E-Bola

I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that people would be going apeshit no matter what.

 

"We have protocols..."
"We know how..."
"We have guidelines..."
"The science says..."
"We have procedures..."

Might as well end each with "Amen."

 

Actually, the bird flu scare (a much bigger potential threat than this, by the way) was managed pretty deftly by our previous leadership.

 

If this disease, or another with true pandemic potential, comes to this country in more than just a few individual isolated cases, it will require heavy handed, draconian measures to prevent it from spreading. You isolate and interrogate Patient Zero, list every single contact you can, and you interrogate, physically examine and monitor and isolate every one of those. They are confined, period, to their house or a hospital. If it starts to break out, to prevent a wildfire spread the protocol is to define a ring around the area and clamp down and isolate that. Not just sort of close it, with people slipping in and out as they choose, but telling people that if they are caught trying to leave the infected zone they will be shot on sight, and meaning it. It means actually doing so if it becomes necessary, because if you don't, some yammerhead is going to decide that the law does not mean him and becoming Patient Zero in another city.

If that means that you call out the National Guard to close every single road in and out of a given city or county, you do it. Period. Piss on "Freedom" and "Civil Rights" at that point, because you must clamp down and prevent the spread. Piss on "But I'm a rich and influential white guy, and I have a board meeting in L.A. tomorrow." Piss on "I'm trying to save my family by getting us the hell out of here", sympathetic as I am to that. To control and prevent the spread, there can be no exceptions. None.

If this disease actually takes off in this country and starts to spread in real numbers, the fearmongering that we've seen thusfar will be replaced by actual fear for the lives of the citizenry. I can't think of a time in my lifetime when there has been a disease outbreak that brought public health law to the front in any meaningful way. Perhaps polio when I was very young, but that was before I was really aware of such things.

We're used to doing what we choose to, and skirting the law if we regard it as incorrect or burdensome, because Freedom. This type of emergency, if it is a real ongoing crisis and not the current handful of cases, will require measures that few of us have ever even considered, let alone lived with.

 

So, wait a second.

A healthcare worker, who follows protocol, and only interacts with an infected patient while wearing protective clothing, shouldn't be allowed to fly off to a family wedding, or long planned vacation?

We've been told that you can't catch Ebola from being on an airplane, and that you can't spread Ebola if you're not symptomatic.

But, we're going to stop folks in Dallas -- end presumable Atlanta and Omaha -- from flying, while still letting in folks from Liberia?

This is really our response?

 

Not allowing someone with known exposure to travel for two weeks is different from not allowing the entire population of a country to travel.

There is Ebola in the United States now, should other countries close their borders to our travelers?

Screening those from the countries is intelligent and needful. Closing travel to them is an overreaction at this point.

 

As a fairly well read and educated consumer of news,(media: print, broadcast and internet) the Ebola story has me concerned that the media is over sensationalizing this story. CNN is at DEFCON:APOCALYPSE. Most of the Tabloids are there when a cat is run over by a santitation truck. Fox is Conspiracy Central, Obama is swahili for 'Ebola from Benghazi'.

Is this really an imminent National catastrophe or just more media whoring? Haven't more people died from the flu this year than from Ebola? Is there a context for this story?

If it is a horror waiting to happen, I fear the media has lost the credibility to accurately report it, inform and contextualize it.

 

From what I've seen so far Judge Clay Jenkins is showing some strong leadership. It's
clear that the City of Dallas has decided to take matters into their own hands and not rely
on the CDC or Feds.

Having a county judge in charge makes Dallas seem like the old west.

 

Optics

 

We're seeing 150 travelers from the Ebola zone a day.
Nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

 

More people die from the flu every two months in the U.S. alone, than Ebola has killed worldwide since the outbreak started.

 

The Cleveland Clinic in now putting 13 nurses, who flew on the DFW-CLE flight with the infected Dallas nurse, on 21 days leave.

This was well before her fever began to develop as she prepared to fly back to Dallas.