By Mike McCarthy, News Correspondent in Dallas, Texas
In the leafy Dallas suburb where Amber Vinson lives the neighbour out walking his dog and the woman out jogging are still relaxed about the arrival of ebola in Texas.
But not as relaxed as they were a few days ago.
Both live within minutes of the apartment now vacated by the latest ebola victim.
As we talk the decontamination team are cleaning out Miss Vinson's rooms just yards away.
"Last week it was kind of a joke," says Terry Van Der Heyden.
"It was like 'hey, one of those cases got through here to the US'. Living right here ... that was, like, 12 blocks away.
"Then a few days ago the nurse gets it and that was, like, nine blocks that way. And then now this one yesterday ... this is right across the street."
Ebola - for many months an apparently distant threat - is visiting a real American neighbourhood.
It's not just confined to a hospital anymore. It's not about isolation units ... it's among the everyday people. Or that's how some in nurse Vinson's community see it.
Allison Prange isn't afraid to go out for her regular evening stroll. Why should she be?
You can't get ebola by passing someone in the street. You're safe to shake a stranger's hand.
Yet living so close to the block where the disease's latest patient lives plays strange tricks on the mind.
"It does make you think about what can I do, how do I keep myself safe?" says Allison.
"I did have the thought of maybe I shouldn't go to the local grocery store. Maybe I'll go to the one a couple of miles away ... just a little extra precaution here and there."
And so the fear factor begins to grow despite even President Obama himself reassuring an edgy American public by telling them he's hugged nurses at the Atlanta hospital treating ebola patients and he's OK.
And they believe him. But for how long?
Conflicting versions are emerging of what the protocol is in US hospitals and exactly what advice has been given to those who come into direct contact with ebola patients.
Questions are even being raised about whether some health officials have been entirely truthful in their accounts of how the disease has been handled in American hospitals.
The figures are still very much in favour of the US eradicating ebola on its soil in the not too distant future.
But if those odds even started to look less favourable it's unlikely that ordinary Americans would continue to feel relaxed about the threat of ebola.
The more cases there are - the closer it feels.
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