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After Dallas Ebola Diagnosis, CDC Raises Estimate of Patient's Possible Contacts
As reported by Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, and other outlets, the Liberian patient whose diagnosis of Ebola infection marks him as the first such case to have been first diagnosed within the United States may have had contact with more people than previously estimated, and 80 people in the Dallas area are now
believed to have come into contact with him. While Bloomberg reports that this larger group of potential contacts is "being monitored for symptoms," the Washington Post's slightly later story says that, in keeping with the best current knowledge about Ebola's spread,
"Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said that these [newly identified contacts] are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness. Only the immediate family members of the victim are being regularly monitored for Ebola symptoms; they've been ordered to stay at home and avoid contact with others."
I wear glasses, not contacts.
Amazing how the government freaked out over H1N1 years ago and simply nothing happened. Yet, a real virus is on the move and "everything is a-ok" is the word from everyone.
Yes yes, you only get it if you come in contact with feces, vomit, etc, but that perception is there now that it is in the US.
Good luck Ebola-chan!
I don't have a bunker, but I do have a solid supply of food and water and a generator with gasoline. If I have to, I can avoid most human contact for a month or more. I never actually believed it would come to this, though - it's like something out of a movie.
H1N1 was also a "real virus", whatever that means. The media is equally blowing American risk of Ebola out of proportion like they did H1N1, which actually managed to infect a largish number of Americans.
There were 14,000 worldwide deaths from H1N1 2k9, 3,500 of which were in North America. This ebola breakout doesn't currently represent nearly that much risk to Americans, but it could be a lot worse if the epidemic continues to grow in western Africa.
Ok everyone! Time to freakout!
Please ignore the fact that the majority of Africa has this under control, and the hardest hit areas are those with virtually no sanitation. This could be us!!! Did we mention Plagues are a harbinger of the apocalypse? Worry about your souls as well!
Syria? ... nothing to see there, move along sheeple. Please remain distracted, it's for your own safety.
That plus enterovirus. We had a kid die recently but he had two concurrent infections, one of which was enterovirus. Now they're beating the panic drum.
On the one hand, anyone who gets it now will get the best medical care physically possible on the planet, though the currently available treatments don't have a high enough success rate to give me the warm-n'-fuzzies.
On the other, we have three (known) pharmaceutical companies busting their butts to bring a cure to market, and I'd expect quite a few more putting huge resources into "fling everything at the wall and see what sticks" R&D. So in six months, we might actually have a high-success rate treatment for it. But, in six months we might have 1.5 billion people in who need it.
Really a tough call... Better to get it now, or wait until it becomes a pandemic in the hopes a better treatment will exist.
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1. Also, deaths were mostly people who were ill already or had other issues. Ebola doesn't discriminate. On the other hand, the dumb nurse/doctor who was told that the patient was in Liberia and had Ebola like symptoms and still sent the dude back home needs to get fired. Today. Now. Maybe he/she/it thought that Liberia was a town in Missouri.
Actually with the H1N1 much happened and much was done to prevent people from getting sick.
Just because it din't become a massive media spectacle does not mean 'nothing happened', 360 people died.
And nobody says everything is a-ok now.
Yes there is less media attention because of the wars in Syria and Irak.
But the US and many other countries are doing much to help the African countries most affected.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-plans-major-ebola-offensive-1410738096
Total mortality=lethality*infection rate
There's no serious reason to believe that second variable has any hope of getting anywhere near thousands in the US.
Nothing? My hospital was full of H1N1 patients and 3 died.
Amazing how the government freaked out over H1N1 years ago and simply nothing happened. Yet, a real virus is on the move and "everything is a-ok" is the word from everyone.
H1N1 is a "real virus" which has variants that have killed millions of people. Influenza has killed and has the potential to kill FAR more people than ebola is ever likely to. Read up on influenza pandemics of the past.
The current ebola outbreak is a serious issue but it isn't what keeps epidemiologists awake at night.
Don't panic
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.
Variants of H1N1 have killed tens of millions of people. You should probably spend 30 seconds researching the issue before spouting off nonsense publicly.
Also, deaths were mostly people who were ill already or had other issues.
Again, demonstrably not true in previous H1N1 pandemics.
If any states residents contracted ebola, Id not be surprised if they were from Texas. We're talking about a state that thinks life begins at conception and rainfall will occur if you just pray for it. Its a wild, magical place where homosexuality can be cured but global warming is a hoax. A fantastic wonderland where Texas legislator Jodie Laubenberg thinks rape kits cause abortions and most residents think the president is a secret kenyan. at the end of the day in texas the miracle of life is no more complex than creation science saddleback rides on dinosaurs.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Can you give us a cite?
If I understand correctly, while there have been about 150 doctors and nurses who have died from the disease, none of them were wearing protective suits. In fact, all of them were working in 2nd tier clinics. All of these clinics had poor to no infection controls in place. Nobody has died in a major hospital which had infection controls in place. This strain of Ebola is not airborne – yet.
A lot of people are directing outrage at the healthcare worker who dropped the ball, but what about the patient? He reportedly didn't tell the nurse/doctor "I just came here from Liberia a few days ago and was recently in contact with people who died of Ebola." which is what any sane person would have done. I'm guessing he did the opposite, and downplayed it like "Have you been to Africa? / Yes I used to live in Africa."
1. Ebola is normally infectious Only through bodily fluids. This puts health workers more at risk. 2. It is also very sensitive to light, especially ultraviolet rays from direct sunlight, This relates back to #1 and is one reason it doesn't spread well once it gets in the atmosphere. This is stuff I learned from when I worked at the Centers for Disease control.
Maybe the freakout over H1N1 (and the resulting money and preventative measures) caused nothing to happen.
Not as amazing as you ignorance about what happened with H1N1.
Hospitals around the country were filled to capacity, a lot of people died. It wold have been a lot worse without the H1N1 precautions that were taken.
8.4% of ALL deaths in 2009 were from H1N1. It was an epidemic.It's considered an epidemic if more then 7.3% of deaths are caused by a disease.
Bear in mnd that several state do not track death from influenza, so the number is actually higher.
No, no one is saying everything is ok. The two things transmit and spread differently.
Someone with H1N1 on the plane is contagious to everyone there.
Someone with Ebola not showing symptoms is a danger to no one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ah but Ebola is easier to contain. You need clean water supply. And separate waste water processing. You need to physically isolate potential carriers and monitor them for two weeks.
Africa struggles with providing clean water, proper watste water processing and physical isolation. When you drinking water comes from the same river as the one you shit in. You have issues.
Over the next month you have to worry. If no more cases break out you are good.
So have food delivered. Sit down and binge watch you tube cat videos. It will be over soon enough.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
haha, no.
" an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated"
" 80% of 2009 H1N1 deaths were in people younger than 65 years of age which differs from typical seasonal influenza epidemics during which 80-90% of deaths are estimated to occur in people 65 years of age and older"
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlig...
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So what are you going to do about it?
Informing the public isn't the same as creating panic.
People like you would have the whole world burning before deciding to tell people there is a fire.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Traveler from Liberia with high fever turned away for two days. Then that ridiculous hospital spokesman on TV trying to explain it away. The only lucky thing is the patient was probably too sick to walk anywhere and cut down on the number of contacts. I feel really safe with a health system as alert as this.
Now serious reason to believe the infection rate will be in the thousands?
How about your health care system sucks? According to the CDC as many as 1 in 4 people in the US were infected with H1N1. In contrast, in a third world country with a decent health care system, the infection rate was 1 in 1000.
What actually stopped the H1N1 virus? Vaccines? Summer? I seriously don't remember them mentioning why it just sort of went away.
Oh, I was citing the lab confirmed deaths, which estimates greatly exceed. You're right. Sorry for the massive understatement.
How the fuck can the latter be stated with any kind of confidence in the same sentence as the former?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
House: Or, you're an idiot. (To patient) Are you a Slashdot user?
Patient: What?
House: Slashdot dot org. Do you read and post messages there?
Patient: Yes?
House: No human contact. The US is safe once again. Cameron, stop picking cases based on the bozos at the CDC.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
People in america have this wonderful cure. It's called soap.
I keep hearing that the reason it's so bad in Africa is that they are incompetent in handling it. Surely we're more competent at such things.
Oh crap, now I'm worried!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," said Dr. Mark Lester, executive vice president of Texas Health Resources. ... The CDC has been vigorously emphasizing the need for a travel history."
Duncan was sent home with painkillers and antibiotics, only to return in worse condition on September 28. That's when he was isolated.
"It was a mistake. They dropped the ball," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the miscommunication at the hospital.
"You don't want to pile on them, but hopefully this will never happen again.
Gupta said this mishap doesn't make sense.
"A nurse did ask the question, and he did respond that he was in Liberia, and that wasn't transmitted to people who were in charge of his care," he said. "There's no excuse for this."
And one of Duncan's friends said he was the one who contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with concerns that the hospital wasn't moving quickly enough after Duncan's second hospital visit.
But the hospital said the patient's condition "did not warrant admission" last week.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/...
"Didn't warrant admission" AKA "He wasnt sick enough for anyone to care, and we were to stupid to realize just how dangerous the situation could be." Heads need to roll for this.
Thank god its Dallas ... they know how to keep the blacks segregated.
Apparently not. This guy showed up at the hospital when his symptoms started and got sent home with antibiotics. So now there are 80 people who may have been exposed...
Heaven help me, I'm defending the US's healthcare system.
Health care systems have very little to do with influenza infection rates. I like that you don't tell me which third world country.
Our government thinks we're a bunch of impulsive automatons that need to be instructed when and how we need to worry. They try to control panic by metering out information, first telling citizens "nobody on the plane is at risk" and "the chance of infection spread is near zero" and then slowly releasing information to the contrary, like how there are now home-quarantined individuals and 80 more under observation. FYI government officials: Your strategy has the opposite effect because it undermines our confidence in your information and leaves us to our own devices and imagination about how to protect ourselves and our family.
Gee, you have the facts from the media, and you are ready to fire someone?
You are either an ass, or someone who thinks the media has all the facts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That flues are almost always seasonal, people develop immunities, and it goes into remission(not the proper medical term) until a new strain evolves(or an old strain like H1N1 has enough unexposed members of a population to spread again).
Brilliant! We can make a lot of problems go away by simply not looking for them.
It makes perfect sense if the hospital is the infection point, which again makes a lot of sense with H1N1.
"We don't treat your kind here, now go away."
IV treatment IV vitamin C with sodium ascorbate is a less known antiviral treatment, stonewalled out of conventional medicine for ca 75 years http://seanet.com/~alexs/ascor.... See also
Injectable C http://injectablevitaminc.com/...
Cathcart http://orthomolecular.org/libr...
and Klenner. http://www.doctoryourself.com/...
The more severe the virus, higher and more frequent doses used. As support for nasty viral illnesses overseas that have no vaccine, we also take zinc, 50,000 iu of vitamin D3 for 1-2 weeks, lysine and 200-400 mcg selenium. With Ebola, the real question will be when the last chance for a given level of IV vitamin C treatment (gram C/kg wt) 2-3-4 times per day will work, and when it will be too late - too little.
... or just wear a ribbon of awareness
Talk about a retard. The flu is a virus and as such is not something that even responds to current forms of medical treatment. You might be able to stop the spread of it with vaccines and extreme isolation but that's about it.
The flu is transmissible BEFORE you manifest symptoms. You can be wandering around infecting friends and coworkers before you even know you are sick.
Ebola is not like that.
The flu also spreads much more easily from person to person.
Two entirely different situations.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So if the mass vaccination of people stopped the spread of an infection then 'nothing happened', and obviously the vaccinations and precautions were a waste of time. That's some fine reasoning there.
I live in Mexico City.
The initial fear and reaction was not because it was a known-deadly virus, but because it had not yet been established how contagious it would be, which vectors would it be dangerous on. The city was really weird, almost dead, for the first week of the outbreak — People feared overall to get out of their houses, there was a shortage of mouth-covers (that were later found to be basically useless). It took several weeks to get back to normal.
Of course, with AH1N1 people started saying how it was blown out of proportion. I know some people who were conclusively diagnosed with the virus, and basically had to endure a bad flu but nothing else. I know second-hand of people who did die because of it, but they were all basically immuno-depressed or had preexisting respiratory diseases in some way.
Ebola's growth vectors and mortality rates are known and studied. And yes, I'd expect stricter measures and care. But there is no point in comparing a known disease (maybe insufficiently studied, but 40-year-old anyway) and a new one.
H1N1 was the flu - flu makes a lot of money through flu shots, "treatments", symptom alleviation meds. By alerting the population, the sales of related product go through the roof. How many big pharma lobbyists do you think pushed the government to scare the population as much as possible in order to drive up sales?
Ebola, on the other hand, does not have a wide array of products from big pharma that the population would be *likely* to go out and panic buy/stock up on. So no-one is telling the head honchos in government to get the bullhorn out. Consequently, no big noise...
Can you give us a cite?
If I understand correctly, while there have been about 150 doctors and nurses who have died from the disease, none of them were wearing protective suits. In fact, all of them were working in 2nd tier clinics. All of these clinics had poor to no infection controls in place. Nobody has died in a major hospital which had infection controls in place. This strain of Ebola is not airborne – yet.
Actually I think some of those were wearing some protective gear... but Africa is a hot climate. I was reading an article recently from a doctor there who commented how hot it gets in that gear, and you struggle even after an hour or two not to be wanting to 'wipe your brow' because of all the sweating you're doing in the suit (eyes, nose, mouth are vulnerable spots for contamination). And that was someone in the full-on "bunny suit" (totally sealed) - you can imagine the people who we've seen pictures of with only a 'riot helmet' face protection with a N95 mask under it and a Tyvek gown. And of course every time you walk out of the containment area you have to be disinfected...
"Apparently not. This guy showed up at the hospital when his symptoms started and got sent home with antibiotics. So now there are 80 people who may have been exposed..."
So much wor "the best medical care of the world".
My ass.
"Informing the public isn't the same as creating a panic."
A public where 60% believe in the existence of angels and people like Jenny McCarthy run wild, I'd say:
Think of it as evolution in action.
all we need is it to mutate and survive in mosquito's.
Or better yet, mutate and kill mosquito's.
Someone with H1N1 on the plane is contagious to everyone there.
Someone with Ebola not showing symptoms is a danger to no one.
Yes or No
Would you fly to Liberia today, and shake hands with everyone not showing symptoms?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
these [newly identified contacts] are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness
How does that work? If you are not watching or monitoring them how do you know they aren't showing any symptoms?
The virus evolves (http://theconversation.com/genetic-evolution-how-the-ebola-virus-changes-and-adapts-31525), it's shown to evolve quickly which means its communicability could go up.
Right now it's death-rate is 50%: http://www.nationaljournal.com...
This is a very big deal. Shouldn't we err on the side of caution at the very least?
Said by someone who has never been here, or you would know that Dallas is the least segregated big city in the country. http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010...
"So have food delivered. Sit down and binge watch you tube cat videos. It will be over soon enough."
But remember to order Chinese and not from the Liberian Pizza guy.
Anyway, the Isis guy will cut your head off if SARS doesn't get you or the pig flu.
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.
Amen. I like my chances of surviving H1N1 a lot better than my chances of surviving Ebola.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Yes yes, you only get it if you come in contact with feces, vomit, etc, but that perception is there now that it is in the US.
And sweat and saliva and other bodily fluids. And unlike "the flu", it goes right through your skin - you don't need to touch your mucous membranes at all (eyes, mouth, nose).
And it looks like "the flu" at the beginning of the infection, when you can already infect others.
Duncan knew he had been exposed. So he brought his diseased body to the USA rather than do the right thing, die alone in Liberia.
He should be charged criminally. His was an incredibly selfish act.
Good job america way to make this your own!
'But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," '
My experience from working in ICU and ER years ago:
Can't know, but when I hear phrases like "full team", that's what I am reminded of. Very very unfortunate. Beyond all of the additional exposure, the guy didn't get the care he likely needed to have a chance at survival.
The purpose of this document is to provide a final, comprehensive study of the contributing factors and epidemiology of the Alomal-137 (A-137) pandemic. CDC-Anchorage will continue to update this report at Internet and Skynet locations as long as our facility remains operational. As we are the only American facility still online in the Northern Hemisphere (other operational pandemic investigations facilities include several Scandinavian installations, McMurdo Sound in Antarctica, and CDC-Guam), we have taken responsibility for providing all currently known information to any accessible electronic distribution medium. This report replaces all previous A-137 notices originating from this facility.
This report is not a definitive version of the history of this epidemic; historical narrative provided in this report is purely the work of this office based on largely anecdotal evidence, with some hard factual data provided by many government and civilian agencies from around the world. The true nature and genesis of this disease will never be truly known; all the principal persons involved have been dead for over a year.
Anyone who does read this report is encouraged to contact our facility; our electronic address is cdcalaska@cdc.worldnet.un.gov. We can also be reached by most telephone exchanges, cell phone, short-wave radio and commercial television broadcast at one of the numbers/frequencies printed on the last sheet of this document. We maintain continuous updates and informational broadcasts on BBC World Service, operating out of Bush House in London on standard BBC WS frequencies at twenty minutes past every hour. We encourage anyone who reads this report, especially persons living in North America, to contact us by any means available; however, we cannot accept refugees at our location. Our facility guards are authorized to use lethal force in turning away refugees. Do not approach our facility.
From what I heard on the news (presumably this is correct), the nurse on station had determined the person had ebola like symptoms and noted it on his chart? well, s/he noted it on something. That fact was ignored and he was discharged.
Also, the person bears some responsibility. He goes to Liberia, works with a known Ebola patient (another thing I read and presumably true), comes back and fails to tell his doctors this. He claims they didn't ask, which does not relieve him of the responsibility to tell them. Then he has the temerity to go home and come in contact with other family members and friends.
I don't know what the normal procedure is in American hospitals but at least in Finland where I live, you're 100 % the hospital's responsibility once you're there - i.e. they have to ask the right questions and even if you're dishonest with your answers they can still be held responsible, if it's something they "should" have noticed (which of course is relative). So if you go to the ER and staff ask if you've been drinking and you lie and say no and some nasty shit happens because drugs they administer have contraindications with the alcohol in your system it's a case of malpractice because they should rely on a blood sample and not a patient's word.
I learnt this through a doctor that harshly criticized his colleagues for how they had handled me. When I got what seemed like just a cold with a very high fever, I went to the hospital and once I was in a bed there, a nurse asked me some basic questions and I mentioned that I have epilepsy. However, the shift changed and another nurse asked me some more and I just said that "I guess I told the other one everything already, I don't usually get this sick because I exercise and am fairly healthy so just let me sleep now". A while later a doctor comes in with the same (i.e. second) nurse and said that the tests and the x-ray showed that I have pneumonia and that I can decide myself if I want to stay or if I think I can manage at home because the fewer will go down with Paracetamol. I opted to go home because I didn't have my laptop with me and figured that I'll simply be too bored there. Now, later on I found out from my neurologist that that was utterly irresponsible by the hospital because a high fever increases the seizure risk substantially so they should have told me that I should stay. The fuckup was because of the shift change, the first nurse had evidently just asked me some questions to make me feel "welcome" and the doctor evidently only got the information I had given the second nurse, which was something like
when you realize it's a bunch of bureaucrats covering their asses trying to justify their own worth in the system.
On the other hand, the dumb nurse/doctor who was told that the patient was in Liberia and had Ebola like symptoms and still sent the dude back home needs to get fired.
Actually, according to everything I read, they were NOT told that the patient was in Liberia. However, what that person DID fail to do was to ASK the patient if they had been outside the country recently.
I could see that being a possibility. If thats the situation people still need to be fired. Particularly the Intern.
It is not so much that it is hot - which is a facotr - but that the system was not set up to handle something like this. Most of the reports I have heard have talked about nurses not being trained in infection control, hospitals running out of gloves, masks, disinfectant, etc.
"Why should the public believe the CDC. You're part of the Obama adminstration after all..." -- Fox news yesterday
nope. that's not fanning any panic or conspiracy theories or anything,.
Yeah, but are they actually going to do that?
WHAT? You're claiming that one quarter of the US population caught the H1N1 virus?
That's TOTAL AND UTTER BULLSHIT.
Unless you're considering people who received a live vaccine to be "infected"...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Considering my wife died of H1N1 here in the US, I don't feel they blew it out of proportion. Yes, she was part of the high risk community.
Oh no, h1n1 is far more familiar than ebola.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
H1N1 is a "real virus".
And even though the case mortality rate of H1N1 is FAR lower than Ebola - the reason H1N1 is so scary is because it is FAR more contagious than Ebola.
e.g. it is MUCH easier to keep an Ebola outbreak contained if your healthcare system is even remotely decent than it is to keep flu contained. It's pretty much a given that each year, 1-2 different strains of flu WILL spread globally, and even with vaccinations, that spread is inevitable because it's so damn contagious. Also, I BELIEVE that it is possible for someone to be contagious but not symptomatic with flu.
With Ebola - I am fairly certain that you are not contagious unless symptomatic (which is where the comments about "zero risk of infection" on his flights comes from), and even when symptomatic, transmission requires direct contact with bodily fluids.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Obama administration scraps quarantine regulations
The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.
The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. ...
I guess Ebola must be a JV virus...
This isn't a disease to play around with. Hardcore mandatory quarantine all that have been possibly exposed. Not in their homes, but in a facility. Treat it as more communicable than it is, because it could change. If I was on a plane with that guy, I should expect to be held in quarantine. Asymptomatic or not, people still do contaminating behaviors all the time: coughs, sneezes, spit when they talk, wipe or pick their nose, poorly wash their hands (if at all), nervous sweat at take off or landings, etc etc.
And... For goodness sake, stop people from travelling to and from Africa, would you please? Isolate that dang continent until this is over, as much as possible. The average Joe should not be able to get there, at all. And any medical personnel going there, mandatory quarantine before they can return. Anyone breaking these rules that causes the disease to spread should be tried for murder.
Quit screwing around with ebola, or this is going to be the plague that took care of overpopulation... in a big way.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I live where that hospital is... I could tell you a few stories about the place, but it is a dump. If this shit is going to get released to the wider public, this hospital is the most likely one it will happen at around here.
Really they spend billion dollars to save us from terrorists, and they epically FAIL when their reason being can help?!?
Useless
I can't help but think his uninsured status played a part in him being rushed out the door. Hospitals in the US have a financial incentive to provide only the bare minimum legally-mandated treatment to uninsured patients, which usually means "keep them from dying if they start to die in front of you".
Yesterday's USA Today article has a full quote, saying he was asked for his SSN, and responded that he was "visiting from Liberia and did not have one". SSNs are the things their collection agencies need to go after people for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Don't let the logical fallacies in that post keep you from laughing, idiots.
I think you need more care than that. I think you wind up too weak to move and your caregivers need to gown up and know what they're doing. I think ICU level care is appropriate.
Died of Ebola: Photos from the last three days of Marie Finda’s life
http://imgur.com/a/PNXH6
If you were sick with Ebola I would try very hard to get you to an ICU bed.
Contagiousness is far more important. If yxou have a virus which is 100% lethal, who cares if it is 0% contagious (beside the infected) ? That is why H1N1 is less lethal but is far more disruptive and dangerous.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The people in these stricken countries should not be allowed to leave their stricken countries. At the very least, the US Customs should have quarantined this man at the very moment he stepped off the plane. Something really stinks about this.
Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people.
It's pretty clueless to worry only about lethality without considering the likelihood of transmission. Of course ebola is scary if you contract it or have a significant risk of contracting it. But frankly being worried about ebola is kind of like being worried about a shark attack. Scary as hell and you'll probably die if it happens but not something you should worry about much because the odds are so absurdly low.
between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.
Unless you were actually in West Africa your chances of contracting ebola were and remain close to nil whereas your chances of contracting H1N1 were and are FAR higher no matter where you live. Risk = Consequences X Likelihood X Detectibility . Ebola has high consequences, very low likelihood (hard to transmit) and fairly high detectibility. H1N1 is more variable on the consequences though generally lower mortality rates but has much higher likelihood because it is more easily communicable and H1N1 has worse detectibility prior to infection. Occasionally strains of H1N1 mutate into something very deadly that can kill millions of people. There are strains of H1N1 that have infected virtually the entire global population and it does not always just kill the old and the infirm.
Wait... are you prepared to acknowledge that some third world countries have better health care systems than the US?
Because otherwise I don't see how which third world country is relevant.
And health care systems are relevant because that's how you educate people about transmission vectors and what can be done to prevent spreading the disease. When your health care system is almost disconnected from the government by design, then your public education campaigns do become a lot more difficult, because instead of a single coordinated effort, you end up with a myriad of private entities all communicating something slightly different. Right now, in Texas, people think they can get ebola from watching news about the case. You cannot get more disinformed than that.
Tens of millions of people get the flu (of many variants) each year, and many thousands die from it - but in general it is mostly the very young or elderly who don't have the immune systems to fight it off
That depends on what strain of H1N1 you are talking about. It's not a single virus and at times it has mutated into strains that are much more lethal. The pandemic in 1918 was notable in part because it tended to affect young healthy people. Epidemiologist don't worry about ebola too much. They worry a lot about pandemic influenza or Vancomycin resistant staph-aureus or any number of other diseases that are much tougher to contain.
The flu kills a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of those who contract it...
But it infects FAR more people. 1% of a very big number is a bigger deal than 50% of a very small number. The chances of you or I contracting ebola is a good approximation of zero. The chances of your or I contracting some strain of influenza is actually quite high. Worrying about ebola is kind of like worrying about a shark attack. Scary but absurdly unlikely to actually occur.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.
"Newspapers: A tiny little part of the internet, printed out yesterday, and delivered to your house"
Actually, I'd look to fire somebody higher-up. Communication issues like these are cultural and systemic -- organizational problems. I feel it is always a bit too easy to punish the front line folks without holding responsible higher-ups to any account.
1) The fact that other H1N1 strains have killed millions of people has little bearing on how lethal the particular, modern-day H1N1 strain they were referring to happens to be
H1N1 family viruses are constantly mutating and there is more than one. The notion that I should be more worried about ebola than H1N1 is frankly absurd because the odds of me contracting ebola is almost nil.
you realize that the particular H1N1 strain they're talking about in this thread (the 2009 strain) wasn't actually that lethal in comparison to Ebola.
Perhaps I'm not being clear. I don't really care much about a disease with 50%-80% mortality rates when the chance of infection is almost zero. I care a lot of about a disease with 1% mortality rates when the chance of infection is quite substantial.
2) You're clearly confused about what "lethal" means.
I'm not confused at all. I'm merely point out that people are panicking over the scary but very very unlikely disease when they really should worry about the less scary but far more likely one. If you happen to be in West Africa then by all means exercise appropriate caution. Otherwise it's absurd to get very worked up about it.
Pointing out that the Spanish Flu was indiscriminate in whom it killed in no way takes away from his claim that the 2009 H1N1 strain's deaths were primarily those who "were already ill or had other issues."
He cherry picked a bit of data to support his conclusion. The situation is more complicated than "50%+ mortality rates = OMG".
Any day of the week, I'll take an H1N1 injection over an Ebola injection because, Ebola is vastly more capable of causing death.
That my friend is a strawman argument. Of course you would rather take your chances with influenza over ebola if you were certain to be infected with one or the other but that scenario is absurd. You aren't certain to be infected with either one and the odds of infection are VASTLY different between the two. Unless you actually live in West Africa you should be FAR more concerned about the disease with a small mortality rate that infects huge populations than the disease with a 50%+ mortality rate that infects virtually no one. The current Ebola outbreak has affected approximately 0.0001% of the world's population.
...they said we'd be safe. They said it would never come here. I don't understand. It's almost like they lied through their fucking teeth.
Medicine was never, is, and never will be a perfectly sensitive or specific process and there will be near misses and misses such as this. I'm an emergency physician and there are a lot of moving pieces in an emergency department that are not controlled by the physician, nurse or others. Shit happens, deal with it, and move on. To say that the nurse or physician needs to be fired is out of line and irresponsible. How would you feel if someone were to say that we need to fire dc29A for this one bug in the line of code that causes a crash when we hit this corner case?
Of course I'm prepared to acknowledge that assertion. That's irrelevant though, it's almost certain other qualities of the nation(such as plausibly being an island nation, or being completely unurbanized) are far more relevant for H1N1 infection rates.
I'm sorry for your loss, but H1N1 hit only marginally harder than a typical flu season. The depth of your personal experience has little bearing on the overall net severity of the pandemic.
People here in Dallas often forget we are a International Hub. We also have many foreign nationals. The entire incident is called "being caught off guard" and I'm hoping people can learn from this mishap, otherwise life is going to be weird for a while, at least if you work in medical.
"Network penetration is network engineering, in reverse."
Stop spewing crap if you don't know what they hell you are talking about! EMTALA is a federal mandate that any patient that presents to the emergency department regardless of ability to pay receives a medical screening examination, treatment, and management to stabilize the patient for either discharge, observation, or admission. Also, thanks for the retrospective look at how the physician and nurse dropped the ball when he first presented the first time to the ED. Everything is 100% accurate after the fact. Do you know how many people present to the ED with non-specific viral complaints? How do we know that he iterated / reiterated this fact to the physician that he saw during his first visit? My guess is that he didn't.
Love her massive thighs. (That's not important) very irresponsible in sAying the sheets at hospital were not changed after patient zero(usa) laid and vomited on them. Not all our property is owned by Pattels!
Love you and bring Nolan back!
So the government can force house arrest upon you against your will even though you've committed no crime? Land of the free, my ass. It's quite ironic that the average slashdot poster, who rushes to criticize government overreach and trampling of freedoms in the name of safety (how many times has Franklin's "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety..." been quoted here?--countless!) sees nothing wrong with this example OF THE VERY SAME FUCKING THING! Talk about hypocrisy! I'm sure I'll get BS replies about thresholds etc. from people that forget that fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of mobility, are supposedly inviolable.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
CNN is a propaganda machine, as is NPR, and they have been talking about it non-stop.
It's been predicted for several years that the NWO will use a disease to control the population and implement martial law. Ebola is the perfect disease to do it. They can claim it's out of control, but we know how to control it. They can claim there is no cure, but we know there is. They will use it to control travel, food, water, medicine, communications, free speech and arms.
Yes, it's a real threat, but the NWO has intentionally left our border open for 14 years, and have been working very hard to infringe on our constitutional rights, and turn our country into a fascist police state.
Folks, You know that Tylenol causes health problems, and Ibuprophen causes health problems. I can't recall which one exactly, but I believe one causes liver damage and the other causes kidney failure.
After many decades of use, and taken billions of times, they know these problems exist, so why do you just believe that vacines are all just fine?
1."Cardio" 2."Double tap" 3."Beware of bathrooms" 4."Seatbelts" 6."Cast iron skillet" 7."Travel light" 8."Get a kickass partner" 12."Bounty paper towels" 15."Bowling Ball" 17."Don't be a Hero" 18."Limber up" 19."Ziploc bags" 21."Avoid strip clubs" 22."When in doubt, know your way out" 29."The buddy system" 31."Check the back seat" 32."Enjoy the little things" 33."Swiss army knife" 34."Clean socks" 48."Hygiene" 49."Always have backup"
Mod parent up... If I hadn't already have posted, I'd do it myself. An excellent question for doctors.
H1N1 was also a "real virus", whatever that means.
As someone that caught swine flu from a legit Mexican - bullshit. H1N1 was like a flu - it's nothing compared to something that makes you literally die shitting out your internal organs.
Ebola has an incubation period prior to killing of 30 days. The person doesn't show ebola-like signs until the last 1-3 days. They are contagious from 7 days onward. You're armchair estimate is a bit off.
Ebola can actually spread for weeks before any noticeable symptoms are present. The first 2-3 weeks are like a mild flu with sneezing, that's about it.
Why we are even allowing flights to/from Ebola infected countries to continue?
Why are are we taking the chance with this?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Someone please confirm and site this please.
Life is not for the lazy.
I didn't provide any fucking estimate. It was a 2 sentence post. 2 sentences. There isn't much room for you to inject your imagined flawed assessment in there.
As someone who's not so brain dead as to think the nationality of the transmission vector matters a god damn bit, shut the fuck up.
It's true. Once you realize this, everything in the world starts to make sense.
Nobody can confirm it, because it's bullshit.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
Incubation happens for a few days to a few weeks; until symptoms develop (i.e., incubation period ends, and you start feeling symptoms of the illness), you are not infecting others. You CAN however infect people for a few weeks after symptoms have disappeared, because the virus will still appear in body fluids (including semen) for nearly 2 months after the infection passes.
FINALLY, we have a legitimate reason to nuke Texas!
if you are infected with a deadly disease and set foot on an airplane with the intent to leave the country when you should be quarantined, is that a terrorist action?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The transmission vector has changed in the past. It will change in the future.
Consider...doctors who knew what they were doing, wore protective suits and underwent decontamination procedures regularly still contracted the virus and several have died.
So if you sat next to the guy on the plane, rode in the cab after he did, etc....No Worries! (cough cough...literally)
You mean the male doctor who hugged the victim without protective gear? The female doctor who re-used protective clothing that wasn't properly washed because it's Liberia?
Talk about depressing. That last picture is the worst. The very worst.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
Symptoms of Ebola virus disease
The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days. Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms. First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools). Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I agree completely.
Emergency rooms aren't really set up to deal with flu-like symptoms. Which can be from a lot of causes other than travel to Liberia. I can easily imagine a situation where between the bloody messy auto accident and a gunshot wound and two or three heart attacks the dude with flu-like symptoms just slips through the cracks.
When I took an EMT class so many years ago, one night a week I had to either ride around with a volunteer fire department or be at the emergency room of a small-town hospital. The amount of stuff that comes into the emergency room of a small-town hospital on Friday night would probably amaze you. I almost exhibit flu-like symptoms myself thinking about a big-city hospital.
Which gets to the other catch here. The initial presentation of Ebola is "flu-like" symptoms. Most people are highly suggestible and can practically think themselves into such symptoms if they are panicked and freaked out about possibly being exposed to an extremely fatal disease. So I suspect we will have a wave of people from Dallas or from Dulles Airport or from the flights this idiot was on who think they might have been exposed turning up at emergency rooms, urgent care clinics, and even their own doctors thinking they have Ebola. It is going to be quite a sorting job finding the tiny number of people who really are sick. I really hope someone has a fast, reliable, and relatively inexpensive test kit for Ebola that can be rapidly deployed. Because we are going to need it. Not because I expect a lot of people to get Ebola, but finding those needles in a haystack of hypochondriacs is going to take some work.
I don't know what the normal procedure is in American hospitals but at least in Finland where I live, you're 100 % the hospital's responsibility once you're there - i.e. they have to ask the right questions and even if you're dishonest with your answers they can still be held responsible, if it's something they "should" have noticed (which of course is relative). So if you go to the ER and staff ask if you've been drinking and you lie and say no and some nasty shit happens because drugs they administer have contraindications with the alcohol in your system it's a case of malpractice because they should rely on a blood sample and not a patient's word.
From the perspective of one American, that sounds insane to me. Patients absolutely must share the responsibility for receiving proper care. Holding staff responsible for a patient who directly lies about their medical history is incredibly cruel to the staff and terribly inefficient because then it would logically mean staff must test for any and all potentially relevant conditions, genetic markers, chemicals, antibodies, bacterial cultures, etc. for every patient. That would be very costly to the system. If patients expect that society has an obligation to take care of them, doesn't it seem logical that the patient has a reciprocal obligation to society to be forthright in their medical history so as to free up as many of society's resources as possible for the next, potentially sicker, patient?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
'But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," '
My experience from working in ICU and ER years ago:
Can't know, but when I hear phrases like "full team", that's what I am reminded of. Very very unfortunate. Beyond all of the additional exposure, the guy didn't get the care he likely needed to have a chance at survival.
Heh, could be. But, you've got to keep one thing firmly in mind when it comes to nurse:intern interactions: the average intern hears 6 pieces of bullshit from a nurse for every piece of important, accurate information.
Next to a July intern, a confident seasoned nurse is the most dangerous person in the hospital.
okay, first: they HAVEN'T identified the length or method of transmissability, because it keeps spreading by surprise.
second: we know that in Africa they have missed many cases. Therefore, 7000 actual cases would not be far off.
Third, the world population is 7 million, so there are 2^20 doublings (at 23 days each) between now and total infection, at the current rate.
Fourth, the US population, including illegals, is about 350 million. So by the math, you might guess that there was 350 cases in the US, but the actual rate of spread is probably initially faster than a 23-day doubling, but slower to enter the country. So a reasonable guestimate is that we might have 120 cases, about a third of 350, but with Dallas/CDC response, we'll rapidly catch that 350 number.
In line with that, I'd estimate that in any state that has a lot of human commerce with Dallas (including Louisiana, Virginia, Oklahoma, and California), you could estimate the number of cases by dividing the state population by 3 million, more or less.
In other words, we're in deep trouble already.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Of those 80 people, how many do you think work at the lochal grocery store, or a fast food restaurant? How many would be permitted to take time off for minor cold symptoms? How many could afford to do so?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Not fired. Quarantined. as is the case with the whole city. They need to take a one-month break, with robotic Amazon food and TP delivery on call.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Medical history, prescribed drugs etc. is just an SSN into the health care computer system away... You can decline having your history accessible to anybody by - every time tests are taken or you visit a clinic - not signing the permission to share between different clinics and hospitals and medical staff on a medical need basis (except the doctor that has entered those particular details about you and even in that case you can at any time request that it's deleted...). So if you want to mislead them about your medical history by doing that in advance or refusing to give your SSN and also give false information, it would no longer be something they "should" have noticed (hence it is relative, if they're responsible for it or not). The tricky area is I guess people who get high or intoxicated and manage to seem normal in that state. But sure, there might be some waste of resources if they're supposed to treat every patient as if he/she has Alzheimers and remembers nothing...
My knowledge is based on a lot of personal experience with the system due to my epilepsy (luckily it has finally been under control with medication for a few years). Of course, maybe my neurologist exaggerated a little when he said "they were 100% responsible for you and it was pure luck that you didn't get a seizure at home" when bashing them and explaining things to me.
Wait... are you prepared to acknowledge that some third world countries have better health care systems than the US?
Because otherwise I don't see how which third world country is relevant.
What's the point of this grandstanding? A claim was made. Back it up. Name the country that is mentioned in this statement: "In contrast, in a third world country with a decent health care system, the infection rate was 1 in 1000."
Note that Europe didn't have significantly different infection rates than the US.
And health care systems are relevant because that's how you educate people about transmission vectors and what can be done to prevent spreading the disease. When your health care system is almost disconnected from the government by design, then your public education campaigns do become a lot more difficult, because instead of a single coordinated effort, you end up with a myriad of private entities all communicating something slightly different. Right now, in Texas, people think they can get ebola from watching news about the case. You cannot get more disinformed than that.
You do realize that there are public health services doing public education campaigns in the US? Your premises are wrong.
It's worth noting that some if not most people who are infected with a normal flu are asymptomatic. The H1N1 flu apparently had an unusually high rate of asymptomatic infections. For example, this report implies infections were at least a factor of three higher than symptomatic infections due to the increased presence of antibodies.
For example, Belgium, Spain, and Germany seemed to be hit pretty hard by H1N1 flu with higher "confirmed cases" per capita than the US.
If I were an Al Queda or ISIS big shot and wanted to do some damage that would scare the crap out of people I would send 20 or 30 suicidal jihaddists to Liberia to get themselves exposed to ebola, then put them on planes to whatever western countries I didn't like. You have a couple weeks after exposure before you get sick- plenty of time to travel. Some would get stopped at the borders, but some would get through and be able to deliberately infect as many people as possible before becoming too sick to function. Maybe they don't even have to travel to the target countries- If they infect people in airports they can spread the virus all over the world very quickly.
I am surprised I haven't heard any speculation about a scenario like this on the news- especially Fox "News".
Someone with H1N1 on the plane is contagious to everyone there.
Someone with Ebola not showing symptoms is a danger to no one.
Yes or No
Would you fly to Liberia today, and shake hands with everyone not showing symptoms?
No, and the reason is that I hate flying.
Also, I won't shake hands with people to whom I've not been properly introduced.
How many big pharma lobbyists do you think pushed the government to scare the population as much as possible in order to drive up sales?
You are trying to make a statement by pretending to ask a question.
The answer to your question is "none". Zero. nada. zilch.
That shit was nuts. People were dying left and right from H1N1 in our ICUs. Some had multiple comorbidities and immunocompromised states; but MANY others were just young, healthy, yet unlucky people who developed life-threatening respiratory failure from it. Why it hits some people so badly, while giving others just a fever and some aches, who knows; but the families of those who suffered through these critical illnesses, of whom there were many, would vehemently disagree with your assessment that "nothing happened" from H1N1.
Additionally, our hospitals were stretched to the absolute max, it felt like sheer mayhem for several months, and we saw the (frighteningly restricted) limits of our healthcare system's ability to cope with a large-scale epidemic.
In conclusion... lots of bad things happened in the United States from the H1N1 epidemic, and you are lucky you didn't have to bear witness to, or suffer the consequences of, any of them. Others were not so lucky.
H1N1 is a air borne virus which is much more dangerous to humans in its then form ie strain
Ebola is more like HIV in that its not very hardy outside the host ie human body and requires the direct contact of fluids ie sex, touching the body fluids AND then getting those fluids in the new host's body thru mucus membranes, the eyes, or in an open wound.
where the ebola outbreaks originate its until now been rural where the immediate family handles majority of supportive care when they get infected and the relatives process the dead victims and do the actual burial process and rites. Little to NO modern medical barriers, training, gear, etc are locally available and what is available is quickly depleted.
In a modern industrialized country few if any citizens handle their medical care on their family's own ability and resources and they have little to no direct contact with a dead body. Medical examiners and funeral workers handle the remains almost exclusively.
THUS direct exposure would usually only happen in the brief period when your sick enough to have visible symptoms ie when your contagious until you get too sick to be ambulatory which in the US you are 99.99% of the time gonna be in a hospital unless you live in back country Alaska.
Im a 46 yo rurally raised American and while been around large numbers of dead farm and game animals -the only dead humans I have ever seen are on tv or film.
As as long as the health authorities follow the protocols and the public follows what they are told this wont be a huge problem.
Didnt help the Liberian male lied on intake forms when he was traveling where he failed to declare when asked if he had had contact with ebola patients/persons deceased from ebola while traveling abroad.
I don't have any points to mod. :(
THey have to..Caucasions, with their pink skin and pansy immune systems ,are veritable storehouses of obscene blood diseases, such as porphyria, leukemia, haemophilia, etc.. and would likely infect everyone close to them, much worse than any African would, after catching ebola. So there..mr whitehood!
Thats why 95% of ebola patients are black.
I call bullshit
have you hear about the recent news of a few Ebola dead coming back to life?
Well, that falls under "Unless you're considering people who received a live vaccine to be "infected"..." - since a live vaccine will cause antibodies to be present.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?