Ebolapocalypse fears spread through the Athens of America

Yes, xenophobic would be a better choice of words. Thanks.

Correction: ebola is spread by contact with the body fluids of an infected person or animal, at the point where they are symptomatic. If people typically vomit or lose their feces in your salon, you have something to worry about. If not, this is a display of ignorance.

Outside of Africa, there are two countries with Ebola. Spain with 1 case and no deaths and the US with 3 cases and 1 death. Thats it.

To quote somebody else, Taylor Swift has dumped more Americans than Americans with Ebola.

THOUSANDS of Americans die from FLU each year.

I would be more concerned with getting a flu shot than contracting Ebola.

These could be students or other visitors or immigrants from that area OR they could be doctors, public health people, and others travelling for professional reasons.

I'd bet, in this area, there is a lot of the latter, and many of those are not originally from West Africa.

OTOH ... A salon shouldn't be exposing its workers to anybody's bodily fluids. HIV and other chronic conditions spread just like Ebola does - so they are either not protecting their workers properly and/or they are doing things they shouldn't be doing and/or they are panicking.

There is another place that I've seen signs about recent travel: The Harvard School of Public Health has them, because people do a lot of research in West Africa, and not just on Ebola but a whole bunch of infectious diseases, birth outcomes, poverty, solid fuel cookstoves, etc. There are a number of people returning because the situation is making other types of research difficult.

Those signs merely asked that returning staff and students contact a specific department for a debriefing and action plan.

why does everything these days automatically get classified as "racist"?

the social justice warriors of the world are the worst kinds of people

exclusively a Republican campaign tactic to inflame the irrational fears of ignorant voters about Ebola and to advocate border closings that every medical expert says would be counterproductive to quelling the epidemic. That should make you angry. If it doesn't, I'm in favor of *you* taking up stamp collecting if it keeps you away from the polls.

Hey, I'm not offended or anything, I just hope you aren't saving your joke for some party later tonight. It's not funny.

Hairdressers, nail techs, whatever, all deal NOW constantly with people who may have blood-borne pathogens and not even know it. Ever hear of HIV or the alphabet of hepatitis? Or how about skin-borne pathogens like staph? They are supposed to use procedures and equipment to protect themselves and their customers from exposure to these pathogens; if they're not doing that, then something's wrong with them, not with their customers. They are not equipped to protect themselves from what the nurses in Texas were facing. The nurses in Texas were handling an ebola patient who was, pardon the crudeness, spewing bodily fluids from every orifice. They were furthermore doing so with IMPROVISED PPE. Is that in any way comparable to what hairdressers deal with? Is it? Are hairdressers up to their elbows in feces and vomit?

There is a reason for that word, UNIVERSAL.

It means that you ASSUME that ANYBODY that you encounter in a health care setting may have HIV, Hepatitis, etc.

Hairdressers aren't exposed like health care workers. If salon employees are in the potentially exposed categories that require UNIVERSAL precautions, they need to be using them - NOT because of Ebola, but because of the far more prevalent nasties that are out and about in the general population. However, IF they are observing universal precautions, they will be protected from Ebola, too.

If they are not taking precautions, and doing procedures which expose THEM, they could also give YOU a bloodborne disease.

PS: please learn to use apostrophes.