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Ebola-linked cruise ship passenger cleared; hospital apologizes for mistakes
CNN ^ | 10/19/2014 | By Ben Brumfield

Posted on 10/19/2014 6:34:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

A cruise ship plowed through the waters of a Texas port on Sunday with precious cargo on board -- the end of a small Ebola scare. A passenger had been loosely linked to the only patient to die from the disease in the United States, but health authorities cleared her after an odyssey at sea.

After voluntarily isolating herself in her cabin, she remained symptom-free and her lab tests looked good, the Galveston County Health Authority said. She and a travel partner were allowed to disembark.

The drama goes back to her work as a lab supervisor at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, the center of a maelstrom of Ebola fears in the United States. It's where Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan was misdiagnosed and later died, and where two nurses became the first people to contract Ebola in America.

Hospital apologizes

And on Sunday, with the eyes of the nation upon it, the hospital took out a full-page newspaper ad, once again offering an apology.

We slipped up; we're deeply sorry; we'll do better. That could serve as a summary of the open letter from Texas Health Resources CEO Barclay Berdan in the Sunday editions of the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cruiseship; ebola
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1 posted on 10/19/2014 6:34:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Whoops our bad...


2 posted on 10/19/2014 6:44:25 AM PDT by cableguymn (We need a redneck in the white house....)
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To: SeekAndFind

What about ruining this woman’s vacation—impacting the vacations of everyone on that ship—and needlessly causing a whole lot of expensive uproar with these overreactions?

Just because someone works in a lab where samples are processed does NOT mean they are a risk of infection! People routinely process samples in labs without getting infections—in fact, lab-acquired infections are rare enough to be newsworthy when they occur.

This is what happens when hysteria, not reason, takes over.


3 posted on 10/19/2014 6:49:06 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: exDemMom
This is what happens when hysteria, not reason, takes over.

It's been coolly and calmly calculated. It is no different in any way from strip searching grandmothers at the airport while letting the sleeper terrorist through with a cursory glance. There are two problems, no concept of relative risk (or grasp of science for that matter) and political correctness. The latter is only going to get worse as Holder or Holder II threatens to sue local authorities for profiling Liberians.

4 posted on 10/19/2014 7:07:34 AM PDT by palmer (This comment is not approved or cleared by FDA)
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To: exDemMom

I wouldn’t call it hysteria, but an over abundance of caution. I’d rather have the caution than an assumptive, cavalier attitude that could cost many, their lives.

It’s sad that her vacation was ruined, and so were the vacations of 4 thousand others, but those 4 thousand could have also been a vector for a horrible, uncontainable, plague.

I’m sure this makes for a demonstration of why ‘caution’ is an inconvenience to the travel industry, but until this thing burns out, if it ever does, I personally will be thankful that I’m not having to stand by and watch my loved ones, or yours, melt into a rotten puddle of infectious fluid.


5 posted on 10/19/2014 7:11:06 AM PDT by PrairieLady2
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To: palmer
It is no different in any way from strip searching grandmothers at the airport while letting the sleeper terrorist through with a cursory glance.

Exactly. I am a grandmother, and I am frisked about 50% of the time when I fly. At 5'3 and 130 pounds, I must look really dangerous.

6 posted on 10/19/2014 7:16:05 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: SeekAndFind

I’m sure all the people who flew with Amber Vinson are relieved that she didn’t inconvenience herself.


7 posted on 10/19/2014 7:42:24 AM PDT by Tax-chick (Feeling fine about the end of the world!)
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To: exDemMom

Please call congress and tell them that we must be deadly serious about containing Ebola by strict quarantine within the United States and from infected nations. This is our right and our duty and it is THEIR duty to protect US.

Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121 or Google your congressman or senator and get his contact information and call him / her office directly. You can also call or go to their local offices.

I believe decisive response is urgent because you can’t put this Ebola genie back in the bottle once it gets out. It is a fire, it consumes all the fuel it can get and the fuel is people. The only way to stop a fire is to block it from the fuel or cool it with water. A vaccine or medicine to treat Ebola would be the water and we don’t have reliable, enough or any.

Every possible measure must be taken to stop the spread before draconian measures are imposed. What is being done now is sloppy. We are walking a dangerous road. The threat is blossoming by the day if not hour. Almost every hour there is some new Ebola development and none of them are good. This is a serious and potentially deadly event. Unchecked it could destroy or weaken the United States and facilitate our destruction by others. It has that potential for every country and that is why so many are responding with such strict quarantines. These consequences, no matter how small the probabilities, demand a full effort and significant response.

Ebola is being spread here in the United States right now. First Texas, then Ohio then? Terror is an excellent weapon. It disrupts, confuses, paralyzes and destroys a society. Many others and we on FR have speculated that terrorists may spread Ebola. How do you that remember 9/11 feel right now compared to what you felt then? Do you want to gather your loved ones near you to protect them? I do. Even more than I did on September 11, 2001! Isn’t this passive response by this administration accomplishing the very same things a terrorist would want?
When something is being done that makes as little sense as what Obama is doing there has to be some other reason. I leave it to you dear reader to draw your own conclusions as to the reasons.
What is happening now is insane. It makes no sense at all. For example the head of CDC says: “Stopping travel from Africa won’t do any good because you have to get people into Africa to fight Ebola.” “You can’t get Ebola from an infected person on a bus but an infected person should never be on a bus because he can infect others.” “Blocking travel from infected countries would damage their fragile economies.” What about ours? What about our safety? What about resources we have paid for that should be protecting us?

Even the most despotic dictatorship in Africa has acted to protect his nation by strict quarantine and stopping travel from infected countries. Even CDC, the UN and WHO advocate and credit strict quarantine for nipping the spread of Ebola in the bud at the source in places like Senegal and Nigeria where both have had faster and more successful outbreak controls than we have had here. 35 countries have stopped travel of people from infected West African countries. It is so obvious even a child could understand it so why is it OK for people from infected countries to travel here?
I will post this message and keep posting it until someone stops me.

For further reference:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3216461/posts


8 posted on 10/19/2014 7:54:40 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Obola brought to you by demorats. Hope you like your Change and live to tell it.)
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To: SeekAndFind

These days too many think that all they have to do is say, “I’m sorry.” and they think that ends it. Shame and contrition do not seem to be apparent in the apology or after. That is what bothers me these day, the absence of shame and self-loathing for having harmed someone or, in this bungling mess, having harmed so many and terrorizing and damaging the safety and trust of a nation.

I have forever stipulated that the crime is only the beginning of an offense and that it endures and injures beyond the initial act by serving to make all of us less secure and less trusting on one-another.


9 posted on 10/19/2014 8:04:03 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Obola brought to you by demorats. Hope you like your Change and live to tell it.)
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To: exDemMom

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

However, there ‘is’ an ironic precedent and, unfortunately, demonstrates we have more to fear from either incompetents and/or progressives running the government than the bug itself.

The precedent? Well, the CDC lab scandals, of course.

Rare? Yes. But the dichotomy between how far they’ll go to assign literal blame upon anyone that comes in proximity to the patient or their samples vs. this disconnect of reality we now know as the “Free to Travel from Infected Areas” Federal Policy shows both a belligerence toward the public and a horrible loss of confidence that they can deal with this, or any other for that matter, biological pathogen. If ‘loss of confidence’ is a phrase that can be used seriously, as it conveniently makes the ‘crisis’ exponentially larger than it is.

In other words, along the lines of what I’ve stated prior, they continue to stoke this ‘manufactured-crisis’ by what appears at face value to be ‘incompetence’, but upon further scrutiny looks more like ‘induced panic’.


10 posted on 10/19/2014 8:21:50 AM PDT by logi_cal869
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To: SeekAndFind

so how did this issue even start and how did cruise ship even know about it. If self imposed why didn’t the person just self impose not going on thew cruise in the first place. Something is not being explained about this story


11 posted on 10/19/2014 8:34:25 AM PDT by kushnejz
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To: PrairieLady2

“I wouldn’t call it hysteria, but an over abundance of caution.”

I agree. It is the better to be safe than sorry.


12 posted on 10/19/2014 9:42:45 AM PDT by Parley Baer
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To: SeekAndFind

I would not be surprised if the story was that the tech would have skipped the cruise, but already had non-refundable tickets, and no one (lab, hospital, CDC) offered to cover the loss. So off they went.

Meanwhile, with ObamaStrain on the loose (and no all-clear possible until next year at the earliest), people are reconsidering their elective travel plans, including cruises. Is this trip necessary?

Cruise ships are notorious for various outbreaks (going back to Legionaires Disease), although usually non-fatal.

On a cruise, you are at risk of exposure from a confined population. You have little alternative if food preparation is suspect. There’s usually no place to evacuate to if a real threat arises. On-board medical is limited. Do any cruise ships have P4 isolation wards?

If I held cruise line stocks, I’d sell sell short.


13 posted on 10/19/2014 9:50:56 AM PDT by Boundless (Survive Obamacare by not needing it.)
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To: kushnejz; SeekAndFind
You pose a very cogent question here regarding the how and why.

I think I stumbled on the answer elsewhere. It seemed that the CDC themselves e-mailed the authority on board the ship. They wrote that although a person had worked in the Dallas laboratory and was a passenger, do not worry. Absolutely no chance of their being infected. Carry on and enjoy your cruise etc.

Oh boy!

14 posted on 10/19/2014 9:53:37 AM PDT by Peter Libra
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To: SeekAndFind

How about the lab tech, obola and the CDC apologizing for ruining 4000 passengers’ vacations and all the money lost and will be lost by the ship?


15 posted on 10/19/2014 10:09:43 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: Boundless

Easy solution to getting a refund fast -

Ring, ring. Hello, cruiseline, I handled Duncan’s blood sample. Do you want me on your ship or could you please see a way around these non-refundable tickets?


16 posted on 10/19/2014 10:16:26 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: SeekAndFind

“... She and a travel partner were allowed to disembark. “

We gotta STOP this MSM media usage of ‘partner’ everywhere. We know this person was her spouse/husband. Substituting and eliminating traditional wording is only aiding their perverted cause.

‘Partner’ is the kiss of the LGBT crows and must be stopped. COMPLAIN.


17 posted on 10/19/2014 10:36:22 AM PDT by George from New England (escaped CT in 2006, now living north of Tampa)
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To: SeekAndFind

I also noted Sunday morning, the MSM coverage I saw was talking about the Belize incident and the return to Galveston.

No mention that Mexico at Cozumel ‘denied the entire ship’ dockage. Crickets.


18 posted on 10/19/2014 10:38:44 AM PDT by George from New England (escaped CT in 2006, now living north of Tampa)
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To: Peter Libra
If the CDC assurances weren't enough to scare the reasonable, they're now terrified after John Kerry's reassurances to Mexico of the ship's safe status.

Maybe the cruise line theme can be "Day of the Dead!"


19 posted on 10/19/2014 10:46:09 AM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Hey Obama, be a MAN - Implement a travel BAN!”


20 posted on 10/19/2014 10:58:28 AM PDT by jaz.357 (Contrary To Ordinary)
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