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.
http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=5725&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=3300&sid=eacae20ff01181645fa59eeabb41ac43
Quote:
“The world's response hasn't kept pace with the spread of Ebola, Koroma said, and “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times” is threatening everyone.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for a 20-fold surge in international aid to fight Ebola.
….
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim endorsed pledges Thursday from the United States and United Nations to guarantee medical evacuations for health care workers responding to the crisis, an effort to ensure that enough doctors and nurses are willing to risk their lives to help stop the disease.”
It won't be enough, very soon, to simply promise to evacuate volunteer medical workers.
The exponential numbers are driving case loads into unmanageable territory.
There's a tipping point that will come around Thanksgiving (if one uses MSF’s case estimates) where the “infrastructure” that nations are now trying to get into place will become overwhelmed if the pace of response is not lightning fast, right now.
So far, speed has been talked about in terms of weeks, then days. Now we're really looking at setting the Thanksgiving countdown clock to hours.
If an incredibly overwhelming response isn't on the ground in just a few days, it is very likely that by Thanksgiving those workers who have been promised evacuation if they contract the virus will be instead being evacuated due to a complete social breakdown and the great danger it presents to the continuation of relief operations.
By Thanksgiving, MSF and the remaining response teams may be forced to pull their workers out of the original affected outbreak areas.
MSF and the other relief agencies may be tasked, at that point, to three or four other nations which, by that time, might be experiencing outbreaks of Ebola in an effort to try to stem the tide in those locations, where such a thing appears feasible.
In Liberia, around Thanksgiving the U.S. military will be reexamining the operational situation and, having built the ETUs it said it would build, will probably begin quietly withdrawing its personnel. The U.S. military may be home by Christmas. The British, who are just now beginning to deploy their military forces, will no doubt attempt to complete their mission goals as soon as possible and then will likely reassess and withdraw also.
The day that MSF and the U.S. military must announce that they are leaving will be a very bad day.
What will happen to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea then? Well, then raw science will take over. Herd immunity is reached when around 40% of a population has either been infected or vaccinated. There won't be a vaccine available in large quantities by the New Year's. The public’s attention will turn to saving the newly affected nation states and to each exported case that turns up in their own backyards.
So when Ban Ki-Moon says he needs a “20-fold surge,” he means he needs it tomorrow.
The leaders of the world, along with their militaries and health resources, need to act, right now, as if a World War were breaking out, rather than a virus.
They can respond, they do have the ability, but the orders have to go out now. Right now. Any time spent wasted on anything other than making public appeals for workers and moving with record breaking speed on logistics is tragically wasted time.
Any government or public official spending time giving screen time to anything else — unless they are a local official who happens to have an Ebola patient in their local hospital — is misusing the few moments we have remaining to contain this outbreak.
The immense amount of time that has been sunk into arguing the ideology of open borders will be seen later as having been a fruitless distraction from the reality that everything nonessential related to these countries needs to stop in an effort to focus on arresting the transmission of Ebola.
Governments - stop whining. You need to either buy up the commercial air routes yourselves or set up regular access and egress flights to ferry essential personnel into and out of the hotspots via your militaries (the U.K. takes Tuesdays, the U.S. takes Thursdays, the Canadians take Saturdays..).
It is not that complicated. Not if you all act like it's Word War III. It may well be. It's just that this time you won't be fighting against ideologies or territory grabbers, you'll be fighting against an invisible foe for which, perhaps, Will Smith movies can offer the best model of preparation and response.
So, yes, a “20-fold surge,” now, right now, as the U.N. chief said. Absent that, the mathematics tell the tale.
The surge will either be TO those countries, now, or the surge will be OUT of those countries come late November and early December.
As we've seen throughout this experience, it's important to get the prepositions right.
How's that going to work out with only 19 isolation beds designed to care for Ebola patients in the U.S.??
It sounds like we are only weeks away from being Liberia with our healthcare/ hospitals from being oerwhelmed.
If overwhelmed , do we turn 30% away as they were forced to do in West Africa ?
we have 19 “Ebola”-ready” beds in the whole country??
oh crap
To the best of my knowledge, Phoenix Air is the only airplane that has a self-contained isolation chamber in flight.
And that plane is a small plane, and may accomdate only one passenger at a time.
Are there others in the International Community ?
CDC guidance is “every hospital in the United States should be prepared to care for Ebola patients”.
I heard the head of the Emory unit give a talk yesterday about what they did (with a dedicated unit and funding to go with it), and, let me tell you, it was incredible.
Could they have done it in 2 ICU beds in “regular Emory” and kept the place operational? Not at all clear.
In any real outbreak our healthcare system will crumble.
In order to be fully compliant with what the CDC does in their own labs to work with Bio-safety Level IV diseases
it would require independant air supply , negative pressure air with full filtration, space suits with independant air supply and air 'pig-tails'.
I doubt that "regular Emory" could comply without full reconstruction.
How would you feel in regular Emory ICU ,knowing that next room over there was an Ebola patient there getting treatment ?
Hospitals and medical staff are used to dealing with difficult medical issues, improvization and adaptation are not what they are known for implementing.
I started preparing in mid-August. It's now October 9.
I'm afraid you're right.
Emory sterilized (autoclaved) FIFTEEN tractor-trailers of medical waste, and disinfected TEN TO FIFTEEN LITERS A DAY of liquid waste.
That was for two patients, in a segregated, specialized unit with it's own staff and funding.
The water district threatened to disconnect their sewers. They used private cars to take lab specimens to CDC (essentially across the street) because they were refused by all couriers.
I can't wait to hear from Dallas Presbyterian, because they did an ICU week (with hemodialysis) with none of the advantages of Emory.
I just pray to God none of the nurses, doctors, or other staff die because of this incredible recklessness.
Local Dallas media (WFAA for one) reports “many” hospitals have established Ebola isolation wards.
Work out the implications from goings on in Spain right now if there are no negative filtered air pressure isolation facilities for those Ebola isolation wards to be placed in.
Dallas hospitals certainly didn’t grow negative filtered air pressure isolation facilities over night.
The scare going through the North Texas HCW community right now amounts to a 10% reduction in staff as older HCW retire, and part timers — either older or pregnant — quit taking any more work hours.
Neither the CDC nor the local North Texas media are going anywhere near the HCW “Ebola strike” story.
I saw the two surgical curtains in the hallway, with the criss-crossed biohazzard tapes, and the warning bio-hazzard sign.
Pretty primitive , but the best they could produce with little advance notice.
Also saw the earlier posting today by a doctor who stated that the now infected nurse's sleves were exposed ( exposed skin)and that may have contributed to her infection .
I think the doctor was talking about the sleeves on his suit. He found out the nurse was infected through the media, and knowing he attended to her, with the ill-fitting PPE he had, he has put himself in quarantine. At least that is what I got out of the translation. YMMV.
The hospital is trying to blame the nurse for own infection, and is now claiming that she didn’t inform them she might be infected. They said it was possible she was “lying”. Nice, huh?
It sounds like they are 'schlepping ' away from legal and finacial accountability and responsability.
Thank you for that information .
I hadn't seen any information about waste products before.
Most interesting to see the resitance by professional waste professionals, and delaing with waste products for just two patients !!
Meanwhile, we have the Barry and CDC song-and-dance act saying that with so many helathcare professionals, we can handle it !
"Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, the health center where Ebola victim Teresa Romero is being treated, is having to draft in extra staff
given that nurses are refusing to work with cases – or suspected cases – of the virus, claiming that safety conditions are not adequate.
A number of other patients are being monitored in the hospital after having come into contact with Romero,
although none so far has been confirmed as having contracted the virus.
“There are members of staff who are canceling their contracts so that they don’t have to enter [rooms with Ebola cases],”
explains Elvira González, provincial vice-secretary of the SAE nurses’ union.
González explained that a number of nurses and technicians have formally resigned from their posts at the regional health department,
while others have refused to treat patients under current conditions.
People get anxious and they can’t work like that, being so nervous” ( article continues)
Liberia will go under by the end of next month. It is happening now. Sierra Leone and Guinea will go by the end of January. Under best case conditions, whose odds are actually looking better.
We only need to avoid widespread outbreaks in the US through May to get by ourselves with only significant economic damage.
I can’t say I blame them. They are putting their lives on the line, and should have Level 4 PPE, not Level 2, which allowed skin to be exposed, which may be how Teresa was infected. That should not happen in a first world hospital.
If this is how the Healthcare Workers at Presby were outfitted, I am fearful that there may be infections among the staff there.
What exactly is level 4 PPE ?
Space suit,head-to-toe , coated with plastic (impermable) with the positive pressure air supply pig-tail ?
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