Posted on 10/16/2014 1:32:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
Add Ebola to our long and growing list of federal screw-ups. On Wednesday
morning we learned a second nurse was infected by the virus in a Dallas hospital while taking care of the Ebola patient from Africa who died October 8.
When the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, went on TV, he admitted his government agency wasn't aggressive enough in managing and containing the spread of Ebola.
"We could've sent a more robust hosital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed."
Thanks for the newsflash, Doc.
This latest failure of the federal government is really incredible. Just how incompetent can it get?
Iraq, Syria, ISIS and now Ebola. Isn't there anyone in Washington who's qualified to do anything right?
The president made fun of ISIS last year when he called them "the JV team," but it turns out the real JV team is based in DC and he's the captain.
Quarantines, restricting flights from West Africa -- I don't pretend to know the best way to keep the USA safe from Ebola. That's supposed to be the CDC's mission.
But I do know that the best way for the federal government to deal with this or any problem is to put qualified people in charge of solving it.
We've known for six years that the president isn't qualified to be where he's at. We know Susan Rice isn't qualified to be his national security advisor.
And now we're finding out that Dr. Frieden of the CDC isn't qualified to take your temperature.
The CDC boasts that it's "the nation's health protection agency, working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats, both foreign and domestic."
But when a guy with the world's deadliest virus showed up for treatment at a Dallas hospital, what did the expert bureaucrats running the CDC do?
Little more than send in a few advisers.
Now we see the head of the CDC on TV giving us his "shoulda, coulda, woulda" speech.
Too late, Dr. Tom. You shoulda already given us your resignation speech.
You knew how dangerous Ebola was. You knew we were going to bring infected people here for treatment.
When it happened, you and your agency were unprepared, inept and slow to respond.
Dallas hospital personnel were ill-equipped, untrained and basically forced to learn how to properly and safely handle an Ebola patient on their own. Late Wednesday
afternoon, when President Obama appeared with his cabinet to speak about Ebola, he said the CDC was going to aggressively monitor the deadly virus and would not repeat the mistakes made in Dallas.
He said the CDC would be setting up a medical SWAT team to handle new cases and it'll make sure all local hospitals receive proper training and equipment.
He reassured us that the danger of any one of us contracting Ebola is extraordinarily low. So is the chance of a serious outbreak in the USA.
And he said he has confidence in the CDC and the healthcare system to handle what the media are already calling "The Ebola Crisis."
Unfortunately, this president -- and the federal government in general -- doesn't have much credibility left on anything.
Let's hope he's right this time.
Keystone Cops.
Government Malpractice, a tautology.
Lots of mistakes were made all around. Here is the thing. This is new. People did what they thought was right at the time. I think all thought and energy should go toward solving the problems and learning from mistakes. I do not believe anyone purposely made things worse. Sometimes mistakes are the ONLY way we humans learn. If we punish everyone who makes a mistake we only manufacture a population of liars. It does not help solve a serious problem to put everyone on the defensive. We need 100% of thought and energy focused on solving the problem.
Just my thoughts on the matter. I lash out, too, mostly toward the lawsuit league. It is appalling to me that so much energy had to be spent on defending people against the charge of racism when their energy was needed to protect the workers and avoid spread of the disease.
Government Malpractice? No.
Government Malice.
governement malpractice is , in reality
Government Mole practice , as in : "Whack-A-Mole".
Hit'em once ,.. and they show up elsewhere !etc.,etc.
And not merely malice, but malice with aforethought. This is not a “getting even” for old real or perceived slights, it is taken to the level of inflicting great and even excessive retribution upon those once thought of as “oppressors”.
Only those who were the oppressors in the past, have now sort of switched sides, and now proceed to persecute those whom they had largely left alone before, to win the love and approval of the formerly oppressed.
I refer you to the saga of “The Star-Bellied Sneetches”, where a middleman was making huge proceeds out of either applying or removing the star on the bellies of the Sneetches.
Bingo! It is malice.
Ebola Scare = Voter Suppression
Just read The Economist/YouGov poll published in the Washington Examiner.
82% want quarantine for travelers from West Africa
66% want outright ban
And Obama doesn’t budge.
I totally agree with you for the most part. Like you, I tend to be a problem solver and spreading blame doesn’t solve a darn thing. Mistakes were made...let’s fix them. I especially agree about the “lawsuit league”.
As the mistakes continue, though, it makes me painfully aware how woefully unprepared we are for an epidemic...of any type. I was one of those complacent Americans that truly believed that the US was more sophisticated and educated than the folks in Liberia. As events unfold, I now see that we are not. And how things got so out of control in Africa. The possibility exists here. I spend my time shaking my head and saying “are ya kiddn’ me?”
I learned from the hearings that human waste of ebola patients is not burned at the site, because of EPA regulations, but is transported elsewhere for incineration.
Why should this waste be transported with the chance that it be spread on the road in case of a vehicle accident? Cleanup will be a nightmare.
Screw the EPA and incinerate the waste right at the hospital.
What is more important — minimize the spread of the virus by immediate incineration or follow EPA guidelines with the chance of spreading the virus during transportation?
Ebola is level 4 biohazard. That is nothing new.
Level 4 biohazards require very specialized equipment and training:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level
Level 4 REQUIRES pressurized suits, not just covering up with masks.
VERY few civilian labs/hospitals are capable of dealing with a level 4 biohazard. Yet the federal government pretended that the hospitals were “ready” to deal with it and all was well.
That wasn't simply a mistake. That was seriously negligent in the face of well known facts.
Commendable affections but misplaced. The mistake that was made sits in the White House. Tolerating him and the ones who put him there is not helping. As the libtards like to say, get to the ROOT CAUSE. Fix that, if you can.
Sorry, but the “ones who put him there” walk the streets with us every day. I don’t know how we change the fact that people got caught up in the hype...and still are. But I do agree...the fish is rotten at the head.
True - except for the fact the sole purpose of the CDC is to be prepared to handle something such as Ebola entering the US. It appears the billions of dollars spent on the CDC has been wasted because when the rubber hit the road, they had four flat tires.
Your argument is like saying we have a fire department waiting around for a fire and when called they wait and see if the locals can put it out before responding.
I don’t blame the locals, this was totally unexpected, but everything after the patient was diagnosed falls directly onto the CDC and by extension Obama.
Make that “D Squad” of the JV team.
These health care workers were overseen by CDC, right? did they not have 'advisors" there? And they did not tell them they shouldn't be going on plane flights or cruise ships? What gets me the worst is these "health care" workers did not know that through common sense?
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