Commuters wary but not fearful of Ebola

• Some commuters say they're not too worried about Ebola, even after NYC case confirmed.
• MTA seeks to reassure passengers that all is safe.

Even with an Ebola case confirmed in Manhattan, people hardly noticed when their fellow commuters coughed on the 6 train Friday morning, Port Chester resident Bryan Dowling said.

"Nobody seems to be acting any differently," said Dowling, 36, who takes Metro-North and the subway to his teaching job at Hunter College on the Upper East Side. "They were coughing and nobody was getting up and moving."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority sought to reassure subway riders that the system was safe to use even though the man diagnosed with the deadly virus recently traveled on it.

"There is no indication the patient was contagious when he rode the subway," the MTA said in a statement. "There is no indication he emitted any bodily fluids on the subway. There were no reports of bodily fluids on any of the subway lines he rode."

Craig Spencer, a doctor who recently returned from West Africa, was the first confirmed Ebola case in New York City.

Some commuters said they weren't overly concerned that their health was at risk.

"I've heard so much news about this thing but most of it seems to be comforting rather than distressing," said John Hwang of Hillcrest, who takes an NJ Transit train to Hoboken, where he connects to Manhattan. "Ebola is not that easily transmitted to other people."

But not everyone was so confident. Carrie Schoen of Yonkers said fellow commuters were talking about the Ebola case in New York City when she rode the BxM4C express bus to the Upper East Side on Friday morning. Crowding on the buses worsens the concerns, said Schoen, a nursery school administrator.

"Everybody's on top of each other, so if anything is going to spread, this is the place," she said of the bus. "Everybody is talking about how nobody knows what's going on, so of course people are concerned. ... I think people are going to be taking their temperature a lot more than they used to."

Suffern's Hal Keshner works for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and has been working on plans to keep home health care workers safe. But riding the rails doesn't concern him at the moment.

And he also suspects New Yorkers' immune systems are pretty tough. "There's so much floating around in the air that they shake it off," he said.

Twitter: @ksaeed1