Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference.
Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops.
Thank You all for you participation.
“He is now receiving an investigational medication, brincidofovir, for Ebola Virus Disease,” hospital spokeswoman Candace White said in a tweet.
The announcement that he is now being treated with an experimental anti-viral medication called brincidofovir comes the same day that the Food and Drug Administration approved its use in experimental cases.
Brincidofovir is produced by Chimerix, a Durham, North Carolina-based company and was approved through an Emergency Investigational New Drug Applications program by the FDA.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29514920
This sentence is enough to send a chill up one’s spine—
The Spanish nurse is in a stable condition, Reuters quoted health officials as saying. She started to feel ill last week when she was on holiday.
Worrisome. She was admitted with a high fever. She was probably shedding virus.
I have a co-worker who’s sib is a HCW at Texas Health Presby.
Sib’s 2nd hand report —
CDC took over the labs there and removed all the test equipment that tested Thomas Duncan for Malaria “...for decontamination.” (Both HCW and I suspect HazMat disposal is more likely.)
The entire lab area is now CDC territory with no Texas Health Presby local med-techs allowed in.
The local HCW are “freaking out” despite public face of professional competence the hospital management, Dallas politicos and CDC are putting out in their “Risk Messaging.”
People talking about HCW walking out if local Dallas HCW get Ebola seem spot on, from what I have gathered from the co-worker.
>Double Face Palm<
The United States has no plans to restrict travel from African countries hard-hit by the Ebola virus epidemic, the Obama administration said Monday.
At the same time, the president’s chief spokesman said the U.S. won’t absolutely rule it out.
‘A travel ban is not something that we’re currently considering,’ White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
‘We feel good about the measures that are already in place,’ he insisted.
‘Our experts continue to be confident that the medical infrastructure that we have in this country is sufficient to prevent an Ebola outbreak from occurring,’ Earnest said.
He continued Monday to project confidence, which some have interpreted as reassuring while others see it as complacency.
Still, he adopted a never-say-never attitude when pressed on the subject.
‘This is something that we regularly assess and re-assess, and – so I wouldn’t rule out any changes in the future,’ he said.
Earnest explained that a back-and-forth flow of aviation traffic is needed in order to fight the Ebola outbreak from an ocean away.
‘We’re relying on the commercial transportation system to move supplies and personnel into the region,’ he said.
‘So we don’t want to obstruct one of the core components of our strategy.’
[snip]
‘There are extensive screening measures on the ground in west Africa where this outbreak has occurred,’ he said, adding that ‘there’s guidelines and guidance and training that has been given to flight crews.’
‘There also is a protocol in place for Customs and Border Patrol officers who are manning our ports of entry,’ Earnest added, ‘to be on the lookout for individuals, again, that may be exhibiting symptoms of Ebola – in other words, that are contagious with Ebola.’
But health officials said Sunday that they are considering the approval of new measures designed to provide the U.S. with one extra firewall, such as checking the body temperature of everyone who enters the U.S. from an affected nation.
So a thermometer is our last line of defense?
Well, that eases my mind...
That’s what I’m thinking, too. Yikes.
How to scare HCW out of their minds about “Airborne Transmission” in one easy infection.
Read Below —
Sarah Boseley, health editor
The Guardian, Monday 6 October 2014 14.37 ED
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/spanish-ebola-case-rapid-response-allay-western-fears?
The news that a nurse in a Spanish hospital has been infected with the Ebola virus by a patient she was helping to treat will greatly dismay those trying to reassure people in Europe and the US that they are safe from the disease.
This should not happen. In countries with sophisticated healthcare systems, such as Spain and the US, it ought to be almost impossible for a nurse to become infected once the hospital is aware that it has an Ebola patient.
In Dallas, ambulance workers were put at risk and are now effectively in quarantine because of ignorance: the hospital did not know that Thomas Duncan might be infected with the virus when they responded to the call to transport a sick man.
But in Spain there does not seem to be that excuse. The priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, whom the nurse was helping to treat at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, had been repatriated from Liberia precisely because he had Ebola.
The virus is transmitted from one person to another through bodily fluids and the sicker the patient becomes, the higher the levels of virus in those fluids, which include blood, urine and vomit. The sick are more dangerous to people nursing them than to almost anybody else. But strict infection control procedures work in the challenging circumstances of west Africa most of the time and should not fail in Europe. Any nurse, doctor or anyone else who has contact with a patient must be in a protective suit, complete with gloves and face mask. The patient will be in isolation and strict hygiene and sanitation measures will be in force.
Among the urgent questions now facing the Spanish health authorities will be whether the nurse treating the priest might have removed or failed to put on any part of this protective clothing. Experts will hope there is a rapid answer to that, because there is a real danger otherwise that scare stories, without any scientific evidence, will circulate on the internet. {they aren’t going to be able to pinpoint how she became infected - and that fact is realistically something that should concern HCWs}
Scientists and doctors have repeatedly said that Ebola is not transmitted through water droplets in the air from coughs and sneezes. It does not have a respiratory route for infecting people. It will be important now to ascertain exactly what happened in Madrid so that any such rumours can be quickly scotched.
IMO, I think we are looking at consistent very low probability “airborne infection events” from sneezes or coughs that have small, EVD viron rich, particles land on exposed skin or other tissue, either directly or getting aerosolized during the PPE wash down.
This level of uncertainty is what will break even the stoutest spirits if it happens enough.
You can only deal with this sort of thing with volunteers, not any HCW off the street hiring for a job, not random horrible death.
Send ‘em all to Gitmo for a month of quarantine. Don’t even let them off the aircraft until Gitmo. Plus return any with Liberian, Guinea or Sierra Leone passports, including unaccompanied children, to their home countries via military aircraft.
Double Face Palm is right.
>>That’s what I’m thinking, too. Yikes.
It’s worse than that.
This Spanish HCW likely used local Spanish pblic transportation to get to the hospital where she reported the high fever.
I fear that Spain is about to get a Liberian style education in Ebola fomite infection on public transportation.
Thanks for your report.
I would hardly blame the HCWs. I haven’t seen any photos of the HCWs attending Duncan. Are they in full PPE or mask, gloves, and gown, as the revised CDC guidelines recommended?
Just wondering.
This is via the PANDEMIC FLU INFORMATION FORUM’s “The ‘New Ebola’ Pandemic” thread.
Short form — The CDC and particularly the NIH head Dr. Frieden’s pronouncements are destroying the US Federal Government’s credibility with the US public at the first onset of Ebola.
What the heck happens when it really gets going anywhere in the USA?
By Craig Pirrong
Oct 6, 2014, 3:32 PM
Author’s Blog
http://wallstreetpit.com/105892-we-are-so-screwed-ebola-edition/?
[snip]
The response to the initial case in Dallas, and the very fact that Thomas Duncan made it to Dallas, hardly inspire confidence. Pandemic illnesses have been a threat for a long time. The Ebola threat has been developing for months.
There should be, and should have been, off-the-shelf contingency plans well in place to deal with this, and deal quickly and efficiently. Starting with screening procedures regarding whom to let into the country, and with protocols to identify and isolate potential cases. But that didn’t happen in the Duncan case.
So the government has taken a Mulligan, and will nail the next shot, right?
Based on the response of Center for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Friedan, the answer is again: Be afraid. Be very afraid. His response is all about defensive spinning and political correctness. He is fighting against measures to restrict travel to the US by those who are at high risk of exposure to Ebola, measures that should have been in place when the crisis began to explode in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Libera.
[snip]
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the federal government is looking at different safety-related suggestions from Capitol Hill and beyond, but he suggested the key is to control the deadly virus where it started overseas, not limiting entry to the United States.
“Though we might wish we can seal ourselves off from the world, there are Americans who have the right of return and many other people that have the right to enter this country,” Frieden said at a press conference Saturday. “We’re not going to be able to get to zero risk no matter what we do unless we control the outbreak in West Africa.”
Frieden went on to say that limiting entry at the borders could actually put Americans at greater risk.
“In terms of the entry process, we really need to be clear that we don’t inadvertently increase the risk to people in this country by making it harder for us to respond to the needs in those countries, by making it harder to get assistance in and therefore those outbreaks would become worse, go on longer, and paradoxically, something that we did to try and protect ourselves might actually increase our risk,” Frieden said.
Where to begin?
1. Who other than Mr. Straw is wishing, arguing, or advocating that “we seal ourselves off from the world”? A discriminating (yes, discrimination can be a good thing!) approach to admitting people to the US is not “sealing ourselves off from the world.” It is the most basic measure that can be taken to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus to the US. We’re not talking about pulling up the drawbridge. We’re talking about aggressive screening to identify and isolate high risks, while letting low or zero risk people travel normally.
2. Who is claiming “zero risk” is possible? The issue is reducing the risk in the most efficient and efficacious ways.
3. Since when is the “right to enter the country” unlimited? FFS, several years ago I was hassled at customs/immigration for accidentally bringing a ham sandwich off the plane from Europe, and was subjected to luggage checks the next four times I returned to the country. I apparently got more scrutiny than Mr. Duncan.
Friday, while waiting for baggage at Newark, a sniffer dog found a guy who’d brought a banana off the plane. He was given a citation.
4. Since when are fighting against the disease at its origin in west Africa and preventing those from west Africa at high risk to being exposed to the disease from entering the country mutually exclusive alternatives? Can’t we put a “Both” box for Obama to check on the options memo that his staff prepares for him? Does fighting the disease in west Africa compete for resources with screening people entering the US? Hardly.
5. As dysfunctional as west African countries are, we might as well just kill ourselves now if controlling the disease in that region is necessary to prevent an outbreak in the US.
6. Does that last quoted paragraph in the story make any sense? Any? I’ve read it 10 times and it’s more bizarre and incoherent each time. How does restricting entry of potentially infected individuals to the US impede our efforts in west Africa? That is the non sequitur to beat all non sequiturs.
One struggles to find good reasons for Freiden’s battle (and hence the administration’s battle) to screen entry into the country.The fact that Freiden feels compelled to resort to such dishonest arguments strongly suggests that there is no good reason, but there is likely a political agenda here. I strongly suggest that it is a politically correct agenda as well.
Regardless of the rationale, it is beyond outrageous that a legitimate function of government-public health-is being executed so dishonestly and incompetently.
[snip]
IMO, by trying so hard to deny closing the border is possible, they are fomenting a “Close the damned border and shoot on site” public backlash that will last generations.
Just like happened after WW1 and the Spanish flu pandemic.
I have no idea.
There has been a complete black out on Duncan Thomas’s physical condition — at least in terms of post admission still or motion visuals — in the Dallas media.
It is totally baffling that this administration is marching lockstep with WHO/UN on this issue.
Have they run some bizarro focus groups on Ebola and Entervirus that has lead them to believe that all this is a mere nothing if Ebola becomes a wildfire event and Enterovirus kills a few hundred more children?
Why aren’t Dem House and Senate up for re-election loudly dissenting from this insane policy. Hell, even illegal aliens can’t be blase about this.
I just don’t get it.
You are about to see a total revolt of HCWs over the CDC’s new and “improved” Ebola PPE plan—basically a pair of gloves, an apron or gown and a mask. No one in their right mind is going to treat an Ebola patient with anything less than a moon suit.
According to Friedan, Obama and the idiots at the CDC, it’s “impossible” to have an Ebola transmission in a “modern” hospital. I will bet my new generator at least one HCW in Presby will be diagnosed with Ebola within the next 3-4 weeks. Forget every other instance of US federal government idiocy during the past six years—this is going to cause well-deserved scoffing and much needed panic among hospital/medical staff and those non-HCWs who are paying attention.
Perhaps if someone actually looks at reality instead of their “plans” and their “theories” the US has a chance of emerging relatively unscathed. Otherwise, grab your napkin—our goose is cooked.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Ebola is doing quite well confounding all the "should nots" and "cannots" being offered.
Good for them. Perhaps if they push back against the idiocy spouted by the CDC and Obama administration, something actually effective will get done.
More on the Spanish Nurse:
The nurse entered the priest’s room twice: Once to treat him and once upon his death, to recover his belongings, officials said.
(Likely in full PPE to treat him.)
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