|
Post by fauxmaha on Oct 15, 2014 8:24:21 GMT -5
I took Mary to the doctor's office yesterday to get examined after the accident. All's well on that score, but the interesting part was the Ebola Screening Form I had to fill out. It was all so bureaucratic. When I went to the counter, the nurse handed me a form. It had every appearance of being rather hastily put together, and asked me (A) If the patient had been in Liberia/Sierra Leone/etc over the last few months and (B) If the patient had been in contact with anyone who had been in Liberia/Sierra Leone/etc over the last few months. I checked "No" twice, signed my name, printed my name (the form explicitly asked for that) but curiously did not date the form. Apparently they didn't think about that when they put the form together. Having been certified as safely ebola-free, we went on in. I found that just overwhelmingly absurd. In other ebola news, it is now being reported that a second health care worker in Dallas was infected through contact with "Patient 0". That news disturbs me, and makes me question my previous assumptions on the relative difficulty in transmitting the disease. I would have thought that the ordinary care that health care folks always take would generally be good enough. I'm starting to think this thing is catchier than we think.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 8:37:08 GMT -5
My concerns are the small local (county) hospitals where most patients walk into a crowded waiting room and wait for hours to see a nurse. The patient sits there sweating, coughing, and sneezing all over those vinyl chairs and couches, then gets called back to a triage room where they check his vitals, etc. Several hours and bunches of people could be exposed before it's ever determined he has ebola.
They won't all answer that form the way you did.
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Oct 15, 2014 8:39:54 GMT -5
PS: The Nebraska Medical Center (that's the hospital attached to the state medical school) has a special bio-containment unit that we are told is one of only four in the country with the highest level of control. They recently isolated and treated one of the ebola patients. Thankfully, the guy recovered.
Anyway, its being reported locally that a senior staff member from the center, a person who was directly involved in the management of the bio-containment unit, happened to be in Dallas for a conference at the time the Dallas patient was identified. He approached the hospital and offered to consult with them on their procedures, but was turned away.
|
|
|
Post by j on Oct 15, 2014 10:02:41 GMT -5
It's hard to draw conclusions without knowing more details, but let's not forget that two Ebola patients have been treated (and recovered) at Emory earlier on this year and nobody caught Ebola in that process. Between hastily dismissing Patient 0 and reporting "breaches of protocol" it sounds like they may have some underlying admin issues in Dallas.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Oct 15, 2014 10:19:48 GMT -5
Aside from the USA connection, I obviously missed why this ebola outbreak threatens to be so much worse than the five previous outbreaks since '76.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 10:24:20 GMT -5
Could be a mutated virus, John. They are adaptive little buggers, they are. Who knows?
|
|
|
Post by j on Oct 15, 2014 10:26:50 GMT -5
From what I understand Liberia and Sierra Leone are still reeling from civil wars, so their already-lackluster infrastructure is doing even worse. I think there is also some concern about metropolitan areas in West Africa, which are larger and more densely populated than even ten years ago.
The finer point is that the worse it gets in West Africa, the worse it can potentially get for everyone. The mutation fear is true of pretty much ANY virus—HIV could mutate and become airborne too, you know? Obviously the fact that this is a "tropical" disease and it makes you $%&T blood tends to inflame the general imagination a bit more.
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on Oct 15, 2014 10:35:59 GMT -5
I've always been suspicious of the claims that we're immune because we have the systems to contain it. The systems part may be true, but life rarely works systematically.
The Dallas guy wandered into the country through Dulles airport on his way to Dallas. Went to the hospital the first time and was sent home because no one recognized his symptoms and apparently Jeff's miracle form hadn't been filled out correctly. Came back and died and now there are two others potentially infected because some protocol was breached in some form or fashion.
As a long time homeowner and vehicle engineer I view ebola sort of like water. You really don't have to worry about it, we've got it all under control.
Until the deck falls off the front of the house.
|
|
|
Post by Fingerplucked on Oct 15, 2014 10:50:14 GMT -5
A couple days ago a coworker told me I HAD to read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. The book is about the origins of Ebola and supposedly true, although it is definitely dramatized and sensationalized. It was originally published in 1994. It makes for fun reading, sort of like watching Jaws for the first time on your tablet while floating on an air mattress in the ocean.
|
|
|
Post by brucemacneill on Oct 15, 2014 10:52:43 GMT -5
The new patient flew from Ohio to Texas Monday night. That will make it more fun. Now they have to contact everyone else on that flight for monitoring. THis could be one way to solve the unemployment problem, ebola monitors.
|
|
|
Post by Doug on Oct 15, 2014 11:01:30 GMT -5
Not a sure safety measure but the less dense the population is where you are the safer you are. So we should all move to Vinton. Seriously the bigger the place you live the more chances for contact between individuals and the more chances of spread. Less likely for Ebola to come to Vinton than DC or Dallas etc. Kingman here is a small city (big town) but it's on I-40 so lots of people passing through, so I guess that puts us somewhere in the middle.
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on Oct 15, 2014 11:08:34 GMT -5
The new patient flew from Ohio to Texas Monday night. That will make it more fun. Now they have to contact everyone else on that flight for monitoring. THis could be one way to solve the unemployment problem, ebola monitors. Drip, drip, drip,........
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Oct 15, 2014 11:12:33 GMT -5
this is a "tropical" disease and it makes you $%&T blood I have never once $%&T blood without eventually regretting it. Never.
|
|
|
Post by Supertramp78 on Oct 15, 2014 12:19:41 GMT -5
There have been fourteen Ebola outbreaks since 1976. Last data shows the virus hasn't mutated at all. The very first outbreak killed 280 people in Zaire and that was because they were using the same needles over and over between patients. 315 people were infected and of those 280 died. Ebola was brand new then.
The biggest difference between all the previous outbreaks and this one is where it happened. All the old ones were in very remote communities that were easy to quarantine off and limit traffic to and from. Effectively the 'treatment' was to let everyone who was going to die, die. Once the virus burned through the limited population it either left someone who was dead or recovered. None of these previous outbreaks were anywhere near a large population or urban area which means none of them were near an airport. That first outbreak with 315 patients was in a remote area. This one in a much more populated area has infected almost 9,000 so far and killed over 4,700 of them. You just can't contain something with that many sick people walking around who might just decide to exercise their personal freedoms and liberties and get on a plane and fly away. You can land lock a small village and keep people in and out. You just can't do it to a small city. It was only a matter of time before it started to show up somewhere else.
We had the same sort of situation with SARS. China, being the freedom loving do what you want kind of country that it is, checked the temp of everyone coming into the country and if you had a fever or refused you were put in isolation until they could confirm you didn't have SARS. Really easy to do in a totalitarian state. And how many SARS victims did this process locate? None. Now we are suspicious of anyone who pukes on a plane, something that happens so frequently that each seat has had a barf bag close by for decades. So people who are airsick, car sick, have morning sickness, got drunk and blew beets, or has food poisoning will all generate a localized panic. Goody.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 14:34:28 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Supertramp78 on Oct 15, 2014 14:39:53 GMT -5
Well I was just going by what the news was saying yesterday. Now that I see all those bold fonts, I don't know what to think.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 14:41:18 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on Oct 15, 2014 14:41:44 GMT -5
Drip,
drip,
drip,.....
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 14:42:11 GMT -5
I tried to find a broad sampling of sources, and added the WAPO and NPR as well. I'd be dubious if the sources were all tin hat, but these are mainstream and quoting research.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 14:43:33 GMT -5
Anyway, my wife and I are in agreement, which is increasingly rare these days. To coin a British phrase, it's just barking mad to allow confirmed patients here, and really ill-advised to allow flights in from the areas of current outbreak.
|
|