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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.
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!
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!
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).
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.
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.