E-Bola

Also news reports that the boyfriend of the first nurse is symptomatic.

 

Newly infected patient was diagnosed on Tuesday. Flew on a commercial flight (Frontier Airlines) on Monday.

 

During this morning's press conference, a questioner said that the hospital had emailed employees at the time that the first nurse was diagnosed saying that two people were in isolation, and being monitored.

They asked if this new patient was one of the two referenced in the email. The answer was no.

So, who's the other person in isolation? Have they been cleared, or is there still a chance they have Ebola?

 

The measures listed there are specific to Ebola, not exclusive to it. Also, if you read about Nigeria's containment effort, it had much more to do with effectively tracking down and isolating contacts than anything else.

I recommend reading some disaster protocols for biological attacks if you want to read about how woefully unprepared we are to deal with something.

 

Good news !

 

If terrorists were smart they go find suicide-Ebola'ers, buy them plane tickets to the U.S. with the intent of spreading it far and wide. Wouldn't that be a hoot.

 

There was a Tom Clancy book along those lines.

 

Ebola would be the worst biological weapon in history. Terrorist can, and have, done much worse.

 

Fair distinction, though it should be noted they go beyond "standard" protocols for contact and droplet precautions.

Again, though, my point is that we shouldn't assume American hospitals are ready to stop the spread of Ebola just because they stopped it in Nigeria. I think Dallas - not some rural hospital, but Dallas - is showing that hospital personnel may be unprepared to face such an outbreak simply because they have not practiced and prepared for it well enough. Not for anything, but why would they spend much time preparing for an Ebola outbreak?

I don't doubt we'll get it under control. I'm not an alarmist for this sort of thing. Our medical system is certainly superior to Nigeria. However, if we aren't prepared properly for this sort of thing, it can certainly cause havoc and the hospital in Dallas is calling into question whether U.S. facilities are properly prepared to stop Ebola from spreading.

Perhaps the scariest part is that the second patient was on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas the day before. Who knows how many on that flight could have come into contact with the patient, and how many were simply laying over in Dallas before moving on to other locations.

 

I'll just say we're no less prepared for this than we are for any other disease outbreak, save the lack of a proven, effective vaccine against Ebola. Even with a vaccine, the flu kills an average of up to 100 people per DAY here. Imagine if it mutated to a point where modern vaccines couldn't protect against it. All the protocols in the world wouldn't be able to stop it. If I had to put a number on it, Ebola is about 1/100 as efficient at spreading person-to-person. Probably about 1/1000 as efficient or worse in a country like ours.

I'm not denying Ebola is a legitimate threat. I just want to see it kept in proper perspective, especially by the media.

 

With regard to the hospitals, having a general protocol on paper, an action plan, is different from actually being geared up and ready when someone who is infected actually walks in the door. Even if you have drilled some of your staff and done an actual walk through of the procedures, that's different from doing it full time, all day every day, without missing some small detail that leaves you vulnerable to infection.

It's like the difference between having done a fire drill in the building you work in and what actually happens when a fire breaks out and engulfs one of the middle floors.

When it was an academic exercise, a "we need to have a plan ready just in case it ever does happen" mindset, it was approached in a far different manner from "Holy shit, you saw what happened in Dallas. We better get ourselves together fast, because I damned well don't want to be in that position."

I think everyone involved has shifted gears in terms of how they think about it and what level of preparation they think is necessary.

 

Agree. But, sadly, I think we all know that fear keeps eyes on the tube and gets more clicks than keeping it in proper perspective.

Agree. I think Dallas grabbed everyone's attention, and hopefully hospitals nationwide are responding accordingly.