Posted on 10/02/2014 8:27:26 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
I'm surprised that I haven't seen any wargaming thoughts on how Ebola Virus is going to play-out in the US in the coming weeks, months and years. Watching how Duncan was managed in Texas does not give me any confidence that the feds or state health authorities have a clue what to do and are totally disorganized and unprepared. This is surprising given the fact we've had almost 40 years of knowledge of and experience with hemorrhagic viruses from Central Africa including Marburg, Lassa, and Ebola. You'd think that every health agency in the country would have figured out how to respond to this rapidly and effectively.
How do you think Eboloa is going to play out in the U.S. I'd enjoy hearing from the smartest collection of people on the web on your prognostications. How will this affect our health, our standard of living, our travel, our freedoms, our families, our jobs, the supply of products on store shelves, the willingness of people to go to work, peoples' faith? Will people be willing to congregate anywhere in even small numbers? Or will people hunker down until it burns out?
Will it spread like wildfire after inept attempts by incompetent government to control it? Or will government do the right thing quickly enough to get this under control?
If it spreads rapidly, how quickly will we exhaust all isolation wards, all medical personnel, all medical supplies (including simple things like bandages and bed linens, mattresses, pillow cases, as well as complex things like Biosafety Level 4 suits)? Will the medical industry be able to research, produce and get to market an effective vaccine quickly enough to slow down the spread? Based on the AIDS experience, this would seem to be wishful thinking.
How will all the dead bodies be disposed? Do we need to build huge incinerators? Would the authorities possibly euthanize infected people before their organs turn into puddles of hot mush?
Will the virus mutation rate in the trillions of cells in each affected person make it's spread more efficient? Will it explode geometrically or exponentially?
Will tourism quickly collapse as people fear staying in hotel rooms where other strangers have stayed or out of fear of getting onto an airplane or train compartment with contaminated surfaces that simply cannot be disinfected?
Will colleges and universities collapse as students stay at home?
What will society look like after this is over?
Will this finally lead to adults being voted back into leadership positions in the country, adults who take our nation's safety seriously? Will this lead to the final demise of the Democrat and Republican parties? Could this lead to dictatorship? Will people finally wake and realize that you need serious, experienced executive leadership to run the States and Nation?
Will this possibly lead to the final end of "politically correct" thought? Will the masses of people finally get back to the practical realization that all cultures are NOT equal? Is this the end of "multi-cultural" PC thought?
The http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=228267 article cited by Gadsden1st above makes precisely that point. When faced with exponential growth, you cannot take timid measures. You must be taking ridiculously out-sized steps that are WAY ahead of the growth curve. The lag time required to take the necessary prevention steps allows the disease to outgrow whatever you planned. What is being done today should have been done 6 to 12 months ago.
This is what’s so shocking. The world has had 40 years notice to get ready for this day, and it hemmed and hawed and dawdled, never taking it seriously.
I tended to think that way until I read “The Hot Zone” last month. We are dealing with a real existential threat here, not media hype.
“The people locked in the apartment in Dallas are already going nuts.”
First of all, as far as I am concerned they were already nuts!
Second, I will be just fine staying in my “safe area”. I will be able to walk outside. Go fishing. Talk to neighbors...at a distance.
Looks like Darwin time for some.
http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2014/10/us_hospitals_ready_to_treat_eb.html
Check out the pictures of the costumes the nurses and physicians at this hospital reportedly will wear to treat an Ebola patient. If I were a nurse there, I wouldn’t go to work.
“The Hot Zone” describes in great detail what it is like to work in a Biosafety Level 4 facility in a full space suit. Extremely hot, positively pressurized so you can barely move, limited battery time to supply air, the constant risk of punctures, face shields fogging over, seven minute showers of disinfectant after leaving the hot zone...few nurses signed up for this kind of duty.
Young Mom Nancy Jaxx in The Hot Zone had the same thoughts — “why am I doing this? Why am I endangering my family like this?” And she is a highly trained microbiologist.
Did you account for outdoor pets?
If a handful of hosp workers get infected, the word will spread throughout the nursing profession almost instantly. Any hosp that is treating ebola patients will not be able to get nursing staff to show up in enough numbers to provide any level of care.
When that happens, the hospitals will cease to function.
You strip naked to don these suits. No street clothes allowed at all.
I live across the street from a nurse. If she stops going to work or never comes home from work again I’ll know the SHTF
The HCW in Liberia have more protection than that! Head and neck exposed, regular gloves...those thing tear just putting them on. I guess they will have clorine showers to spray down with when the leave the room to go get meds, etc.
Maybe the plan is to slip the IV bags under the door or hang them outside with really long tubes.
I am sorry to say that the scenario in Dallas, has not been a surprise, except it’s even a bit worse than I thought. I spent 5 long years of staying with parents off and on in the hospital.
At various times they were in private isolation rooms with negative air pressure. I knew what the protocols were supposed to be. I also observed the lackadaisical manner in which they were half ignored.
So I was skeptical that any hospital would be able to handle Ebola. Also, today a medical doctor on the news made the point that we don’t have an abundance of such rooms - certainly not enough to handle a whole bunch of cases and still treat the other infectious and antibiotic resistant disease, flu, and the increased EV D68.
So far, it’s been handled worse than I expected. There’s no way to know for sure at this point what’s going to happen. A smart congress critter up for election this year could probably make some good headway running on flight restrictions from these regions and other matters of containment, especially if we get a few more cases popping up around the country, or a bunch more in Dallas from this one guy.
I already stay in during the winter because I don’t like the cold weather, but that also cuts down on exposure to whatever virus is going around. I expect that some people will stay home and restrict their exposure, and others will go about life with a don’t worry be happy attitude.
Would you go to Liberia, right at this moment- to contain the virus spread? How about the other populations centers, about to go hot?
“I sadly believe this their intent”
Obama flatly REFUSES to end flights. What other conclusion could be made?
It can be sent in a letter
You have seen the “hazmat” crew cleaning up the vomit, right?
“Will this finally lead to adults being voted back into leadership positions in the country, adults who take our nation’s safety seriously?”
Not if Colbert, The Daily Show, and Saturday Night Live have anything to say about it, since a very large part of Americans now get their primary news from them.
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