Dallas Hospital Isolates Possible Ebola Case

[The Annoyed Man]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/health/eb ... index.html
U.S. Ebola case: Searching for contacts
By Gary Tuchman, Jacque Wilson and Holly Yan, CNN
updated 10:53 AM EDT, Thu October 2, 2014

Dallas (CNN) -- Health officials are reaching out to as many as 100 people who may have had contact with the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S., a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services said Thursday.

These are people who are still being questioned because they may have crossed paths with the patient either at the hospital, at his apartment complex or in the community.

"Out of an abundance of caution, we're starting with this very wide net, including people who have had even brief encounters with the patient or the patient's home," spokeswoman Carrie Williams said. "The number will drop as we focus in on those whose contact may represent a potential risk of infection."

My guess is that health authorities will have in the end nipped this thing in the bud, containing it to just patient 1. But, that isn't going to avert a sort of general panic for a while. Much common sense is called for.

The people he interacted with from the day he first went to the hospital (maybe a day or two before that) to the day he was finally put in isolation... they were exposed and at risk. IMO, those people should all (everyone we can find) be placed in hospital isolation for 21 days. NOT "stay at home" isolation and have them running out for groceries or having the neighbors visit with them.

You have a point.....but it is entirely possible to get a little overblown in this. Back when AIDS was first being openly acknowledged by the medical community, I worked as a phlebotomist at a hospital during which time we received our first AIDS diagnosis for a patient - a bisexual Haitian male. He was in total isolation in our ICU. I happened to walk by his room on my way to draw blood from another ICU patient. One of the other phlebotomists was standing outside the room, and she couldn't make herself go in there. She was scared to death that she would catch it. I told her that if she simply followed the protocols we were already supposed to be following (we were already exercising hepatitis precautions long before AIDS became a known issue), that she would be fine. She thought she could get it by airborne means. I had to remind her that HE was the one without an immune system, and that just by entering the room, she was a far bigger threat to him than he was to her. She wouldn't do it.

In the end, we traded patients, and I drew the guy's blood. Now, I do realize that Ebola Zaire is far more infectious than AIDS, but all the same, by observing some simple precautions, the spread of the disease can easily be overcome. I previously posted that we shouldn't let political correctness get in the way of dealing with this, and that does speak to your point. But, I ALSO think that panic doesn't serve ANYBODY's interests, and that is what I was trying to get across.

[Keith B]

Liberian officials say Eric Thomas Duncan lied on his health documents before boarding the plane and they plan to prosecute him for falsely reporting information

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wir ... e-25908233" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[stroo]

They now have identified about 100 people who had either direct or indirect contact with Duncan and may be at risk.

[VMI77]

But, I ALSO think that panic doesn't serve ANYBODY's interests, and that is what I was trying to get across.

Anybody's? By that I take it you mean the interests of the American people, as it clearly does serve the interests of the ruling oligarchs.

[powerboatr]

Liberian officials say Eric Thomas Duncan lied on his health documents before boarding the plane and they plan to prosecute him for falsely reporting information

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wir ... e-25908233" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

yes and he flew here knowing full well he had been exposed to the Ebola

he should be charged with bio terrorism at a minimum.

100 people to look after, that is scary to say the least and i hope they are finding everyone that was on the plane now as well and their two friends and so on

[The Annoyed Man]

But, I ALSO think that panic doesn't serve ANYBODY's interests, and that is what I was trying to get across.

Anybody's? By that I take it you mean the interests of the American people, as it clearly does serve the interests of the ruling oligarchs.

Ok, you got me there. But generally yes, panic will have a negative impact on eradicating the illness, because as potentially infected people flee the zone of initial occurrence, they will spread the disease to uninfected areas. Soon, the dead will be walking....

...I need more .22 LR....

[sjfcontrol]

But, I ALSO think that panic doesn't serve ANYBODY's interests, and that is what I was trying to get across.

Anybody's? By that I take it you mean the interests of the American people, as it clearly does serve the interests of the ruling oligarchs.

Ok, you got me there. But generally yes, panic will have a negative impact on eradicating the illness, because as potentially infected people flee the zone of initial occurrence, they will spread the disease to uninfected areas. Soon, the dead will be walking....

...I need more .22 LR....

According to "The Walking Dead", about all you need is a sharp stick. Their zombies seem rather fragile.

[CHLLady]

Now they say that the Ebola patient vomited on the sidewalk outside the apartment he was staying at. They had 2 men using a pressure washer to clean off the sidewalk without hazmat suits. The spray can get the vomit airborne.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola- ... rs-n216426" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[powerboatr]

maybe those hornaday zombie bullets are going to be a good investment


today 100 may be "infected" or need of watching
i bet its closer to 300 by now, plus the vomit wash down, so little johnny goes out to walk the dog, the dog tracks the vomit residue in on his paws
now little johnny has potential germ warfare on his bed where the little doggie sleeps


i was going to the state fair this weekend...but now Big D is a no go zone
i sure hope the FBI charges this guy with bio warfare.

[RoyGBiv]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/health/eb ... index.html
U.S. Ebola case: Searching for contacts
By Gary Tuchman, Jacque Wilson and Holly Yan, CNN
updated 10:53 AM EDT, Thu October 2, 2014

Dallas (CNN) -- Health officials are reaching out to as many as 100 people who may have had contact with the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S., a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services said Thursday.

These are people who are still being questioned because they may have crossed paths with the patient either at the hospital, at his apartment complex or in the community.

"Out of an abundance of caution, we're starting with this very wide net, including people who have had even brief encounters with the patient or the patient's home," spokeswoman Carrie Williams said. "The number will drop as we focus in on those whose contact may represent a potential risk of infection."

My guess is that health authorities will have in the end nipped this thing in the bud, containing it to just patient 1. But, that isn't going to avert a sort of general panic for a while. Much common sense is called for.

The people he interacted with from the day he first went to the hospital (maybe a day or two before that) to the day he was finally put in isolation... they were exposed and at risk. IMO, those people should all (everyone we can find) be placed in hospital isolation for 21 days. NOT "stay at home" isolation and have them running out for groceries or having the neighbors visit with them.

You have a point.....but it is entirely possible to get a little overblown in this.
<snip>
I previously posted that we shouldn't let political correctness get in the way of dealing with this, and that does speak to your point. But, I ALSO think that panic doesn't serve ANYBODY's interests, and that is what I was trying to get across.

Here is exactly my fear (see below)... playing out just down the road in Dallas. You have a small set of people who had close contact with the infected person during the time between when he first started showing symptoms and when he was isolated. Several of those people are children, and they attended school for some days before being instructed to remain at home, in self-isolation.

What did they do? They went out!!

Thankfully they didn't go to school (as far as has been reported), but, they left their in-home isolation and are now being "legally quarantined" (whatever that means).

This isn't a question of political correctness or overblowing things. Not at all. It's a public health and safety issue. If we quarantine 100 people (the number reported to have had contact) for 21 days, it costs us a few dollars. At the end of that time, some number may (hopefully none) turn up with Ebola. If those people were quarantined during the incubation period, we're 100% certain that nobody else was infected and the chain is broken. If they are not isolated, and one or more turns up with the virus, how many people have they exposed in the 1-3 weeks they were not isolated? And how many of those turn up with the virus?

The idea that anyone exposed to the virus would fail to isolate themselves voluntarily speaks very clearly to the necessity of isolation to be mandatory and enforced. 3 weeks of inconvenience and then it's over for this case. or.... we can be trusting and risk getting more people sick... It's not a difficult choice. Not at all. And it's certainly not any kind of overreaction. It's simply caution.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/0 ... latestnews" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

At a Dallas apartment where Duncan stayed after arriving Sept. 20, family members were legally quarantined Thursday after refusing to comply with Dallas health officials requests that they stay home.

If you were exposed, could you ever conceive of NOT following a request to stay home to ensure public safety?

[anygunanywhere]

Political correctness is deadly.

[mamabearCali]

You know when my kids have anything more than a moderate sniffle we stay home. We don't want to share our germs. If we had been exposed to something lethal is be begging for Clorox to sanitize everything and daily blood tests to catch it early. I'd want to keep as many in my family alive as possible.

That they feel otherwise is unfathomable to me. How do you put others in lethal risk cause you have cabin fever?

[The Annoyed Man]

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/0 ... latestnews

At a Dallas apartment where Duncan stayed after arriving Sept. 20, family members were legally quarantined Thursday after refusing to comply with Dallas health officials requests that they stay home.

If you were exposed, could you ever conceive of NOT following a request to stay home to ensure public safety?

Of course not. I would stay home, absolutely without question. I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't. All I'm really saying is that we (the editorial "we") need to keep a level head here about how we A) stop the spread of a disease, and B) do so without a panic-induced trampling on someone's civil rights. I'm not even saying that we shouldn't take possibly infected people into temporary custody. I'm ONLY saying that if we are going to do that, we need to exercise a lot of wisdom and discernment. I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn. I really don't. But what I do know is that I am very uncomfortable with plans that involve indiscriminately rounding people up and detaining them.......even for public health reasons.....without there being some kind of protections and guarantees for their rights in place. Nobody should be locked up against their will without there being a government provided public-health ombudsman of sorts in their corner, making sure that they are treated like sovereign citizens with rights who, if they are to be locked up without having committed a crime, should have someone "official" in their corner to mitigate as much as possible the temporary loss of their rights. Those rights for asymptomatic people should include being separately detained from those who are symptomatic, so that if they are NOT sick, detention won't MAKE them sick. After all, this was a primary means of transmission in Africa......healthy people being confined with sick family members and having to look after them.

Here is a for-instance: Let's say just for argument's sake that ONE of your family members has developed nausea and vomiting. That is a symptom of Ebola Zaire. It is also a symptom of the Flu, of food-poisoning, and of alcohol toxicity.....and maybe a half-dozen other equally common things....

1. Do you order the entire family to be incarcerated in the home for 21 days and see what develops?
2. Do you immediately blood-test all (X number) of you, and still incarcerate the whole family?
3. What if the nausea/vomiting turns out to be Flu? Do you release the whole family, or only those who are not sick?
4. What if the entire family comes down with the Flu because they were forced into close proximity and not allowed to leave the home? Who pays for the lost wages because of the state-enforced quarantine?
5. What if the sick person actually has Ebola Zaire, and the remaining family are hyper-exposed to it by being quarantined along with the sick person? What if the quarantine makes them ALL sick?

These are all hypotheticals, but my point is that indiscriminate quarantine may not be the optimum answer, and it certainly is not the optimum answer from a civil rights perspective. So, if we are going to violate the civil rights of someone—who has committed no crime—for the good of society, we have to exercise a LOT of discernment in doing so.

I admit that I do not know where to draw the line. I also adamantly state that I would willingly enter home-quarantine because that is the smart thing to do. However, the world is full of a lot of really stupid people, and a lot of them will refuse to stay home.......perhaps because they know that a family member has been exposed, and they don't want to be confined alongside someone who may have a deadly disease. To what extent are you willing to go to round up people and confine them against their will?

Maybe some people have to be forcibly detained. But all people? And, who decides? And who made them God?

I don't have all the answers. The last time we faced a similar epidemiological crisis was the great Flu pandemic of 1918, which killed between 3%-5% of the world's population, including 500,000-600,000 in the U.S. alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_p ... _the_globe. To put things in perspective, the wiki article says:

This [Flu] pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death. It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

So far, we have exactly one confirmed actual patient in Dallas, and one symptomatic possible under observation in DC (LINKEY). We have as many as 100 people under observation for symptom development. I am NOT saying we don't need to be concerned. I AM saying we need to be wise about it, because precedence is precedence, and once established is very difficult to rescind.



BTW, here is the more or less official libertarian response for Texas, and it is surprisingly moderate: http://www.newsweek.com/libertarians-ebola-texas-274822

.....edited to fix above link......

[KD5NRH]

And this one disputes it, so who is correct?

Given that the Reston strain is airborne, saying that human-lethal strains of Ebola can't become airborne is like watching a Norwegian break a world record and authoritatively stating that no Californian will ever be able to do that simply because they haven't yet.

[anygunanywhere]

And this one disputes it, so who is correct?

Given that the Reston strain is airborne, saying that human-lethal strains of Ebola can't become airborne is like watching a Norwegian break a world record and authoritatively stating that no Californian will ever be able to do that simply because they haven't yet.

Ebola airborne transmission has been documented between animal species although the exact means was not determined.

Airborne transmission to humans and between humans has not been tested and documented.

Those in (supposed) authority keep claiming it is not transmitted via airborne means and keep telling us not to worry.

Right.

Anygunanywhere