Let me get this straight. Yesterday I read that there are roughly a dozen (!) beds in facilities capable of safely treating ebola patients. And of, course, you don’t know they are Ebola patients until it’s too dangerous to transport them.
So, with these two limiting facts, we’re going to become the Ebola recovery ward for Africa?
Hello? Reality check?
RISK GROUP CLASSIFICATION: Risk Group 4 (38). CONTAINMENT REQUIREMENTS: Containment Level 4 facilities, equipment, and operational practices for work involving infectious or potentially infectious materials, animals, and cultures.
PROTECTIVE CLOTHING: Personnel entering the laboratory must remove street clothing, including undergarments, and jewellery, and change into dedicated laboratory clothing and shoes, or don full coverage protective clothing (i.e., completely covering all street clothing). Additional protection may be worn over laboratory clothing when infectious materials are directly handled, such as solid-front gowns with tight fitting wrists, gloves, and respiratory protection. Eye protection must be used where there is a known or potential risk of exposure to splashes (39).
OTHER PRECAUTIONS: All activities with infectious material should be conducted in a biological safety cabinet (BSC) in combination with a positive pressure suit, or within a class III BSC line. Centrifugation of infected materials must be carried out in closed containers placed in sealed safety cups, or in rotors that are unloaded in a biological safety cabinet. The integrity of positive pressure suits must be routinely checked for leaks. The use of needles, syringes, and other sharp objects should be strictly limited. Open wounds, cuts, scratches, and grazes should be covered with waterproof dressings. Additional precautions should be considered with work involving animal activities (39).
SUSCEPTIBILITY TO DISINFECTANTS: Ebola virus is susceptible to sodium hypochlorite, lipid solvents, phenolic disinfectants, peracetic acid, methyl alcohol, ether, sodium deoxycholate, 2% glutaraldehyde, 0.25% Triton X-100, β-propiolactone, 3% acetic acid (pH 2.5), formaldehyde and paraformaldehyde, and detergents such as SDS (20, 21, 31-34).
BOTTOM LINE: Up to 150 Hot Zone citizens are entering the US each and every day or about 3,150 every week. There is room for only 11 patients in this country's "Containment Level 4" facilities. The Obama Administration seems to be using New Math to determine how to handle the Ebola crisis. To make matters worse, Obama appoints a political hack to be Ebola Czar? Are you kidding me?