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The CDC Is Carefully Controlling How Scared You Are About Ebola
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman reports in The Atlantic that the Obama administration is trying to navigate a tricky course: Can officials increase public vigilance about the deadly Ebola virus without inciting a panic? "Ebola is scary. It's a deadly disease. But we know how to stop it," says Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director. speaking "calmly and clearly, sticking to an even pitch and avoiding the familiar political image of the whip-smart fast-talker." International groups wanted the U.S. to step in sooner to help fight the outbreak in west Africa, while more recently some Republicans have called on the administration to ban travel from the most affected countries.
Frieden and other officials say such a move would be counterproductive, citing lessons learned from the SARS outbreak a decade ago. "The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided." The government announced Wednesday that it was stepping up protective measures at five airports, where authorities will screen travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea with targeted questions and fever checks, an action, officials acknowledge, that was taken not only to stop the spread of the disease but simply to make people feel safer. According to Berman, the message is this: Be afraid of Ebola. Just not too afraid.
Frieden and other officials say such a move would be counterproductive, citing lessons learned from the SARS outbreak a decade ago. "The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided." The government announced Wednesday that it was stepping up protective measures at five airports, where authorities will screen travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea with targeted questions and fever checks, an action, officials acknowledge, that was taken not only to stop the spread of the disease but simply to make people feel safer. According to Berman, the message is this: Be afraid of Ebola. Just not too afraid.
WTF am I supposed to do? Look around for suspicious hemorrhaging people?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
DId you hear about the nurse in Spain who got infected? An infected glove brushed her face. It doesn't take outlandish behavior (like corpse water drinking) for this disease to spread.
soylentnews.org
"The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided."
This isn't SARS. The death toll is already 5x that of SARS.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
More fear mongering. I'm looking at it from a perspective where we're not in trouble at all. Are you planning on drinking fluids from a sick person? No? Neither am I. So please lose the "we're all gonna die" attitude.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
If they're contagious when they get off the plane, you're in a buttload of hurt. Now you have to find everyone else who was on the plane and monitor them for symptoms, because some are now infected too.
The only way this can possibly work is to prevent them from boarding the plane.
And, if she was wearing any sort of face mask and eye protection (like you are supposed to do), nothing untoward would have happened.
Contact precautions aren't particularly hard, but they do require a significant degree of vigilance which is not a human being's strong point.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Am I the only one who isn't even slightly scared about ebola? It isn't transmitted through the air or casual contact, so its' pretty easy to avoid. What is there to be scared of?
People are the same the world over.
In many communities where Ebola is running rampant, superstition, and a belief in shamanistic or animistic magic are helping spread the disease and prevent proper care.
And here in the US, I've seen a well-shared Facebook link to a 'natural health' site that tells you how you can get Ebola from ATM keypads and doorknobs, but you can protect yourself via essential oils and the immune system boosting properties of silver! No need for autism creating vaccines!
I'm so glad I don't live in a place where people think magic potions and mystic talismans will ward off disease!
The virus hasn't gained any sort of foothold or presence in the US but that doesn't mean vigilance isn't warranted to prevent it from entering the country. The problem is that ebola shares many of the traits of influenza that we can see how problematic ebola could be if it got into the US. They have similar transmission vectors and a similar hardiness when it comes to survival outside of a host. We see an infection rate of 12.5% annually with influenza and that's with vaccines. Without modifying behaviors we would see a higher infection rate and this strain of ebola appears to have a 70% mortality rate. What that all means is that should ebola gain a foothold it would require aggressive containment and quarrantine as well as a modification of the standard behaviors of Americans to avoid infection.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I'm sorry about your friend but ebola scares me ALOT more than the swine flu, h1n1, or sars.
Shutting down airports for sars was probably a bit of an overkill. Yes, sars is contagious but
it's also highly survivable. My guess is that your friend was already compromised in some
way whether it was extremely old, extremely young, weak immune system, etc...
Until we have an effective cure for ebola (80% survival rate or better), then it's much better
to be overly cautious with ebola. Can you imagine what would happen if this made it to
an elementary school where hundreds of kids are in close contact? Give me sars any day.
The aid workers who picked it up despite taking precautions will sure be comforted by your sentiment.
Even in modern hospitals, disease outbreaks happen despite precautions.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We do know how to put a stop to it, it's quite easy, all it takes is bio-containment level 4 procedures, that should be easy to slap together in every international airport, seaport, and border crossing to the US. Look, I'm not going to fear monger here, but the fact is that if significant numbers of infected individuals start traveling around the globe we will not be able to maintain containment for long, even with all the resources that ultra-rich 1st world countries have at their disposal. How many beds do you think there are in the entire US that can safely treat Ebola ? I'd be shocked if it's over 1,000 and if the situation in western Africa doesn't change we will very soon see Ebola victims numbering in the millions (by the CDC's own estimates, 1.4 million by the end of January).
We need to stop pretending that Ebola is no easier to catch than HIV or other pathogens that are carried by the same bodily fluids, those diseases don't typically cause you to leak and eject the infected material all over yourself and the room you are in. A nurse in Spain got sick after possibly touching her face while removing her hazmat suit, when was the last time you heard about someone catching HIV the same way? This whole idea that Ebola is so hard to spread you'd have to be stupid to catch it needs to stop; it's wrong and it's dangerous and it leads to wonderful things like people not bothering to put on gloves and mask to go into a confirmed Ebola patient's apartment (thankfully that deputies tests have come back negative).
he's a moderate right politician. It's just the racism that blinds so many right wing nutjobs to what Obama is actually doing.
Bullshit -
"America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."
"I don't take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."
"I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody."
"I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."
"If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost."
"It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent."
"We can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."
"What Washington needs is adult supervision."
"You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
"We need to change our tax code so that people like me & an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes."
I don't hate him because he is black, I hate him because he is a tool and fool, and he is causing irreparable harm to this country. And, BTW, I'm not Republican.
We need to stop pretending that Ebola is no easier to catch than HIV or other pathogens that are carried by the same bodily fluids
It spreads easier than AIDS, but not as easily as the flue. Because of the way it spreads, it's easy to contain. Look, I'm not the only one saying this here, the head of CDC said it too, if you had even read the summary. But MozeeToby on the internet is worried, so we should all freak out?
The parent is right. Level 4 containment is exactly what the CDC mandates themselves in order to even study this virus or warehouse it. If it were "easy" to contain, you sure as hell wouldn't have those kinds of insanely expensive precautions being taken to store it in a jar.
And I sure as hell hope you're not eating those "easy to contain" words 6 months from now.
And the head of the CDC is like any other elected official. They are not there to start a panic during a crisis, so regardless of the seriousness of it, they are going to downplay it to a level just below widespread speculation and panic, even if the concerns are actually far greater.
Uhh, she was in the process of undressing...
Then, correct procedures weren't followed.
For any truly infectious disease, proper procedure would have health care workers walk into a disinfectant shower (and possibly UV light) before removing protective clothes. Any disease that can survive that sort of thing is going to kill us all anyway.
Then, order of removal is important. In general, headgear is removed first (preferably by another person), then outer gloves, then fasteners released and gear removed, then inner gloves. All this is followed by hand washing (at a minimum). This makes sure that easier paths to infection get as little possible contact from anything that might have had contact with the pathogen.
The nurse screwed up by touching her face with her outer glove, and I suspect that disinfectant showers/UV were not done first.
Obamacre that inspired a huge backlash from the right was a conservative policy suggestion from the Heritage Foundation including all the most hated provision.
This is not the entire truth and you know it. Of course the admin loves to point out a bit written by the right. but what you conveniently leave out, is that it was never intended to be countrywide. What is constitutional for the state is not always constitutional for the fed, - 10th amendment issue
as for iraq (and the wars in general) more of our troops have died since obama took over than prior to that. the reasons why? I cant tell
no, disagreeing with the president does in fact get one called a racist, for example, I am not happy that bush has not closed gitmo, I am mad he still harasses medical marijuana patients after saying he would not. I am mad that my health care costs almost double what I was paying 3 years ago, and my coverage is no wheres near as good as it was. Im mad that I could not keep my doctor. Im mad that the cost of gas is still over 3$ a gallon. Not all of these things are totally the presidents control, but also none of them are related to his race. sadly, if im not called a racist by obama supporters at least once aday, id be shocked as it never happens
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Can officials increase public vigilance about the deadly Ebola virus without inciting a panic?
No.
Some officials have a vested interest in intentionally inciting a panic. The fox is already guarding the henhouse, the REAL question is: How much of a panic will officials incite while increasing public vigilance.
Most officials will always have a vested interested in lying about it, regardless.
If Ebola is a big threat, they can prepare themselves while keeping the public blissfully unaware, helping to ensure their survival.
If Ebola is not a big threat, they can whip up a managed amount of fear in order to secure more funding, feel powerful, have fun dicking around with their toys, etc.
Easy to contain?
Say you have a breakout and spread among the US population. The emergency room starts getting people with fever and stomach ache. What do you do? Put them in quarantine? Fine.
Ok, now we've exhausted the 10 beds at the hospital that are usable for quarantine. We've still got 150 patients with symptoms in the emergency room. Put them all in the same room? Maybe only one or two have ebola. Can't put them in one room, then they'll all get ebola if a few had it. No rooms for individual isolation. Send them home? Violations of curfews will be common, police won't be itching to babysit every emergency room visitor. That won't contain it once we're reaching that number of cases.
Now we know there's 150 patients with potential ebola. That will get us another 5000 patients with the symptoms in the emergency room. Quarantine them? No place. Send them home? And we go another round.
There is no way western medicine has any chance at all to contain any sustained outbreak. It isn't a matter of knowing how to prevent spread, it's a matter of sheer numbers making those measures ineffective and the fact that potential patients will know that most hospitals can't do anything for more than a few patients with sepsis at a time which means that you're better off hydrating at home, hoping you don't actually have ebola and not risking getting exposed to other possible ebola infectees in an emergency room.
To have a serious chance at containment after any significant breakout removes travel history as a useful major red-flag there will have to be really good treatment or a cure or the rational choice for any individual having the fairly common symptoms simply won't be to go to the hospital.
People with fevers sweat, they cough, they sneeze. Droplet transmission is a serious threat, especially in cramped conditions. No licking necessary. But then you throw children in the mix, and there will be licking and mouthing of potentially contaminated items. And sick kids that want to be held by mommy or daddy, and will sneeze directly in their face.
Not saying that we have reason to panic now, but it is fatuous to dismiss the very real challenges of effective containment once the disease becomes endemic to a particular population.
RTFM - in a computerized system, the nurses enter some information about the patient, but that information is not relayed back to the screen that the doctor sees.
Brilliant.
That also explains why we have to repeat to the doctor(s) everything we just repeated to all the attending nurses.