Posted on 10/03/2014 8:27:21 PM PDT by Enlightened1
When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a positive pressure personnel suit, with a segregated air supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a level four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors from opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a biosafety level 4 (or P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
There are only 19 level 4 bio hazard units in the US and 4 in the UK:
Great 19 for over 300 million people.
I just think they are clueless. The CDC looks as if they are reading social media post to see what step to take next. I just amazed at some of the stuff we are witnessing.
Wife was wanting to buy a tyvek suit and goggles etc. I explained that if we were to wear this stuff into a contaminated area we’d need a place to wash it off before taking it off. Bottom line is there’s no way an average person can truly protect himself with the exception of total isolation. With that said, I will do what I can.
Yes they are reactionary and not proactive.
They are always thinking about yesterday, and can’t seem to keep up with rapidly changing situation.
To make things worse...
They are over confident that they pretend to have the all the answers to everything. But even someone with the slightest knowledge can CLEARLY SEE they do not know what they are talking about.
The cynic in me says that guy was allowed to fly into Texas because it is a solidly red state. The conspiracy side of my brain says maybe someone wants an outbreak there, make them dependent on the feds, try to instill in them the notion that a big powerful fed is a good thing, look how we came to your rescue. .. Just saying, hearts and minds...
All great points... Or another way to describe what you said is
Problem, Reaction, Solution
Why panic about ebola?
Just follow some basic rules:
cough or sneeze into your elbow and all is fine.
I spoke with a local funeral director to see what his take is on ebola. He said it’s no different than AIDS. He says the gov is making too much of a big deal out of it. (My jaw dropped)
Meanwhile, today I was at my auto mechanic’s and needed a pen to sign the receipt. I cringed when I chose a pen from their pen collection and made a mental note to always carry a pen with me, as well as find my grandma’s antique white gloves and start wearing them. Now I know why she had so many!
I think it’s worse because it’s way more contagious.
Right now in Sierra Leone 5 people per hour are infected.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/02/ebola-infecting-five-every-hour-sierra-leone
No medical facility other than a specialized research and testing lab is going to use level 4 gear. It’s not gonna happen.
Wikipedia article says there are only 15 BSL4 facilities in the US and 9 of them are federally owned. They are research only labs..or testing...many have to do with agriculture.
The BSL 4 rating for ebola and other hemorrhagics is due largely because it has no vaccine. Much less a approved antiviral.
That argument is not relevant.
We can gear up for level 3 with or have done so already with many of our larger hospitals. The smaller ones (clinics) will have to enhance their predominantly level 2 setups with some better protective gear and protocols.
All that aside, I watched the briefing today. Although nothing was surprising, I did find what they said about controlling this disease outbreak at the source to be very relevant.
If this continues to run uncontrolled, like a forest fire, it will begin to spread up and down the African Western coastal communities.
People in the interior who get their supplies and food from the coast, will find that there is none available, and they with their lifelines cut, they will have no choice but to migrate out, increasing the population densities..
Eventually the fire will end up in North Africa, and in South Africa.
Use your imagination as to where it will go from there, but you can be certain that at that point, people will be trying to get out, and using any mode of transport to get to Europe, North and south America...anywhere but there.
We would not be able to stop them. There are far to many miles of unprotected coast, and of course the land borders. At this point, no transportation controls will work.
Of course within months our medical care system would collapse. Just as any system would.
But all that is preventable, I believe, if we put the resources to work on the source.
All this bickering over air travel fears brought on by one guy, is ridiculous. It totally avoids talking about the elephant in the room.
I have seen hundreds of posts decrying what is essentially the only correct course of action for the US and the entire world to take, and that is to put out the fire in Africa.
If we don’t, then all the argument will be moot. There will be only one course of action left and that is your own self protection because you will not be able to protect the US from succumbing to the fire.
Oh...we can spend all our time predicting the end of days caused by a gigantic CME or the likely hood of a asteroid strike that would be a cataclysm and end of life on earth, but it’s waste of time because we cannot do anything to prevent that.
But we can prevent this...We have beaten disease and plagues, once understood, and we have the tools to beat this one..We understand it..
But the best way is to put the fire out at the source. If we don’t, our tools will be useless.
“The cynic in me says that guy was allowed to fly into Texas because it is a solidly red state”
He went there because he has family there. There’s a large Liberian colony in Dallas. Whether they are here legally or not is another matter.
Eric Duncan slept in every bed in his Dallas apartment and slept with his girlfriend when he was shivering from the symptoms. The CDC has no properly secured the apartment—infected sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels are still in the apartment. I have read that the members of he family have not been quarantined and were free to go outside the apartment.
This reminds me of the Zombie movie, World War Z. With the incompetence of the CDC we may be headed towards an ebola apocalypse.
Well sure, you can criticize the response, but do it in a fair way. Security, and cleanup is not all the responsibility of the CDC, or even NHS.. A large part of that responsibility belongs to the Dallas emergency services, and the State of Texas.
The fact that they were not ready for this is evident.
Give them some time here, and they will get it right. Other states and localities will look at the mistakes made, and the things done right, and they will use that information to better the responses in their areas of responsibility.
No emergency response, just as no war plan, ever survives the first encounter with the enemy. So it should come as no surprise that this first encounter exposed many weaknesses in our defenses.
“No medical facility other than a specialized research and testing lab is going to use level 4 gear. It’s not gonna happen.”
Well I guess it’s going to spread like wild fire then. Right now in Sierra Leone. It’s spreading to 5 people an hour.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/02/ebola-infecting-five-every-hour-sierra-leone
“If this continues to run uncontrolled, like a forest fire, it will begin to spread up and down the African Western coastal communities.”
Yes and their weak economies will crash. Many of the infected immigrants (3 weeks this Ebola can not be detected) will come here since our borders are wide open. Plus they can fly here now with no ID.
The Ebola pandemic will flood and exhaust are already very busy health industry.
“We would not be able to stop them. There are far to many miles of unprotected coast, and of course the land borders. At this point, no transportation controls will work.”
I strongly disagree with this point. If we can medically treat, feed, house, school and give them welfare, then we can stop it by simply cutting off the benefits.
We can also end flights to the heavily infected countries and securing the border.
It’s not a fail proof system, but it’s a good start and better than what we have now.
“All this bickering over air travel fears brought on by one guy, is ridiculous.”
Well according to the CDC and WHO (World Health Organization) It has killed over 3000 people (about the same number of deaths of 911 was that over hype???), and is doubling every 3 weeks. It has a death rate of 70%. So I think the fears are more real than ISIS and Syria that the politicians are having an orgasm over.
“But the best way is to put the fire out at the source. If we don’t, our tools will be useless.”
It only dies when there is no host bodies left to jump into. This is why you quarantine them and do not let them into your country.
If you can’t do all that, learn how to start an IV and do this...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/health/ebola-fatu-family/index.html
Instead Fatu, who’s in her final year of nursing school, invented her own equipment. International aid workers heard about Fatu’s “trash bag method” and are now teaching it to other West Africans who can’t get into hospitals and don’t have protective gear of their own.
Every day, several times a day for about two weeks, Fatu put trash bags over her socks and tied them in a knot over her calves. Then she put on a pair of rubber boots and then another set of trash bags over the boots.
She wrapped her hair in a pair of stockings and over that a trash bag. Next she donned a raincoat and four pairs of gloves on each hand, followed by a mask.
It was an arduous and time-consuming process, but Fatu was religious about it, never cutting corners.
by Elizabeth Cohen written on Sept 26, 2014
It reminds me of the movie 12 Monkeys.
When will surgeons decline to perform elective procedures?
We are going to slowly descend into chaos if this is not stopped now.
One thing is for sure. We all know who to blame for allowing this to happen. Hint it's the same people that are saying there is nothing to worry about.
These Bureaucrats seem to be a day late and a dollar short from the very beginning. They are not getting up to speed nearly quick enough. They are not being per-cautious enough.
They are coming into this with an attitude that everything is under control.... we are professionals and we know everything.... They are trying to protect their jobs.
These bureaucrats need to understand that if this pandemic gets out of hand... they are going to die along with the rest of us. They are not going to have their pass to the underground bunker that the President will have.
They need to take precautions.
perhaps our 3000 military personnel are being sent to Africa to establish perimeters around the infection zones?
nah...that would make too much sense....
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