EBOLA & REAL ESTATE

[Karen Margrave]

I just signed a petition on We the People site to place travel restrictions on those coming from countries with large Ebola outrbreaks, Petition. Probably shouldn't be linking that, but it is a matter concerning everyone, and I think they need to get on top of this quick! 

However;  in regard to real estate,  this is a real estate site after all, in watching the news I saw where they had to wait for a Haz Mat team to go to the apartment building where the man from Liberia had been staying to do clean up, also, one of his family members will be quarrantined in the apartment for several days, which brought these questions to mind.

1.  What effect will that person being in the apartment with Ebola do to the prospects of renting that unit in the future, will it need to be disclosed?

2. Will insurance cover the cost of Haz Mat clean up? 

3. Will it affect any future value of the property? 

4. What would you do if you found out there was someone living in your building or a neighbor had Ebola? 

[David A.]

This thread, especially a lot of the presumptions and fears of the OP, is sort of disconcerting. As a disclosure, I'm living in West Africa (I'm a New Englander) and serving with the Peace Corps, so I am getting constant updates on the Ebola situation and consider myself pretty well-informed on the disease and statistics, especially in the most recent outbreak. 

@Jon Holdman brings up a lot of great points. There is no reason to fear living in an apartment/apartment building/MFH/whatever that's housed somebody who had Ebola (or, to be honest, who died and splattered their Ebola-soaked blood all over the floor). The disease doesn't like... harbor itself in vinyl and grow and thrive and plot revenge until a baby inevitably licks the ground. There is a zero point zero rate/possibility of transmission after a short period of time away from the host. So, any intelligent person would be pretty flawed to have a legitimate concern for living in a building where someone from Ebola has died (and let's just give it like a 3-week window period after someone in this building was infected to be appropriately cautious of contamination with neighbors). I understand some folk might have the "spook factor" akin to a death in a house, but you don't have to get this place fumigated or tear it down to make it livable again. As has been said, you can literally clean contaminated surfaces with bleach.

But the bigger problem here @Karen Margrave  is that there's a petition to ban people from traveling to the US from countries that are experiencing an incredibly traumatizing and fatal disease outbreak. 

This is a ridiculous option for two main reasons: it sociologically is depressing, and it just doesn't make sense in a logistical, positive way. Let's start with logistics. Do you know what has made this Ebola outbreak in West Africa a lot worse? Travel restrictions. Countless men, women, and children in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia have died because airlines would not fly anybody into or out of these countries, and because many neighbors had completely closed off their borders. This both causes starvation in already struggling communities and limits foreign aid from coming in either with supplies or medical professionals (because sadly, far too many doctors and nurses in these three countries have either died trying to treat a disease they're ill-prepared for or just flat-out refuse to go to work knowing that chances are they will meet the same fates of their colleagues). There aren't even enough beds to treat sick people in these countries for "routine" problems like cholera and the flu and malaria, and now people who would otherwise be able to see HCPs and get treatment for palu are just left to fend for themselves until they die. Do you know what would really help this Ebola epidemic from spreading into the West (because god knows we only care about what happens in the Occidental world)? Stopping the disease here in West Africa. That means importing doctors and nurses from the first world who are privileged enough to study medicine in the United States or western Europe and come with supplies to effectively keep themselves safe from contamination (you know, the supplies that can't even get there in the first place because people keep closing borders and limiting flights). Guess what doesn't help a virus from spreading and killing more people: locking everyone down in a country where people are dying left-and-right. 

And any sociological justification for imposing travel bans is just straight up xenophobic and elitist. What makes you think that a country that doesn't even ban kids from going to elementary school who don't have flu shots would close down its entire borders to the rest of the world (because somebody can just as easily fly from Sierra Leone to Brussels to the US as they can fly directly SL to the states)? Way more people die from the flu every year than Ebola. Sorry. Nobody gives TWO craps while people rot on the streets in Liberia because there aren't any beds to treat sick patients, but DEAR LORD, ONE man in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA has Ebola, and nowwwwwww it's a cause for concern, so we need to close our borders and keep those pesky little Africans from stepping on my ground and infecting MY people with their African diseases. It's been hilariously disappointing watching the news coverage of Ebola shift since the Dallas man was discovered. Everyone thinks they're going to die because they're afraid of things they can't understand - that's called ignorance. Ebola is near impossible to spread stateside in a devastating manner like it has over here. 

We so often take for granted our simple privileges (hot water, paved roads, the obvious things), but we forget that sometimes it's good to live in a technological and well-informed world, where disease-prevention that is near impossible in West Africa is SIMPLE at home. Do you know how difficult it is to contact-trace a man in Guinea? Guess how many people that guy has hugged that day. Guess how many friends and family members have stepped into his home. How many strangers did that guy stop and hold hands with, or share a drink with? How many nurses and doctors treated him when he had a fever last week and went to the hospital presuming it was malaria? WHO KNOWS, but it's a LOT. In the states, how many people do you do any of those things with in a week? A lot less. You brought up how the CDC talked about contacting the family members and healthcare workers of the Ebola patient. Do you honestly think that the CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA just called up like 6 family members and a couple doctors and were like "Hey, you touched a guy with Ebola"? NO. I have no doubt in my mind that they went to security videos in the hospital and watched every single move that man made and every single person, hand, or pen he touched between walking into those doors and being diagnosed with Ebola. In America, doctors and nurses work in things called "shifts" and write "notes" and stuff. It's easy to contact trace. "Hey, who have you hugged since you've been in the states?" "Um, probably one or two people maximum because nobody shows affection physically in this country." "Alright, great - and uh, have you bled onto anyone?" "Of course not. I could be walking down the street looking ill and bleeding out the ears, and at best I would get somebody who still wouldn't touch me, but might offer to call an ambulance for me." "Yeah, sounds about right."

It's a masochistic thing to say, but I would love to see how so many people (whether on here, voicing their mindless opinions on Fox news, or spamming my Facebook wall with their uneducated fears about mass Ebola contamination) arguing for closing the borders would feel if somebody in their town got Ebola, and we just put a 21-day lockdown on the city limits every time a new person gets the disease. What, do you think everyone is going to stay in their bedroom until that period is over? What happens when you run out of food, and your grocery store runs out of food, and the power goes out? No, you get in your car and drive two states over to stay with your fat aunt Fanny. Have some sympathy, people. 

WOW. Sorry, that turned into a super long rant. Now I'm going to bed. :|