Tracing Ebola Patient’s Possible Contacts Creates Host of Challenges for New York City

New York Times ^ | October 23, 2014 | By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Ebola has raised complicated logistical issues of how to trace the possible contacts of an infected patient in a city of more than 8 million people with a sprawling mass transit system and a large population of workers who commute every day from surrounding suburbs and states.

By the time the patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency doctor who had recently returned from Guinea, arrived at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan by ambulance on Thursday, he was seriously ill, officials said.

Dr. Spencer complicated the tracing process when he told health officials that just the night before, he had gone bowling in Brooklyn, making the long trip there from his home in Upper Manhattan by subway and then returning in a car hired via the taxi service Uber.

City health officials were suddenly faced with the challenge of finding the right balance between trying to find everyone who might have been exposed and responding to a disease that is transmitted only through direct exposure to bodily fluids.

[Organic Panic]

It is a good thing people who have been exposed to Ebola in west Africa are allowed to freely come to America without any restrictions. Just think how bad it would be if we quarantined Ebola nations? This according to the CDC director.

[Kozak]

Direct exposure to body fluids that INCLUDES a three foot radius for respiratory droplets.
This is what happens when you import this disease into the most mobile society on the planet. It’s going to happen over and over and over....

[Sacajaweau]

So he has a few drinks at the bowling hall. Someone accidently picks up his drink. Then the bartender handles the glass...uses the rag to wipe off the sweaty handprints on the bar....and wipe off....

Then there's the shoes....

[GotMojo]

most alarming to me is that 3 US HC professionals chose to move about freely / publicly while under self monitoring period....two of them on multiple mass transit trips.....

[abclily]

Didn’t Obama want us all punished?

[abclily]

Then there’s the slapping of hands with each strike.

[Bobalu]

[Sacajaweau]

Sweat is a bodily fluid...and the reason bowling alleys smell ugly.

[Zhang Fei]

Political correctness is preventing Obama from banning West African flights. Ebola has the potential for doing to Obama what Katrina did to Bush. While a certain % will always vote Dem because of the Damocles Sword dangling over certain programs under a GOP administration, the Dem claim to competence has been severely shaken. Even the true believers (i.e. middle income and wealthy Dems voting against their own interests) have to be wondering about their bedrock political belief that Dems know better. Independents are probably deserting the Dems en masse.

[Gadsden1st]

Neighbors have seen the couple around town since they arrived home. Dixon even dropped off the couple’s clothes at a dry cleaner on Wednesday.
“I washed his clothes. I’ll be OK, right? It’ll be OK?” worker John Byun, 60, asked The Post.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/23/nyc-doctor-tests-positive-for-deadly-ebola-virus/
_________________

[pieceofthepuzzle]

From the article “When the paramedics left the hospital, their suits were sprayed with disinfectant and cut off from behind by a special unit, Mr. Miranda said. The ambulance was also decontaminated.
“The suit was peeled off them like an onion,” he said. “So everything went by the book.””

This is a long way from what they told the nurses in Texas, and a long way from what the CDC director and the CDC website has said. It should have been treated as the biosafety 4 level virus that it is from the start.

[Shimmer1]

Was this guy TRYING to infect people? Doctor or not, is he stupid?? Crazy?

[Shimmer1]

I think anyone this stupid ought to be shot, for breaking the law against felonious stupidity.

[VTenigma]

It’s OK, NYC is “uniquely qualified” to take care of Ebola.

[MulberryDraw]

What tune will Obama be singing this week? Is NY just another “sporadic outbreak”? Will the CDC be telling them to not panic and get flu shots?

[joshua c]

PC has been unmasked.
PC is a deadly virus.
PC kills!

[driftdiver]

Two of them MDs

[Mouton]

Not to worry, today is the day the new Ebola Czar takes his job. Expect a stream of politically white washed news on the subject of Ebola. In fact, I was somewhat amused by the lack of front page coverage in my local rag this AM. Of course this was far less important than the fact the Danica Patrick spoke at some girl’s junior achievement luncheon which got above the fold news and pictures.

[SMARTY]

Death by PC