Posted on 10/16/2014 5:51:17 AM PDT by shortstop
We have screwed the pooch.
With this ebola thing, it is hard to imagine how we could have been more incompetent.
Our stupidity has killed one patient and infected two nurses, and left a nation suddenly unsure of the reliability of its health care system.
For all the cocky assurances and arrogant assertions, it turns out that primitives with dust masks are better at caring for ebola patients than we are with our isolations units and high-tech doo-dads.
In the treatment of one patient, the American hospital system has infected more health care workers than would be infected by the treatment of hundreds of Africans.
It is almost inconceivable.
Let’s review the chain of calamity.
A man who self-diagnosed as having ebola, and who informed a nurse that he had recently traveled to the United States from Liberia, was misdiagnosed and sent home to allow his disease to fester and potentially spread to dozens.
When an ambulance brought him back two days later, we now learn that he lay in an open emergency department essentially unattended and spreading his contagion for hours.
And that somehow through the course of his treatment – until his death to the disease – two nurses operating under strict contagious-disease guidelines became infected with ebola.
How does that happen?
How do we, with our moon suits and boy-in-the-bubble technology, catch this deadly disease when doctors and nurses in Africa, working with far fewer assets and much less technology, largely avoid it?
What went wrong?
And why are we worrying about the fate of a nurse’s dog when what the UN is calling potentially the worst epidemic of the modern era is knocking at our door?
About that. Though the UN isn’t staffed by the smartest kids in class, and warnings do tend to be alarmist, it is worrisome that health officials at the United Nations think this ebola outbreak has the potential to rival AIDS and the Spanish flu of 1918.
Only time will tell about predictions. And only time will tell if the incompetence at the CDC and Texas Health Presbyterian are representative of the rest of the American health care system.
Ebola is controlled by diagnosis and isolation. You diagnose patients and those exposed, and you isolate them from the rest of the population.
We failed to do that in Dallas.
And then we got dumber.
The second nurse to be announced as sick with ebola, concerned about her temperature and an approaching trip to Ohio, called the CDC, informed the person she spoke of her work with an ebola patient and her own fever, and asked if she should fly on a commercial airliner or not.
Think that through.
You’ve been around an ebola guy. Coincidentally, a co-worker of yours has just been in the news for coming down with ebola, and you’ve got a fever, and you want to know if you should fly commercial.
That’s the question laid before a CDC official.
That’s a question almost everyone in America would have gotten right.
But a question which the CDC got wrong.
It told the nurse that, though her temperature was bad, it wasn’t bad enough. So she was free to fly.
And she did, from Ohio to Texas, while arguably contagious for ebola.
That’s the kind of stupidity that gets people killed. That’s the kind of leadership the CDC is giving us. That’s the kind of direction our nation is getting in the fight against ebola.
And it raises a question.
If a state-of-the-art hospital in one of America’s largest cities can so fail in its handling of an ebola patient, then what about the hospital in your town? Do you live in Magicville, where mistakes are never made? Are all your doctors and nurses just smarter?
And what about the CDC?
When a federal agency clears a likely ebola sufferer to fly on a commercial jetliner, you have to wonder how engaged it is, and how it will avoid such stupidity in the future.
Finally, there is the issue of the president’s order to send some 3,000 American soldiers and Marines into western Africa to help fight ebola.
If we can’t protect our health care workers in isolation units in America, how are we going to protect GIs operating in the open air in Liberia?
If you send 3,000 Americans into the cauldron of contagion, don’t you expect that some of them are going to come home sick?
And what are you going to do with GIs who catch ebola? Do they get treated where they are? Are they shipped off to military hospitals in Germany? Do they come back home for treatment?
And if they do come back home for treatment, how will we keep the nurses from catching it?
It seems like sending troops to fight ebola is a pretty good way to bring that virus into the heart of our population.
Seems like if we wanted to keep this contagion out of our society we would tell folks coming from affected areas that they have to sit out an incubation period over there before they can come over here.
But we’re not doing that.
We’re screwing around taking temperatures at airports and pretending that this will be a piece of cake.
We’re pretending that ebola is nothing.
That’s what our words say.
Though, thus far, our actions say something else completely.
Our actions say we’re in trouble.
Duncan lied to board the plane & he lied during his first trip to the hospital.
While this post is excellent - I disagree with placing full responsibility on the hospital.
Duncan’s deceptiveness & lack of judgement placed everyone in harm’s way.
From that point on our lack of preparedness took over.
Shame on the nurse and shame on the CDC. 'Gee, I've been exposed to ebola. Gee, I'm running a slight temp. Gee, the CDC says it's okay since I'm seven-tenths of a degree below the cut-off, so I'll go ahead and get on the plane and expose, potentially, another hundred people'. Is there no one with any common sense anymore?
The Brainless Trust....
the sick nurse hopping on the plane has put Ebola out of reach of the CDC and the federal government....even if we had a competent one.
Ebola, thanks to this nurse and the airlines, will spread like wildfire now.
All I can say is I wish I would have started prepping in 2008
I believe it's call “Chaos Theory”
I don't know but I can certainly see a coup in the offing, where it's announced that obozo is medically incpapable of performing the duties of the office etc etc....
“our stupidity” don’t kill a patient
Duncan was dead man walking by the time he came clean with the hospital
no, I don’t believe he was completely honest with them from the first visit anymore than he was honest at the airport of departure
notes from doctor number 2 indicate he replied “no” when asked if he had been in contact with anyone ill with ebola- that had to be a lie since both the women he carried AND her brother died from ebola before Duncan fled
Biden to the rescue!
Rotflol!
Nobody on that plane is going to get ebola.
about 30 miles from WACO.
flight with nurse who has Ebola
Posted: Oct 15, 2014 10:39 PM CDT
By Taylor Durd
BELTON - Two Belton ISD students were on the same flight Monday as Dallas nurse, Amber Vinson, who tested positive for Ebola, Belton ISD confirmed Wednesday night. The parents of the two students, who attend Sparta Elementary School and North Belton Middle School, have decided to keep those kids out of school for 21 days.
Belton ISD held a press conference Wednesday evening assuring the district was safe for all children to attend school. Bell County Health Department Epidemiologist Lacey Sanders said they do not expect these two students to have any symptoms of the virus because of where they were seated on the plane.
“She was not symptomatic on the airplane at the time. So the CDC and the Texas Department of Health Services and myself think the possibility of any kind of spread of it is almost nonexistent,” said Sanders.
The Bell County Health Department said they are waiting on official written notice from the CDC for a reclassification of those student’s risk levels.
Several concerned parents early Wednesday evening were wrestling with whether to send their children to school.
“There’s a risk. Low risk, high risk, it doesn’t matter. It’s a risk—and that’s a risk as a parent that I’m not willing to take for my child,” said Breanna Sherburne, a parent of a student attending Sparta Elementary.
Belton ISD sent out a letter to parents at Sparta Elementary School and North Belton Middle School early Wednesday evening informing them that two students were on that flight with the second nurse who tested positive for Ebola.
Bump
This one truly made me lol.
“Nobody on that plane is going to get ebola.”
I agree with you.
OK, Freepers, it is time for action.
More is needed NOW than just posting here.
Call your reps in DC and tell them the flights from West Africa through any hub and admittance of anyone from these countries into the USA HAS TO STOP!
The place to fight this disease is at its source, not here.
The “screening” process at our airports is a joke and ineffective. 150 people a day are coming here from West Africa—that is 4500 a month. Some may show a fever and yet may be carrying the virus. The second nurse is proof of that.
Our healthcare system will shutdown if this continues.
We already have cases in Kansas, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Texas.
The first order of business of a government is to protect their citizens. And this government is failing to do so.
Make the calls.
The family you save may be your own.
"I agree with you.
Allow me to disagree. It is unlikely that anyone on that flight is going to contract Ebola.
It is not impossible.
(I can't calculate the probabilities -- but neither can the CDC.)
All of the 230+ deaths among health care workers have been in west Africa. All but 3 of the 400 cases contracted have also been in w. Africa =>
Around the globe, about 400 health care staff have contracted Ebola, and more than 230 have died.
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