have Ebola. He did not survive.

I never remember touching him, although it’s possible he could have picked up a sprayer to decontaminate someone, and I could have picked up the sprayer. Or we touched the same thing. I never touched him.

At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, spouses of U.S. soldiers headed to Liberia seem to be lingering just a bit longer than usual after pre-deployment briefings, hungry for information about Ebola…

There are already more than 350 U.S. troops on the ground in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, including a handful from the 101st. That number is set to grow exponentially in the coming weeks as the military races to expand Liberia’s infrastructure so it can battle Ebola…

The message at Fort Campbell and at American military bases elsewhere is that the threat from Ebola is manageable. With the right precautions, the risk is low. U.S. soldiers certainly will not be treating sick Liberians and, if all goes according to plan, they will not interact with them either…

“I have two kids … Of course they’re worrying about their dad,” Lieutenant Colonel Scott Sendmeyer, the chief engineer now in Monrovia, told Reuters by phone.

ABC News medical expert Richard Besser told This Week Sunday morning that there was a “very real” possibility one of the 3,000 U.S. troops being sent to west Africa to help fight the ebola outbreak could contract the virus…

“Right now we have a situation where only 20% of patients with ebola are being treated in treatment units,” Besser said. “So there are a lot of patients who have ebola who are not in a protected environment. So the possibility of a soldier getting ebola is very real and something we have to be ready for.”

Raddatz added that the military was prepared for that scenario.

When President Obama declared Ebola a national-security issue, he didn’t calm people’s fears. He inflamed them. Many immediately jumped to suggesting all kinds of draconian solutions to keep the disease from getting here.

Additionally, the national-security talk muddled the nature of the response to stem the outbreak in West Africa. Breaking up the outbreak is clearly a humanitarian mission, not a national-security imperative. Providing some military support for overseas disaster and disease response can well be justified. But by trumpeting the deployment of troops, the president obscured the fact that what’s needed is a response supported by multiple U.S. government agencies and nongovernmental organizations…

Furthermore, the White House committed what is an unpardonable sin in responding to a public-health concern: it lost legitimacy. Rather, than make a concerted effort to deliver effective risk communications to the American people, the White House slapped a national-security label on the problem and advised us that it’s “unlikely” anyone with Ebola would ever enter the country and that the chances of an epidemic were “extremely low.” Essentially, the word from Command Central was “Don’t worry, be happy.”

ZMapp, it’s the Ebola virus drug that could be key in beating back the spread of the deadly disease sweeping across Western Africa and now trickling into Spain and the United States. Though the initial few doses of the experimental drug are gone, its parent company is quietly rushing to speed up production…

A Spanish priest took the drug as well, but succumbed to the disease. Three African men also took the drug. One has reportedly died according to a Breitbart report. However, the African that died did not have the clinical circumstance under which the two Americans that lived had. The lack of sterile surrounding is reportedly as contributing to spread of and trouble treating the disease in Africa…

Wednesday the man that represented first case of Ebola diagnosed within the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, died in a Texas hospital. He reportedly contracted the disease in Liberia before traveling to the U.S. Duncan did not have access to the drug as supplies had been exhausted.

In both the United States and Europe, Ebola is increasing racial profiling and reviving imagery of the “Dark Continent.” The disease is persistently portrayed as West African, or African, or from countries in a part of the world that is racially black, even though nothing medically differentiates the vulnerability of any race to Ebola…

The saga of Thomas Duncan reflects racial perceptions. His girlfriend, Louise, whom he had reportedly been visiting in Dallas, had publicly begged for him to be given the same experimental ZMapp medication given to two (white) American missionaries who were infected in Africa and recently flown back to the United States…

Unfortunately, doctors and the pharmaceutical developer said there was no longer any ZMapp left for Duncan or any other victim. But the imagery that accompanied his plight lingers: Whites can be flown to the United States or Europe at any expense, while Africans are left to die unattended on the streets of Liberia or Sierra Leone. Or now, without ZMapp, in Dallas.

“It’s easy for the world — the powerful world, who are largely non-African, non-people of color — to ignore the suffering of poor, black people,” Harvard Medical School professor Joia Mukherjee said on PRI’s “The World” last month. It’s easy, she said, to “other-ize” the Ebola crisis.

The World Health Organization is sending doctors to countries where the virus is most prevalent — Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Fusion’s Jorge Ramos spoke to one of the doctors, Dr. Aileen Marty, who recently returned home to Miami after spending 31 days in Nigeria. She says she was surprised what happened when she arrived at Miami International Airport.

“I get to the kiosk…mark the fact that I’ve been in Nigeria and nobody cares, nobody stopped me,” Marty said.

“Not a single test?” Ramos asked her, surprised.

“Nothing,” Marty answered.

Via Mediaite.