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Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola
Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to have been diagnosed in the U.S. with Ebola, and who subsequently died of the disease, was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Now, in a second diagnosis for the U.S, an unidentified health-care worker from the hospital has tested positive for Ebola as well. According to the linked Reuters story, Texas officials did not identify the worker or give any details about the person, but CNN said it was a woman nurse.
The worker was wearing full protective gear when in contact with Duncan, Texas Health Resources chief clinical officer Dan Varga told a news conference.
"We are very concerned," Varga said. "We don't have a full analysis of all of the care. We are going through that right now."
...
The worker was self-monitoring and has not worked during the last two days, Varga said.
The worker was taking their own temperature twice a day and, as a result of the monitoring, the worker informed the hospital of a fever and was isolated immediately upon their arrival, the hospital said in a statement.
(Also covered by the Associated Press, as carried by the Boston Globe, which notes that "If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.")
We have robots for ridding explosive ordinance. Considering the humber of healthcare workers that contracted this disease so far, hopefully some remotely controlled robot doctor/nurses would help further quarantine the situation.
We are far from autonomous humanoid robots, but since this isn't a labor saving measure, it should be much easier, as they are rather more like walking drones, how far is current tech from making this possible?
No, there is no need to panic. Get a grip on your fantasies.
There is no outbreak in the US. Learn what that word means.
I'm sure that there's a protocol you could follow to prevent catching the flu from flu patients, too, but I doubt it would be practical to practice medicine at the same time. I think that as Western medical personnel are beginning to be infected, it becomes less easy to just say "the training/equipment/conditions were the problem". At some point, we need to look at how the containment protocol interacts with the treatment protocol, and see if it actually works.
Remember, correctly executed withdrawl is just as effective a form of birth control as a correctly applied condom, but a greater share of condom users use them correctly than those who attempt pulling out.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
For those who said "No need to panic" ... are we there yet?
One thing these outbreaks in Europe and the US show - we don't know enough about Ebola.
Personally, I think the authorities trying to avoid a widespread panic... However, it's clear the outbreak is getting out of control and it's only a matter of time before it spreads to the rest of the world. I'm preparing by stashing up on food and water and other emergency supplies. When it spreads... Your best precaution is to avoid going out as much as possible (fortunately, I am a slashdot geek so that suits me!). We've been warned about the dangers of global pandemic for years now, but this is it folks... Get ready and look out for yourself!
You know, I've heard that many times now, yet Ebola continues spreading. And every new case gives it new opportunities to evolve further. So perhaps it would be better to panic and spend some serious dough to crush the outbreak while it's still possible, rather than wait for it to turn into the doomsday scenario a deadly and highly contagious disease has every potential to become?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
As someone who lived through the SARS panic in Asia, I would say no, we're not "there" yet. Apparently it has taken a bit longer than it should have for the rank-and-file health workers in the USA to get clued in on this, but I would venture to say that the number of them who remain unaware of this threat today is approximately zero. If anything, I'd expect to see a lot more "false alarms" than actual infections in the next few weeks.
Once the public is aware, the infection rate will plummet. Because of SARS, I still avoid doorknobs and elevator buttons whenever possible (use your keys, lighter, sleeve, etc. to buffer such contact), it just makes sense to do so. Once the protocols for avoiding Ebola become widely known, this so-called "epidemic" will quickly dissipate.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
"Human infections caused by Ebola-Reston virus in the US in 1990"
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd...
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Yeah. Pigs and monkeys. And in the US and Philippines. Enjoy your day!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Does anyone know how the virus can penetrate a hermetically sealed suit?
The fact that the nurse in Spain, and the one in Dallas both contracted the disease despite wearing full protective gear - and in full knowledge that the patient was infectious - is pretty scarey. You have to imagine that both of those people were fully aware of how dangerous the situation was and were doing their very best to avoid doing anything to compromise their own safety. Clearly we either need better suits or better training, or some kind of a 'buddy system' where two people watch each other to ensure that they don't accidentally do something wrong.
There was a piece on NPR a few days ago that said that the Doctors Without Borders people use a buddy system like this - and despite having hundreds of people on the ground in Africa for a month or more, have only had three staff infections.
Without some improved level of protection, asking doctors and nurses to expose themselves to a disease with a 70% mortality rate (latest WHO estimate...up from 60%), no immunization and no known cure, is asking a lot. Clearly we aren't going to be able to make a vaccine or a cure in any reasonable timescale - so we really need to be working hard to improve protection. The idea of using robots for at least some of the jobs is interesting - but probably impractical for all but the simplest tasks.
We know that this disease can spread exponentially the "base reproduction" figure (the number of people who catch the disease from one infected person) is between 1.7 and 2.3, and it takes 2 to 3 weeks for the infected person to develop symptoms and pass it on. So there is a potential for the disease to double every 3 weeks. We have just a couple of victims in the USA right now, so in a year, we could have a million victims and 700,000 deaths. Clearly, we have to reduce that base reproduction number below 1.0 - but if...with proper protection gear and highly aware workers...both the Spanish and Dallas initial cases were able to spread to one additional victim, we're clearly not going to get anywhere close to a 1.0 rate anytime soon.
We now have two cases of Ebola being contracted by health care workers in developed nations (Spain, USA), plus the many workers who have contracted it while working with patients in the affected African nations. One wonders if the pool of health care workers willing to work with these patients will start to dwindle and whether the CDC call for calm is more direct at those workers than the general public.
But last week it was reported that Sgt. Michael Monning contracted ebola while trying to get the quarantine order signed.
No, it says a possible second Ebola victim. He didn't actually have the symptoms of Ebola, but felt sick, and since he had been in Thomas Duncan's apartment, he went to get checked out just in case. But his test for Ebola was negative.
For those who said "No need to panic" ... are we there yet?
No. Panicking does nothing, except perhaps make you look like an irrational moron. Like all those people panicking about terrorism after 9/11; idiots.
nonsense, more likely contaminated objects were not properly isolated to sick area and not disposed of properly. Carelessness can get one maimed or killed in the real world.
By the way, "not airborne" does not included someone sneezing or coughing droplets right on you.
It also leads to morons getting upset over jokes, like with the man who joked about having Ebola, or when government thugs harass people when they joke about bombing something. The idiot isn't the one who made the joke, but the ones who overreact. Oftentimes it's an infringement upon someone's constitutional rights when the government gets involved. As if making a joke about having Ebola makes you more likely to have Ebola, or making a joke about being a terrorist makes you more likely to be one.
All of these things caused by irrational, worthless panic.
yet Ebola continues spreading.
No, no really. There are more and more victims in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. But it was stopped in Senegal and Nigeria. All African nations are not the same. In terms of institutions and infrastructure, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are at or near the bottom. While primitive by Western standards, Senegal and Nigeria are far more functional countries. If they were able to control and contain the disease, then more developed countries should not have much difficulty doing the same.
Simplest explanation is always right.
No. Most likely. But in the absence of more information, most certainly NOT "always right".
AIDS doesn't cause contagious blood, spit, diarrhea, and vomit to go everywhere. Ebola does.
AIDS doesn't infect health care workers who are treating patients unless there's a needlestick or sexual contact. Ebola does, with alarming frequency. Even if you DO have sex with someone with AIDS, it's not 100% that you'll get AIDS.
AIDS can't be spread by sneezing or coughing. It's possible Ebola *is*.
In terms of contagiousness, Ebola seems 10x worse. It's like saying "smallpox is no worse than chickenpox". Maybe if you put them both on a logarithmic plot and back up 50 feet!
--PM
No.
We MIGHT (and I stress "might") be getting to time to panic the first time we get an ebola victim who hasn't been to Africa, and hasn't been in contact with any known Ebola victim.
Note that this case is one of the 48 people who are currently being monitored due to contact with that ebola victim who brought it here from Africa.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
But where is the evidence of a pandemic? It's only a few thousands at this stage.
The evidence is continued exponential growth of Ebola to recent past. It appears that the rate of infection may be slowing down in the worst of the three primary countries of infection, Liberia. If true, fears of pandemic are overstated.
If instead, cases continue to climb exponentially, but patients are staying away from hospitals, then you still have the eventual pandemic problem looming on the horizon.
Hospitals..... One of the most contagious places in an area. Being in an environment with the highest concentration of infected people is bad enough, but hospital employees have been known to have less than stellar hygiene. I think an entire technology product sector has had to be created just to encourage employees to wash their hands regularly.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I know, if "you only follow procedure" this isn't supposed to be a big deal.
But what's scary is that with a very small number of patients (one) and likely a lot of attention to procedure, a healthcare worker got infected. Sure, we can blame sloppy procedure, but it happened anyway.
What would it look like though if we had a dozen patients or a hundred or a thousand? It's real easy to blame bad procedure, but what makes us think a wider outbreak would have *better* procedures and more attention to detail? We might get better at it (lack of practice may be an issue) and we might make incremental improvements to the kinds of procedures we follow but we might also get worse, lack facilities or the inevitible stress of a larger outbreak might impede vigilance, not improve it.
What scares me about Ebola is how apparently difficult it can be to contain even under ideal conditions.
It's not too late until it makes the jump to central/south American as well as Asian shitholes. Than things get real ugly, real fast. Imaging Ebola infected Brazilian crackheads who are convinced the hospitals are holding out a cure.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Highly trained workers are getting infected.
Exactly as happened with SARS. Most of the infections were among health workers.
the rate of transmission is phenomenal. The death rate upon infection is phenomenal.
Yes, the death rate is high, but the transmission rate is low. The common flu is far more transmissible. And even though its death rate is much lower, the flu kills many times more people each year than Ebola will ever affect in the USA.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
We MIGHT (and I stress "might") be getting to time to panic the first time we get an ebola victim who hasn't been to Africa, and hasn't been in contact with any known Ebola victim.
Uh, Ebola spreads through contact, so by your logic it still wouldn't be time to be concerned if every last person on earth contracted the disease...
Panic of course is never helpful. However, extreme vigilance is. I think we're really underestimating the ability of this to get out of control.
He took the idiots words very accurately...
You seems upset with a idiot being called on being a idiot though....
well no, I bet a dollar there was a tear in his suit. Simplest explanation is always right.
Be prepared to lose a dollar. The protocol for donning and removing the protective gear is very complex, and very hard to get perfect. When putting the suit on, it's possible to get gaps between the goggles and suit without even knowing it. And when taking it off, a tiny flap of the contaminated suit brushing against a clean surface is almost impossible to detect.
In contrast, Tyvek suits are very hard to tear unless you're doing hard physical labor in a rough environment. Most hospital settings don't have the infectious care nursing staff crawling through piles of dirty rebar or squeezing along rough mortared brick walls.
John
Dear Texas,
After careful consideration, we do actually think that your secession plans make sense after all!
With Best Regards,
The Other 49 States
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Yup, nothing to worry about. We've had all of about three people in the US with the disease so far with no more than one in any hospital at a time, and yet the workers still manage to get themselves infected. That is under fairly ideal conditions - these patients are actually in specialized isolation wards and they can dedicate personnel to them and generally isolate them from the rest of the hospital.
So, 3 sick patients leads to 1 sick healthcare worker. That isn't a particularly good ratio. If we had 100 people with Ebola then you'd expect 33 sick healthcare workers, and then you'd expect those to go on an infect another 11, then another 4, and then one more for good measure. If you're keeping count that is 50 healthcare workers in total, from treating 100 sick people.
Now, maybe we're just really unlucky or something, but I'd think that if the ERs started filling up with Ebola patients the amount of isolation would go down, not up.
The "nothing to worry about, it is just Ebola" crowd is beginning to sound a bit like the "the space shuttle is designed to not blow up more than once per 100k missions" crowd. All the hand-waving about how hard the disease is to transmit is in complete contrast that in first-world medical centers we already have two infected nurses.
This isn't AIDS. You CAN catch it from a handshake, let a lone a kiss.
The barrier protocols are quite onerous. It doesn't need to be idiocy, fatigue is enough to induce human error. Experts have pointed to this as a factor in the spread of Ebola in West Africa; aside from the fact that most people have access to medieval levels of health care, or facilities that lack things like latex gloves, supplying hospitals with equipment is not enough. The workload of health care workers has to be kept light enough that they can take the extreme precautions needed without making errors.
It is also possible that the barrior protocols have a bug somewhere in them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I don't understand: Wouldn't it be possible to put the wearer through a disinfectant decontamination shower before he or she takes off the suit?
By my logic, if you people start getting ebola with no KNOWN ebola contact, it's time to think about maybe panicking.
Because that would mean an unidentified reservoir of ebola in the country. Which is potentially disastrous.
So long as we have a clear eye on patient zero and everyone in contact with him, we don't need to be terribly worried....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
According to NBC, this is exactly what appears to have happened.
This was exactly My thought at first.
Let's see: total number of Ebola Patients in the U.S. is ... 1. Mssr. Duncan is dead and cremated and no longer spreading the disease. So, the answer is "no".
Last I saw, that debate wasn't split on party lines. Some of each party said both. Oh, but no, let's just treat every single event that ever happens like one US political party is always right and the other wrong. Because when you get elected in one party you become a god. They're not at all just people with their own opinions and ideas who make mistakes. And when you get elected to the other party, you sit around wringing your hands trying to think about how to screw up. Because they too aren't just people trying to stumble through awesome responsibilities.
Behold the brilliance of American politics. Nothing in the world is more important than choosing which group you'll worship.
GP was answering OP's question. I see no error in GP's statement nor any need to qualify it.
It would be easily spread by coins and monetary notes, though, wouldn't it?
Would you choose different words were this an on-the-air interview instead of an anonymous Internet post?
If not, then rock on. You speak as you choose, damn the consequences. But if so, then you shouldn't have used those words here either. Whichever way, what's the point in defending it if you really think there's nothing wrong with it?
If you just reply making this about me, I'll just figure you were trolling.
For those who said "No need to panic" ... are we there yet?
Nope. And we never will be. Panicked people make stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
One thing these outbreaks in Europe and the US show - we don't know enough about Ebola.
There is no "outbreak" in the US or Europe. And not knowing enough about Ebola is not the same as saying we know nothing about Ebola, and what we know says there is not going to be an outbreak here -- just a few isolated cases of transmission. Thus far there have been one confirmed case of endemic transmission in the US and one in Europe, both nurses. The other "cases" were people with other viral diseases. One transmission does not an "outbreak" make, except to people who are panicky. It's normal in a situation like this for "suspected cases" to pop up all over the place. What do you expect, with the media spreading panic.
The CDC is now saying that the transmission in TX was caused by a "breach of protocol", which is not surprising given that the barrior protocols are exacting and onerous.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Note that this case is one of the 48 people who are currently being monitored due to contact with that ebola victim who brought it here from Africa.
While I agree We should not panic, this case is not 1 of the 48 according to NPR.
The problem in these African nations is that the virus' main victims have been predominantly among the few trained health care workers they had.
If you live in the developed world, you don't even think about the doctor:patient ratio, which is probably somewhere around 1:400 in your country. In Liberia, the ratio was about 1:100,000 (back in 2008). That means in this entire country of 4 million people, they had about 40 doctors - about the same as one typical urban American hospital. These are the only people capable of "holding back the infection", as you so glibly put it.
This year alone, Ebola has already killed about 10% of their doctors.
As far as money goes, Liberia already spends more of their money on health care than any other country in the world. As they are one of the poorest nations, they have very little money for anything at all, so this has them completely tapped out.
What good is even a hundred liters of zMapp if there aren't enough doctors to identify and treat the infected?
John
Fairly ideal is not ideal. According to CNN, the 2nd Patient broke protocol. If One does not do what One is supposed to do, bad things can happen.
No, according to CNN, the 2nd Patient broke protocol. If One does not do what One is supposed to do, bad things can happen. So far, the disease has spread only thru the exact process which "they" have stated.
When Taylor Swift has been dumped more times than X, X is laughable in an argument.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Yes because time and time again it has been proven that lampooning conspiracy theorists is the same as buying into their theories. Thank you, lieutenant obvious. Hope you get that promotion you've been working towards.
You know, I've heard that many times now, yet Ebola continues spreading.
And it is still correct. There is no need to panic. Ebola gets WAY more press than the severity of the actual risk justifies.
Basically stop freaking the hell out. The people that can and will deal with this outbreak are dealing with it. Panic will accomplish nothing productive. Quite the opposite in fact.
So perhaps it would be better to panic and spend some serious dough to crush the outbreak while it's still possible, rather than wait for it to turn into the doomsday scenario a deadly and highly contagious disease has every potential to become?
First off, ebola is NOT "highly contagious". It's actually rather hard to get. Unless you have been in direct contact with the sweat, blood, tears, feces or other bodily fluids of a symptomatic ebola patient then you have nothing to worry about. Medical personnel who are treating such patients directly are at highest risk for obvious reasons. This is nothing shocking though it probably means someone made a mistake.
It is incorrect that "every" pathogen has to potential to become a "deadly and highly contagious disease". Go talk to an infectious disease doctor and they will tell you that the biology of most viruses and bacteria prevents them from ever becoming a threat to humans. It's actually quite hard for that to happen even in a rapidly mutating virus which ebola is not. What you are suggesting is almost as unlikely as all the air in the room suddenly deciding to be on just one side of the room because, hey, it's theoretically possible. The real world probability of most viruses and bacteria mutating into something harmful to humans is actually vanishingly small if not actually zero.
http://www.khou.com/story/news...
"Monnig was transported to Texas Health Presbyterian inside an ambulance protected with plastic on the inside. Once there, his blood was drawn. He was cleared of the Ebola virus the next day."
The evidence is continued exponential growth of Ebola to recent past.
Be careful of extrapolation.
Let's see: total number of Ebola Patients in the U.S. is ... 1. Mssr. Duncan is dead and cremated and no longer spreading the disease. So, the answer is "no".
You didn't bother reading the summary or the article, did you? Not just 1, Mr. Duncan. The next victim is the trained, well-equipped health care professional who - despite having far better protection and awareness than the vast majority of people in the world - just tested positive for having caught the virus from him.
What's your point in ignoring that glaring little dose of reality?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So, 3 sick patients leads to 1 sick healthcare worker. That isn't a particularly good ratio. If we had 100 people with Ebola then you'd expect 33 sick healthcare workers, and then you'd expect those to go on an infect another 11, then another 4, and then one more for good measure. If you're keeping count that is 50 healthcare workers in total, from treating 100 sick people.
Extrapolation from small numbers is rarely a sensible idea.
No, in fact, we're nowhere near "needing to panic."
AMG, 2 people with Ebola - one who traveled to West Africa and apparently had prolonged contact to an Ebola patient there, and a nurse who was part of his care team when he presented with Ebola symptoms - have gotten sick here. One died in an isolation unit, and the second is in an isolation unit with teams of CDC epidemiologists tracking her network of contacts since she was exposed, and setting up monitoring (twice-daily temperature checks and notifications) on all of those contacts.
In all likelihood, this is the last one in this chain, because the nurse *just* started presenting symptoms, and immediately was placed in isolation and started receiving treatment - which means that she would have had a VERY small window to transmit to other people, and those people are now being monitored closely.
One thing these outbreaks in Europe and the US show - we know plenty about Ebola, and the risks are ridiculously minimal. 2 people in a country of 300 million does not constitute a pandemic, and the resources being brought to bear on this small cluster are enormous. There are numerous problems in Africa that exacerbate outbreaks: poor medical care, poor sanitation, customs & culture, poverty, and simple lack of resources. Those conditions have led to ~8,000 people contracting the disease so far; none of those conditions are likely to be prevalent here in the US - where a grand total of TWO people have been infected - and only ONE of those people was infected here in the US.
The CDC transported several health care workers with full blown Ebola back here to the US, too, and treated them here: and yet, where are the clusters from that outbreak? The procedures for eliminating transmission are well-defined, and they are proven to work, when they're adhered to.
So no, it's not time to panic. It's time for you to take a deep fucking breath, and get some perspective, and stop trying to sound like you know what you're talking about - because you don't.
--
this post brought to you by the letter 'H' in HPWKWTFTTA (Healthcare Professionals Who Know What The Fuck They're Talking About)
We have the same in Europe. At least one health care worker here has been infected and will probably die because someone thought it's smart to bring people infected with a 90% lethality virus home for treatment. Good job.
From March till now, the mortality rate for ebola infected Government and NGO workers has been around 55%.
It's higher for the the rest of the infected, as they usually have preexisting medical problems which renders them less able to fight the virus.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Don't let facts get in the way of your rant.
This latest case arose because of a man who arrived in the US like any normal person would. He was not flown under quarantine for treatment, he developed the disease already in the US.
Considering the record so far, it's far safer to fly people back to the US for treatment than to let them arrive on their own even if they show no signs of the disease. This allows us to reach a single conclusion and no other: that Dallas hospital has some explainin' to do.
If your advice had been followed, that man would still have died in the US, infecting this other person, and those who were successfully treated in the US may have died due to not having access to the same level of care.
So long as we have a clear eye on patient zero and everyone in contact with him, we don't need to be terribly worried....
Well, that would be true if we didn't have opportunities for new infections, and if we REALLY had a clear eye on everybody in contact with patient zero. As far as I understand it they were basically all told to stay home and are on the honor system. That really doesn't strike me as a responsible way to manage public health. I don't want to punish anybody, but this is a serious matter - by all means shower them with support, but at least post a guard to ensure nobody goes in or out of their homes.
How do you know it was stopped in Nigeria? Because the Nigerian government, who have a strong incentive to protect their billions of dollars in trade with the rest of the world say they stopped it? 21 days will tell more than any press releases.
She thinks she may have touched her face with a glove. Nobody is really sure. However, if she did that would show that Ebola is way more contagious than the CDC thinks. That implies transdermal transmission.
That's an R0 of 0.3 -- which means the disease will eventually burn itself out without ANY external intervention... why is that cause for alarm, again?
In total, your scenario suggests that 150 people will die, and then the disease will burn itself out because there's nobody transmitting it further. Certainly tragic, but not exactly the stuff of worldwide pandemics.
Not quite true, there were 8 more cases in Nigeria during the last reporting period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
The whole point is that a regular US trained nurse got it when the ambulance bringing him into the hospital immediately went into quarantine, so the nurse new about it from the get go. Those people out there who lied about Ebola contacts to get into the U.S. over the past few weeks to be with their families, girlfriends, etc, will first be contacting _regular_ nurses and healthcare workers, not highly trained Level 4 infectious disease prepared specialists from the CDC.
well no, I bet a dollar there was a tear in his suit. Simplest explanation is always right.
My favorite part about this is how it gives the lie to all the xenophobic rationalizations that people in various African nations were contracting Ebola because of $DANGEROUS_TRIBAL_FUNERARY_CEREMONY.
Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids including sweat and aerosolized saliva (produced by sneezing). Containing bodily fluids in a social context—especially saliva and sweat—is virtually impossible and probably makes Ebola a lot more contagious than the talking heads are letting on.
blog
well no, I bet a dollar there was a tear in his suit. Simplest explanation is always right.
Be prepared to lose a dollar. The protocol for donning and removing the protective gear is very complex, and very hard to get perfect. When putting the suit on, it's possible to get gaps between the goggles and suit without even knowing it.
Goggles?! - Proper biohazard suits are full-body and pressurized, with a full-head hood and absolutely
no openings in the vicinity of the head. Or any place on the front side of the body for that matter.
And when taking it off, a tiny flap of the contaminated suit brushing against a clean surface is almost impossible to detect.
Eh, again? - There's a multi-step decontamination procedure before taking off the suit.
Taking off a still-contaminated suit would be a major fuckup, and a (potentially) contaminated suit should never
be in an environment where any "un-suited" contact can happen.
Have a look at how this works at the BSL-4 level (skip to about minute 13).
What kind of amateurs are running this place?
According to NBC, this is exactly what appears to have happened.
The NBC report is pure speculation. Nobody knows. It's just as likely aerosolized cough droplets, which is another thing the CDC insisted couldn't possibly happen.
Where are all those Slashdot posters who scream "Stop blaming the victim" now? Too scary to stand on principles?
When it comes to a choice if blaming the victim or admitting that their protocol is woefully inadequate, the CDC seems to take the low road.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Exactly.
Furthermore Ebola never did reach Nigerian cities. When it does, it will be the same disaster as the other countries.
Nigeria has a better military, to control their borders, but once the infection get past borders and into the cities its game over.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What I don't understand: Wouldn't it be possible to put the wearer through a disinfectant decontamination shower before he or she takes off the suit?
I would have assumed that this would be standard protocol. It's at least standard protocol for chemical and radio-logical handling, wash'em before you take'em off. Even there trace chemicals can get on your skin if your not very careful.
How you you propose to improve the outcome by panicing ?
Nullius in verba
Which half of the person infected in the united states is dead ?
Nullius in verba
Actually my understanding is that they are not treating patients with the full suits on. The decision to just do face masks, gloves, etc. was pretty common it seems now... I think people have gotten more lax with Ebola simply because wearing the full suits is hot and tough to deal with for a long epidemic like we're seeing. It sounds like the nurse in question wasn't in full protective gear. I agree with the idea this shouldn't be happening... How many of these places really have full training for BL-4 diseases though? Last I knew there were only a few labs in the US capable of fully handling diseases like this in the laboratory. (CDC and USAMRID) How is an average hospital set up for this? Hopefully the Dallas one was, but if this trend continues these will not be the last patients we see coming to the US. My guess is this little incident will get in hand just fine, but I doubt that the ones that are likely to come will be as easy to contain.
The CDC and respective officials around the world train and plan for this stuff. Sure, some political idiocy always exists and sometimes makes problems worse (or blows them out of proportion) but overall the experts are making informed reasonable decisions. Naturally, propagandists twist anything to their own ends and the armchair critics who have way more confidence then competence (which BTW, is a big problem in the USA...go find the studies which prove it.)
Europe isn't banning relations with whole nations. If there was an easier way to screen for it, don't you think they would be doing that already?
You can't realistically quarantine whole nations as if that would actually work. It only takes 1 person sneaking bye -- and instead of thinking of that man who brought it to the USA as a massive failure, you should realize the obvious: they identified the man who brought it in rather quickly... he could have gone around spreading it until his death on some sidewalk somewhere.
It's not highly contagious and we have more deadly diseases in the USA already which don't get this kind of attention; no media reporting on those. Some are born right here as a result of industrial farming... (which is part of the reason it won't be hyped until more than a million die per year... or 1 celebrity.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Umm... what again does panicking accomplish?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Paging Dr. Schrödinger...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Highly trained workers... hmm...
Before you go on a tangent, think about this:
Look at the average person who works with you.
Note his abilities, how he handles himself, how he acts and how he does his work.
Note that this is what we call "a professional"
Now reevaluate that statement about "highly trained workers".
In my experience, 9 out of 10 times "professional" only means getting paid to do it. It's not a statement of quality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, then let me rephrase my question that you'll probably find below:
What does being afraid of it accomplish?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
*shrugs*
Feel free to panic, then. I suggest a cabin in a remote corner of Alaska.
Go there, avoid all human contact for at least ten years.
You should be safe by then, so you can rejoin the world no later than early 2025....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How you you propose to improve the outcome by panicing ?
Personally, I've always found looting to be calming and restful. But to loot effectively requires you first incite panic in a sizable group.
#DeleteChrome
The United States could easily keep even a single grain of sand from blowing across the Mexican border. The actual implementation of a sealed border isn't the showstopper. It's politics alone that poses the only real difficulties.
In the USA, about 630 people die every week in motor vehicle accidents. An additional 2,250,000 are injured. Nonetheless, the 24 hour news channels are going batshit because a couple of people have contracted a horrible disease.
Perhaps the smart thing to do is turn off the TV and step away from news sites. Oh, and remember to wear your seatbelt.
I don't have a clue in the world what your taking about. Why would i change my stance on victim blaming? The nurse is a victim, its not her fault, she did everything she was required to do.and your answer is? You know something we don't know? Please explain.
Jack of all trades,master of none
When did I advocate panic? In fact, I said the post you replied to that panic was useless.
What is necessary is treating the issue seriously, and not just like an outbreak of food poisoning.
Fairly ideal is not ideal. According to CNN, the 2nd Patient broke protocol. If One does not do what One is supposed to do, bad things can happen.
Thus proving my point. There is no such thing as truly ideal conditions, and if your disease management program starts with assuming that things are ideal it is going to fail.
You can't do just enough to stop the spread of the epidemic. You need to multiply that by a factor of 10 once or twice, while you still can. If it gets out of control, then there is nothing you CAN do.
This thing could already be air borne. If so, we're all fucked. It's like watching a train wreck happening in ultra slow motion, and there's nothing that can stop the inevitable. Dear God I hope I'm wrong!
Life is not for the lazy.
Remember, this is slashdot, and he's technically correct. The withdrawal system works if you withdraw before any physical or emotional contact with a female.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I had brunch with my friend this morning, who is an MD PhD in infectious disease and works in a BSL-4 laboratory from time to time, so I asked about this.
BSL-4 is a standard that only applies to laboratories, the same standards aren't necessarily applied to clinical environments, and in the case of Ebola are major overkill. Ebola can't travel through the air, so positive pressure suits aren't appropriate, and they still have to be taken on and off, and that's when health workers seem to get infected. People who "test positive" for Ebola are not contagious, only people who have symptoms are, and they can only pass the disease through contact with bodily fluids -- this usually implies touch, since hemorrhagic fevers cause people to give off all kinds of gross effluent, but it's just not like a "virus" one gets from casual contact, like, say, rubella.
The fact is, Ebola isn't that contagious -- HIV is more virulent, and these two are nothing compared to the influenza or SARS. It's bad that health workers can get it, but this is still one person, so on a completely epidemiological basis it's really not a big deal. Characterizing a single case as somehow indicative of the safety of these procedures is sensationalism.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
As I understand it, in humans, Ebola has a very low concentration in saliva, sweat, and mucus until the patient is quite sick, so although those methods of transmission are possible, they aren't highly likely.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Take a deep breath. You are wrong. If you're like me then you really appreciate the times when that's a good thing.
Ebola is spread via bodily fluids, and it needs an opening to the body to be contracted. There's a nurse who caught it because she touched her face after working with a patient. The face has openings to the body. Getting an infected someone's blood, urine, or saliva on a cut is a surefire way to catch it. So, it's not as communicable as Captain Trips from The Stand, but don't let that inspire complacency either.
Medical workers responding to the outbreak in Liberia have been photographed burning the belongings of ebola victims, and sanitizing with pure chlorine anything that can't be burned. Think about your sheets and mattress. You sleep on those, so it's inevitable that bodily fluids will come into contract with them. Now think of the number of people who don't wash their hands after using a public bathroom. How many people use a public bathroom and some time later rub their eyes?
So, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that with careful hygiene and quarantine with appropriate protective equipment used and all procedures properly followed, an outbreak can be prevented. The bad news is that if there is an outbreak, it's almost guaranteed to be an epidemic because people won't do what they have to in order to prevent further infections. They simply won't listen, guaranteed.
I really wish that hospitals would consult with the US Army regarding proper procedures when dealing with NBC contaminants because from what I've read, the current procedures are lacking in proper rigidity or are otherwise not followed properly. They need to start with replacing their ridiculous protective equipment. That flimsy crap is made on the cheap, sold at a stupid markup, and is simply not good enough.
Furthermore Ebola never did reach Nigerian cities. When it does, it will be the same disaster as the other countries.
Unlikely. Nigeria has twice the literacy rate of Sierra Leone, three times the per capita GDP, a much stronger public health system, and working government institutions. It is a democratic country, with leaders answerable to the electorate. Nigeria has plenty of problems, as any country does (well, maybe not Denmark), but compared to Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea, it is not even close to the same level of dysfunction.
Being afraid accomplishes lots, it motivates us, it is stops us doing stupid things,
but too much, of pretty much anything including fear can be a bad thing too, it can do the opposite, paralyze us, make us do stupid things.
Maybe if the nurse was a little more afraid she would have followed procedures better. (don't know what went wrong so I am only guessing).
Maybe if we are afraid we have tested this first patient at the border instead of taking his word for it.
Maybe it will stop the US spending billions on fighting terrorism which truly is an insignificant problem, and has very little potential to become bigger. And start focusing more on this which is small but has the potential to become massive.
You could feasibly cut off the entire continent, if desired. It isn't hard to guard the tiny little border with the Indian subcontinent. Then ban flights in or out, and use RADAR and air cover to enforce it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There will be the largest human migration from Mexico into America the world has ever witnessed; all for advanced healthcare and handouts should the outbreak occur. And, it will.
Learn Spanish. You will eventually use it more than English.
Life is not for the lazy.
The thing is, if you dont bring infected international aid workers home for treatment, you have no international aid there. Who in their sane mind would go knowing they will be left for dogs if they get infected? Nobody thats who. You eighter evacuate the infected aid workers or you leave Africa to solve it on their own - which they wont and the epidemic will blow up in everyones faces anyway.
That is only counting healthcare workers wearing space suits.
I'm not saying that we should give up hope on containing Ebola. I'm just saying that we should be pulling out all the stops. By all means aid those who have been affected by the disease, but let's be a LOT more serious about quarantines to prevent its spread.
If I called up the FBI and told them that I had anthrax in my basement they'd send in a small army. If I called up the CDC and told them that I had lunch with the guy who had Ebola they'd tell me to stay home and call them if I get a fever. Maybe we should be less worried about saving money, and more worried about whether I decide I get tired of staying home and just make one quick trip to the grocery store.
Decontamination shower is part of the protocol in Africa, but not in the US. The doctors in the US need to be trained better on this.
No shit??? It is not meant literally, moron.
Then don't say just that without even a hint of meaning anything else. The problem with this "Read between the lines" crap is that you often end up reading things that simply are not there.
But people should be afraid of this.
Contrary to what the other person said, you don't need to be afraid of something to take rational measures to stop it. There is no need to be afraid nor panic. That just leads to the loss of civil liberties and rational solutions.
Nobody alive has seen anything like this. This WILL be serious.
*yawn* I doubt it.
One problem is to most healthcare workers, all of their training on blood-borne pathogens is geared primarily toward AIDS, unfortunately HIV is a very labile with a fairly high infectious dose, so basically if you do just about anything you kill it and it remains infectious in the environment for minutes to an hour if you do nothing. Ebola on the other hand is a robust virus with a very low infectious dose (1 -10 virus), anything strong enough to guarantee a 99.999% kill rate is going to also dissolve plastic, peel the paint off the walls and corrode any metals to uselessness.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
BSL-4 is a standard that only applies to laboratories, the same standards aren't necessarily applied to clinical environments, and in the case of Ebola are major overkill.
I mostly agree, but I'd still expect strict precautions to be taken to prevent the mixing of
clean and contaminated environments. That includes not taking contaminated objects (suits,
gloves, whatever) out of the containment area.
Ebola can't travel through the air, so positive pressure suits aren't appropriate, and they still have to be taken on and off, and that's when health workers seem to get infected.
So WhyTF are they taking off undecontaminated gear?
People who "test positive" for Ebola are not contagious, only people who have symptoms are, and they can only pass the disease through contact with bodily fluids -- this usually implies touch, since hemorrhagic fevers cause people to give off all kinds of gross effluent, but it's just not like a "virus" one gets from casual contact, like, say, rubella.
And still somebody got infected. Somebody who knew they were dealing with an infectious
and lethal disease. This should never have happened. You're not making me feel better about the
competence of those involved.
The fact is, Ebola isn't that contagious -- HIV is more virulent, and these two are nothing compared to the influenza or SARS. It's bad that health workers can get it, but this is still one person, so on a completely epidemiological basis it's really not a big deal. Characterizing a single case as somehow indicative of the safety of these procedures is sensationalism.
Well, yes and no. I'm not really concerned about it "getting out". And while it's obviously not enough
for proper statistics, it's more than enough for concern for the health workers: How many people were
treating this patient? 10-20?
That makes for a 5-10% infection rate amongst people who knew what they were dealing with, in a supposedly
first-rate facility in a highly developed country. And the infection happened despite Ebola "not being that contagious".
Yikes.
This is why Africa was finally made barren of human inhabitants in 1980...
Also this is what, two cases in the US, three? Maybe 5 total outside of Africa, and almost all of them among health workers collateral to treating confirmed Ebola-suffering patients?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
it isn't free. and we still can't keep mexican's from crossing in the south without a plague and panic driving them to flee.
<BlackHumor> Just tell the Mexicans we're putting illegals into the secret FEMA Ebola Quarentine Camps, problem solved. </BlackHumor>
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I think he was talking about the other victim who likely killed this nurse by lies and knowingly placing the nurse in danger of catching the disease.
When the original story broke, people were blaming dincan for all sorts of things.
The CDC is now saying that the transmission in TX was caused by a "breach of protocol", which is not surprising given that the barrior protocols are exacting and onerous.
I'll agree that a few cases an "outbreak" does not make. However, what is going to prevent the next case from involving a "breach of protocol?" If a hospital can't contain a single patient's disease, what are they going to do if there actually is an epidemic?
I think we need to take this a bit more seriously and pull out the stops to get ahead of things. Panic obviously isn't going to help anybody, but are we really doing all that we can to prevent an actual outbreak?
So basically you're just anxious, because none of this "seems right" in complete absence of empirical evidence?
Somebody in a modern clinical environment who supposedly knew what they were doing got infected.
That right there is empirical evidence of something not being right.
And in your sample of 10 (or 20, who knows!) one person became ill, because, we dunno, but it sounds fishy.
It doesn't to you? "Well, they have to take off those contaminated suits, and some will get infected while
doing that. Shit happens." really isn't the right approach here.
What recommendations would you make, if you were, say, a public health official? Everyone who develops illness has to be treated in something akin to a BSL-4 facility?
No, but how about "don't mix clean and unclean environments, and follow proper decontamination
procedures while moving between them, and before undressing"?
Have you any idea how many plane flights that would require, just to cite one small aspect of the logistics?
Huh? Plane flights? Are we still talking about a controlled clinical environment in a big American city?
And all this to protect from a disease vector that's completely unsubstantiated in the literature?
Or do you do like Judge Clay Jenkins, and personally go to the family's house in shirt-sleeves and drive them to a new home? Which approach is more appropriate? Which one balances our available resources against the actual concrete threat of the disease? Which one is actually workable?
You're losing me here.
Furthermore Ebola never did reach Nigerian cities.
Um, ebola certainly reached Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, populated by 17.5 million people. The index case, doctor Patrick Sawyer, even performed surgery while ill and symptomatic.
Do you even know how this case of infection occurred? I made no claims along these lines, you're the one who says he knows, or rather knows enough to know there was a systemic problem and not one merely attributable to failure to follow established protocols.
There are only about a dozen BSL-4 facilities in the US; if you want to establish the principle that patients must be treated in such a facility, you will be moving A LOT of them. Also, none of these facilities are equipped to handle patients. The first requirement of a BSL-4 lab is that it's a separate building purpose-built for containment.
I sure am, because you seem to think every metro in the US has a world-class biohazard facility and infrastructure, and has plenty to spare on a wild goose chase of isolating minimally-virulent ebola patients, and you can't seem to understand that your fears are based completely on your own speculation and snap judgement. Your conceptualization of this disease, and the means required to contain it, constitute the textbook definition of cargo cult science.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
How do you know it was stopped in Nigeria? Because the Nigerian government, who have a strong incentive to protect their billions of dollars in trade with the rest of the world say they stopped it?
No. We know it because US health authorities and the WHO reported it.
Every biohazzard situation i have been through reqired a complete disinfection of the safety gear before you can remove it. It was similar on level 1 hazmat responses too, you stood in what looks like a kiddie pool anf an overhead shower sprayed down while people sprayed from side angles. What was sprayed depended on the hazzard- disinfectant/water/citric acid/or whatever was needed to neutralize the danger. This was the same for all your equiptment too.
I haven't worked in a field where i do this since the late 1990s- early 2000s but i cannot imagine much has changed on this. It was all regulated by OSHA, MSHA and usfmc dot regulation which helped developed most of the internation response proceedures and adopted those it didn't so it was pretty uniform across the board on anything that posed a risk of death from contamination.
Maybe they are not treating this as seriously as death being a result.
What's all this about protective gear? Duncan's family wasn't wearing protective gear for crying out loud and they didn't come down with the disease. Something doesn't add up here.
Seastead this.
More recent version of the WHO report (which confirms no new cases in Nigeria since 8 September).
According to the cdc and various other sources, a 1-10 solution of household bleach for 10min would work to disinfect ebola contaminated surfaces. It also seems to be killed by strong UV light.
Perhaps someone needs to update something.
Every Ebola virus host (infected individual) is a vector for the virus to evolve. If it becomes airborne we're fucked. The world is so interconnected now that it wouldn't wipe out 50%+ of a continent, but 50%+ of the global population. We need to crush this before this virus has that chance to evolve, even if it is a low chance as the impact would be horrendous.
IMO is especially troubling as Ebola is an RNA virus. RNA viruses have short generation times and relatively high mutation rates (on the order of one point mutation or more per genome per round of replication for RNA viruses). This elevated mutation rate, when combined with natural selection, allows viruses to quickly adapt to changes in their host environment. Notable human diseases caused by RNA viruses also include SARS, influenza, and polio.
What I don't understand: Wouldn't it be possible to put the wearer through a disinfectant decontamination shower before he or she takes off the suit?
There is a strong protocol, and yes, it includes decontamination sprays. As I understand it the protocol includes a disinfectant spray before taking off the suit, a hand spray after removing the first layer of gloves, then another disinfectant spray after stripping. And the gloves and suit are all supposed to come off inside-out, always turning the the hot side to the inside.
Remember that any suit that can protect the wearer against virus is also impermeable to air. That means the suits heat up. They are sweating profusely as soon as they get their suits on, and they can only remain suited up for less than an hour before roasting in their own juices. When every surface is soaked in sweat, it's impossible to recognize when it's the patient's infectious sweat or your own.
We know the best practical approach is to use a buddy system, and have them help each other. Even so, the first buddy to disrobe is still handling the infectious materials while helping the other to strip, so they still have to be vigilant. Repeat that clothing protocol every other hour for a long work day, week after week, and if the wrong piece of fabric ever accidentally brushes on you any time during the process you may get infected with a disease that has a 60% chance of killing you. Or if this is your first time dealing with an Ebola case, how do you know you've followed the protocol perfectly?
Now, cross the ocean. Place all of that in the context of extreme poverty; chronic suit, glove, equipment, and doctor shortages; wailing and shrieking family members; orphaned babies that may be infected; contaminated water supplies; relentless heat; men who tell rumors that Ebola is a disease from the West that is being spread by doctors and is being used to kill Africans, or that Ebola doesn't exist; populations frightened by the presence of workers in "moon suits" coming to collect their dead relatives; a culture that grieves by touching the bodies of the dead; and the dozens of other deadly diseases that still strike Africans constantly, including malaria, dengue fever, AIDS, hepatitis, typhoid fever, and chronic diarrhea caused by rampant bacterial and protozoal infections. Oh, and attacks on clinics by gunmen.
It's almost as if the disease evolved itself to adapt to collapsing health care systems in impoverished nations.
John
Please don't conflate transmission by contact with bodily fluids vs. airborne transmission. The latter is something way more than merely due to contact with droplets. Transmission via droplets is, by definition, transmission by contact. Airborne transmission is when the virus can survive in the air without being in the droplet at all. Aerosolized cough droplets are what masks are to protect us from - masks that should be, BTW, worn by both the patients and the personnel.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Ebola travels through aerosolized body fluid droplets, such as what you cough up. Of course once the droplets dry up, the virus neutralized (or has been, so far).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
To answer your question, if you mean *absolutely* prevent, the answer is nothing. But that's not the right question. The question is whether this will be transmitted at such a rate that it can result in sustained "endemic" transmission. "Endemic" is defined as a situation where each person infected in a location on average infects at least one other person. There may be a handful of transmissions from this index case, but it will fizzle out.
People worried about Ebola becoming endemic based on what's happening in West Africa have no idea how primitive conditions are in West Africa, where hospital workers often lack basic supplies like gloves, and are even reduced to re-using hypodermic needles. And people there who get to one of those horrible hospitals are the lucky ones. The health care and sanitation standards in the effected regions has been described as "medieval".
"Pulling out all the stops" sounds like a good idea, except if you think about it, it gives you absolutely no guidance about what you should do. Some of those "stops" would actually make things worse, and others would be a ridiculous overreaction. For example, should we quarrantine the state of Texas? After all there's been a case of transmission there. That's an overreaction.
Beware the Dunning Kruger effect. Not knowing anything about public health or tropical disease makes it really easy to design a containment program that sounds to you like it ought to work. But there aren't infinite dollars, even to fight Ebola. Every half-baked thing you do comes at the expense of something that would have been more effective. I've worked with the CDC, specifically the Fort Collins DVBID, which does vector borne stuff. The agency is full of PhDs and MDs who've spent their career studying tropical disease outbreaks and what to do about them.
People who think they know better remind me of this quote from Terry Pratchett:
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands To Reason, and was now a post-graduate student of the University of What Some Bloke In The Pub Told Me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If I called up the FBI and told them that I had anthrax in my basement they'd send in a small army. If I called up the CDC and told them that I had lunch with the guy who had Ebola they'd tell me to stay home and call them if I get a fever. Maybe we should be less worried about saving money, and more worried about whether I decide I get tired of staying home and just make one quick trip to the grocery store.
If you had anthrax in your basement, you would most likely be a dangerous nutcase you could do untold damage. If you had lunch with the guy who had Ebola, the assumption would be that you are a normal upstanding godfearing citizen who knows that if they leave their apartment after being told to stay and someone dies because of that they would get hit with a manslaughter charge.
This is why Africa was finally made barren of human inhabitants in 1980...
The current bout of Ebola is of larger extent than than all previous incidents combined. And even if it did infect everyone over time with current lethality, there would still be 30-50% survival rate.
Also this is what, two cases in the US, three? Maybe 5 total outside of Africa, and almost all of them among health workers collateral to treating confirmed Ebola-suffering patients?
Because nothing ever changes. We have several examples throughout history of novel diseases making their way into vulnerable human populations such as various historical plagues, colonization of the New World, and AIDS. I hope that this bout of Ebola becomes just another odd footnote in history. But it has already passed a key hurdle to becoming a pandemic and infected several urban populations - something no other known Ebola flareup has done.
Do you even know how this case of infection occurred?
I don't. You, however, speculated about contaminated suits which "still have to
be taken on and off, and that's when health workers seem to get infected."
Which really shouldn't happen.
you're the one who says he knows, or rather knows enough to know there was a systemic problem and not one merely attributable to failure to follow established protocols.
Please tell me where I said that.
Huh? Plane flights? Are we still talking about a controlled clinical environment in a big American city?
There are only about a dozen BSL-4 facilities in the US; if you want to establish the principle that patients must be treated in such a facility, you will be moving A LOT of them.
1.) I don't. My video example above was meant as a "look at how the pros do it".
2.) You do expect "A LOT" of Ebola patients in the US?
you seem to think every metro in the US has a world-class biohazard facility and infrastructure, and has plenty to spare on a wild goose chase of isolating minimally-virulent ebola patients, and you can't seem to understand that your fears are based completely on your own speculation and snap judgement. Your conceptualization of this disease, and the means required to contain it, constitute the textbook definition of cargo cult science.
Hm? What part of "don't mix clean and unclean environments" is cargo cult?
Also: I'm not afraid.
Just to clarify: I'm not talking about the Ebola outbreak as such, and arbitrary
patients. I'm talking about this one specific case of an infected health worker in
a proper clinical environment.
Sneaking from Africa to the US isn't exactly easy to pull off. You have to base your quarantine on geographic borders as a starting point - if you wanted to do a travel ban it would make the most sense to just ban the entire continent. Then by all means narrow it down as you get things under control on the ground. However, the current outbreak is way to big to just put a fence around it.
Just shut down all air and sea travel to the entire continent, and if other countries don't go along with it include them in the ban. Worst case you just shut down all international travel. Yes, this will cost billions of dollars, but so will an outbreak.
I think we need to get serious about this...
No, the protocol needs to be changed if it's inadequate.
Of course the small amount of bodily fluid needed is well known, you pretty much need contact with one droplet of airborne saliva from a sneeze/cough. That's about it. With ebola it seems that you really need to get one, literally one viable virus into your body and you're infected.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Nope decontamination sprays are not part of removing PPE gear, according to the CDC. http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/pdfs/pp...
Blocking travel from specific countries is useless unless all,countries agree to this or we choose to block travel from any country that does not participate in the ban. Nothing would prevent someone from first flying from an infected country to a third country before flying to the US. Really the flu killed more than 50000 times the number of people this year as Ebola has. Is it really that big of an issue here? This is simply people panicking needlessly.
Being afraid accomplishes nothing. Being wary is. Being careful is. But if you're afraid you start being irrational.
Being afraid WAS a pretty good survival strategy from back when survival often meant running fast or fighting tooth and nail. Neither is going to serve any purpose in the presence of a virus. If anything, a level head and methodical action will keep you safe, not frantic "must do something" action.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, I was talking about the CDC blaming the victim for breaking protocol, when it is clearly their own protocol that is at fault here.
Doctors without borders uses a much stricter protocol, with a buddy system for donning and doffing, and they have had
a much better record in keeping their people safe in absolutely horrible conditions.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So I'm safe then. Whew, I was worried there for a second!
It is still a majority Muslim country and if you had been following this epidemic at all you would know
that Islam's funerary rituals are the main problem.
http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/e...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1:10 bleach solution is one of my favorites, but what it lacks is the guarentee, in this case manufacturer's product liability insurance. It doesn't disolve plastic, but repeated and prolonged contact does oxidative damage and embrittlement. It also does a number on latex paint but not immeadiatly and it will corrode metal even stainlees steel and colbalt-chrome alloy.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
if you had been following this epidemic at all you would know that Islam's funerary rituals are the main problem.
There is nothing "Islamic" about the rituals, and your citation does not say there is. It does not even mention religion.
Are you being willfully blind?
Muslim leaders have had to be badgered by WHO into revising their teachings in the face of Ebola.
http://www.esinislam.com/Other...
http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Regardless of the merits of that suggestion... you do realize you need a passport to enter this country, and that this passport lists your country of origin and every country you've traveled to, right?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is Arizona. Lots of people here who came in without a passport. We have absolutely no idea what their medical history is. If we criticize this situation, we are automatically regarded by Washington as racists.
Well, yeah, that's unfortunately true. I feel for you folks in the southern states - it's a ridiculous situation. Of course, it's a little harder to walk across the border from Africa, and the incubation period fortunately precludes a long, roundabout trip.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"Pulling out all the stops" sounds like a good idea, except if you think about it, it gives you absolutely no guidance about what you should do. Some of those "stops" would actually make things worse, and others would be a ridiculous overreaction. For example, should we quarrantine the state of Texas? After all there's been a case of transmission there. That's an overreaction....there aren't infinite dollars, even to fight Ebola.
Well, you could quarantine the folks who actually came in contact with the one case. And by quarantine I mean actually putting them in a segregated area of some kind, with controlled access, not telling them to stay home and to call if they get a fever.
Sure, there aren't "infinite" dollars, but you're not saving money if you save a few million and then end up with an actual outbreak.
Also, there is no reason that we can start mass-producing treatments like wmapp. Sure, it could turn out to not work out as well as it seems, but it isn't like there are a lot of other options. Whatever options there are should also be explored.
Situations like this almost always cost a lot less if you spend a lot of money up-front vs waiting for things to really get bad and then REALLY spend a lot of money. What else are we going to spend the money on? Certainly it isn't going to the welfare state...
If I called up the FBI and told them that I had anthrax in my basement they'd send in a small army. If I called up the CDC and told them that I had lunch with the guy who had Ebola they'd tell me to stay home and call them if I get a fever. Maybe we should be less worried about saving money, and more worried about whether I decide I get tired of staying home and just make one quick trip to the grocery store.
If you had anthrax in your basement, you would most likely be a dangerous nutcase you could do untold damage. If you had lunch with the guy who had Ebola, the assumption would be that you are a normal upstanding godfearing citizen who knows that if they leave their apartment after being told to stay and someone dies because of that they would get hit with a manslaughter charge.
Funny. When you go to borrow money at the bank they don't just assume that you're a fine upstanding citizen who will pay back the loan. People act negligently all the time - just look at how they drive. If you put 100 people in self-imposed quarantine, chances are a few are going to step out (only for important stuff, of course).
Also, imagine if the news broke that Al Qaeda or whatever was working hard to try to break into the CDC to steal Ebola samples for a biological weapon - you'd probably see an army stationed outside the research labs. Think about it - if they want to get their hands on it now all they have to do is go visit somebody who is waiting at home for the results of their tests.
Because it's impossible. How do you block travel from those countries? What if they all fly to Europe before changing planes and flying to the US? If the US stops letting people in with passport stamps from Africa, then African nations will stop stamping US passports (that was the solution to the Cuban embargo).
Because it's impossible, it's pointless to aspire to.
Learn to love Alaska
There are only 3,572 known comets, but there are many millions of asteroids.
Thus you are orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by an asteroid than a comet.
Does this mean you should go about cowering and worrying and fulminating about the possibility of your own "death by asteroid"?
Guns... same thing. If you're at high risk for a firearms injury, you probably not only know that, but you probably know why, and you probably know what you could do to reduce that risk. While "probably" is the modifier at hand, I'll tell you what's probably going to actually kill you:
Deaths per 100,000 by disease/accident (total is about 600 a year right now)
Note no comets, no asteroids, and no ebola.
Deaths per 100,000 by firearms (total averages out to well under 20. Location where the odds are worst? Alaska. Yes, Alaska. :)
So... 600 out of 100,000 die by disease or accident (and more than 50% of them from heart disease or cancer), and I bet it wouldn't take me more than a few seconds to find some smoker and/or over-eater in a crowd who spends a goodly amount of their time online pearl-clutching about firearms, when that's ~3.2% likely as compared to the other 96.8%, and where that 98.6% is LARGELY UP TO YOU, as is a GOOD BIT of your odds of dying by firearm.
Ah, but you just can't fix stupidity. Such is life. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A says: "This thing could already be air borne" in apparent (textual) tones of abject terror.
B responds: "Take a deep breath" in an attempt to reassure.
Oh, yeah. THAT's the way to go about it. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Are you being willfully blind?
Muslim leaders have had to be badgered by WHO into revising their teachings in the face of Ebola.
Neither of your citations describe any "badgering". Nor do they say the problems are specific to Muslims. Nor do they present any data, or even imply that any exists, that ebola is infecting Muslims more than other religions.
It's almost as if the disease [was designed] to adapt to collapsing health care systems in impoverished nations.
Just think of all those resources in newly unpopulated areas. I'm sure you won't be the first to do so. I'm not at all sure anyone has acted on it, but we've seen similar things done for no reason we would consider worthy. I saw some lowlife run over a kitten on purpose last Wednesday. Never under-estimate the human potential for scumfuckery.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Remember, correctly executed withdrawl is just as effective a form of birth control as a correctly applied condom, but a greater share of condom users use them correctly than those who attempt pulling out.
Here were some of the problems with the studies you've alluded to:
A noted limitation to these previous studies' findings is that pre-ejaculate samples were analyzed after the critical two-minute point. That is, looking for motile sperm in small amounts of pre-ejaculate via microscope after two minutes – when the sample has most likely dried – makes examination and evaluation "extremely difficult."[4] Thus, in March 2011 a team of researchers assembled 27 male volunteers and analyzed their pre-ejaculate samples within two minutes after producing them.
The researchers found that 11 of the 27 men (41%) produced pre-ejaculatory samples that contained sperm, and 10 of these samples (37%) contained a "fair amount" of motile sperm (i.e. as few as 1 million to as many as 35 million).
Of course, that study as well is not completely definitive either.
However, two things need to be kept in mind. First, the study suggests that some men can leak sperm into their pre-ejaculate (though the authors do not extrapolate on this supposition and the possible causes of such a phenomenon). Second, the authors admit that some of their subjects who submitted sperm-positive pre-ejaculate samples could have actually used their ejaculate – due to failure of producing pre-ejaculate – to avoid the "embarrassment" of not producing pre-ejaculate.
So I'd say, the jury is still out on this question.
We had 0.
Then Mr Duncan arrived. We had 1.
Then Mr Duncan died. We had 0.
Then the nurse tested positive. We have 1.
We've never had more than one case. Unless the guy in Boston who went to renew his prescription and complained about muscle aches tuns out to test positive. In which case there are two cases.
In comparison, every year, between 3,000 (confirmed) and 49,000 (estimated) people in the US die from influenza.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We had 0.
Then Mr Duncan arrived. We had 1.
Then Mr Duncan died. We had 0.
Then the nurse tested positive. We have 1.
You're an idiot. If you have to play those kinds of semantic games in order to avoid counting above 1, please just avoid participating.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The _village_ in Africa that got exposed to a disease like Ebola probably died off, but they did not have peaceful and easy interaction with other tribes, much less easy transportation with continental highways, airplanes, etc, that they have today. The village model successfully protected the majority of Africa by isolating any disease to a cell-like level, something that is not possible in our modern open societies.
We know that Ebola continues to exist between outbreaks, but we don't know what serves as the reservoir. Or if there are multiple possible hosts between outbreaks. Or the true risk of dogs as possible carriers and agents of transmission.
Most people won't take any action unless they're panicked into it. Common-sense stuff like aid to help get it under control at the source - "What's the hurry - it doesn't affect US." If that's what it takes to mobilize people, that's the reality of the situation. If they won't act out of altruism or enlightened self-interest, do you have a better idea? And please don't say "better information and education." That takes at least a generation.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I wasn't playing semantics games. i just immediately understood what the GP meant, unlike you.
(But he was also wrong - this is disregarding the two simultaneous cases we had last month in Atlanta. The score now is 4 confirmed cases, 3 of them imported cases, one death, which may rise to two. Plus the possible case in Boston, but at this point I think it's more likely to be a case of hysteria than Ebola.)
And taking useless measures such as temperature screening at airports, instead of checking each person's passport to see if they've been through a "hot" country, and then not allowing them to board an airplane or other mode of international transport, with a mandatory 23-day quarantine period ... and the same for returning aid workers ... would be a lot more effective.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When neither a sense of moral duty nor enlightened self-interest will make people get off their butts, a bit of panic can be a good thing.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Umm... what again does panicking accomplish?
People did nothing about AIDS as long as they could call it "the gay plague." It was only when politicians found out they could get it from their hookers that things began to change.
As long as people have the "it's not my problem because it's 'those people' and not me", nothing short of a bit of panic is going to get them to change their attitude wrt the need to actually help the countries that are most affected. Liberia is broke, the hospital workers are going on strike Monday morning (tomorrow) because they are only getting $80 a month in hazard pay because the government hasn't got the money to fulfill the earlier promise of $700 a month (the disease spread way too far way too fast), and the 2,000 deaths they've had to date could quite easily be only just a start.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And neither coughing or sneezing are Ebola symptoms.
The next victim is the trained, well-equipped health care professional who - despite having far better protection and awareness than the vast majority of people in the world - just tested positive for having caught the virus from him.
What's your point in ignoring that glaring little dose of reality?
Some of the best trained people do stupid things. If you want an example of this just look at any record of industrial accidents. Ironically it's the ones who aren't trained that normally take the most care and see the safety breaches in typical tasks.
I don't want to misattribute something to the CDC, but what I read was glaringly clear on this point.
What the unnamed party said, was, "there HAD to be a breach of protocol, because this person is infected. However, we haven't identified what the breach was yet"
Circular reference?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Why isn't anyone blaming the administration? The people responsible for drawing up procedures, training their staff, monitoring operations, having the proper resources and facilities to get the job done, yeah those guys.
I think that's not done because it's messy and you have to dispose of the liquid, and you're going to throw away the suit anyway so why bother to clean it first.
So then it's up to you to take the suit off without getting any of the outside of it on you, or getting it on anything else that will remain.
Sa this posted over on SoylentNews:
Seems some are getting a little pissed at getting blamed, without any proper training
http://blink.htcsense.com/Web/...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Do your own research son, your desire to remain willfully ignorant suggests there is simply no point in talking to you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I guess you chose to ignore the rest of my post - that we don't know enough about Ebola to make reliable predictions.
Still no need to panic, especially if it's an unknown. I'm not going to quake in my boots about this.
Most people won't take any action unless they're panicked into it.
Get them panicked, and they'll take irrational, harmful courses of action. See: TSA, NSA surveillance, and the general erosion of our fundamental liberties in response to (mostly imaginary) terrorism. A rational, clear head that recognizes any danger this poses and knows how to take effective measures against it is what is necessary.
Having worked at a nuclear power plant i know that wearing full biohazard suits will not protect you if you do not know how to take them off properly. There is loads of training at the plants on how to take them off without contaminating yourself for a reason. If the healthcare worker did not take her suit off properly then it has nothing to do with either of your 2 limited options.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It is not "clearly" If the nurse failed to take off the suit properly then it is not "clearly" The CDC's fault. Even with a buddy it is possible to contract it;.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
-so far - -- but the nurse has been constantly monitoring herself -- so wait 21 days before you claim no one else was infected there...
We have the technology to make climate-controlled underwear (although admittedly it might be hard to find a way to exhaust the heat without compromising the seal).
It seems to me a good plan would be to have the person on the next shift suit up, then help the person on the previous shift remove his suit. That way, the only person at additional risk is the last person in the chain.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Nah....just run for the hills.
Yes, right NOW Ebola isn't a common way to die. Only 8k cases.
WHO projections of an uncontrolled Ebola epidemic have the number of cases up into the millions next year.
So apparently Ebola can become one of the top ten causes of death worldwide within 1 year. It has already overtaken terrorist attacks. In a month or so, it will have overtaken lightning deaths (60k per year worldwide).
I just hope that we can do better than 'uncontrolled'. So far it has not been a happy trend.
--PM
Well that person would just have to wait until the next shift of people came out..and they would be first in line. Set them up with a TV or something and they'll be fine.
and let them secede like they've always wanted. Then embargo the shit out of them.
Texas sucks camel anus.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Damn. I take it back - I had no idea their "protocol" was so weak:
"that the nurse in question was wearing the recommended personal protective gear for handling an Ebola patient, including a gown, gloves, mask, and eye shield"
I thought these folks were treating this guy with full body suits, not just eyewear, gloves and a dust mask.
Whoever told them this protocol was sufficient should have to treat the next ebola patient with the same protocol.
We euthanized the dog because we don't know for sure. In such cases, it's NOT an over-abundance of caution.
We don't know for sure that fruit bats are the reservoir. "All research points to various species of fruit bats native to West Africa, which have been implicated in Marburg and Ebola outbreaks in the past" is not the same as "We know that fruit bats serve as the reservoir." So, again, we don't know.
Even the government has admitted that temperature screening is next to useless, wouldn't have caught Thomas Duncan (whereas passport screening would have), and has been roundly criticized as security theatre. And at least one airline (El Al) does passport screening, in response to bombers. When's the last time El Al had a hijacking? The first and last time was in 1968.
It's not what you know, it's what you "know" that ain't so, that will bite you in the rear. So, until we know for sure ...
As for who pays for the 23-day quarantine? Simple - you want to come here, you pay all the costs, same as any visitor, unless you're an aid worker sent to alleviate the problem.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Nope I was right, the CDC is adding a bleach/water spray down on exiting now as part of the official protocol. No the CDC did fuck up, this should have been out months ago, not after "oh shit" after a nurse caught it.
The problem is that between being asymptomatic and being on death's door you have moderate flu symptoms and are contagious. That is something we want to keep an eye on.
As far as Al Qaeda goes, I was just pointing out the irony of the situation. In any case, if they wanted to spread it around I agree that they probably would want to avoid catching it. If you had a sample of tainted blood/vomit/whatever you could easily soak a rag in that and wipe every doorknob in town. Even if you wore no protection it would take a week before you showed any symptoms, so if you were into suicide you could just keep a bag of vomit in your coat pocket and periodically dip your hand in it as you go about your day.
I don't think we should be more serious about quarantines to keep Ebola out of the hands of terrorists. I think we should stay on top of quarantines because it simply makes sense.
When you say "1-10 virus", does this mean that a single Ebola virus can - if it makes it into your body or onto your mucus membranes - infect you?
Because if that's the case, then no amount of spraying your hazmat suit is going to guarantee your safety surely? A single virus could easily be hiding in the folds of those baggy-looking suit things, and then you touch that part on the way out of the suit, and you're done.
Scary.
Afraid, weary same thing, the reason we have fear is because we need it, we evolved to need and we still need it. Kids don't usually jump of high thing because they are afraid.
If this case if we underestimate the danger, it will be too late, you are right we will not be able to run an hide from this. So a little bit of overreaction is better than a little bit of under reaction.
So be afraid, be slightly afraid.
So, you are saying that the protocol was changed because it was inadequate. Got it.
I found a more reputable source ebola is listed with ID10 1-100, ID50 10-1000, ID90 50-1000 which means 1-100 virus is enough to infect 10% of the population and 50-1000 will infect 90% of the population; (on page 4) It's scary stuff. Figure a hospital-grade "kills" 99.999% (5-log) after 10 minutes contact time, a sneeze might disperse a million virus that leaves 10 virus which is enough to infect half the people who contact them, and seriously if no one suspects Ebola or Marburg, your less likely to see 10 minute contact time than you're to see 30 second hand washing.
On the plus side if you take off the barrier suit properly your going to be ok with or without a disinfectant spray down; it's just when the personel were trained, they took the training as a hypothetical situation, not a "your life depends on this" situation. This is universal, in the Army I notice the attention to detail was several orders of magnitude higher before your were exposed to Sarin than before your were exposed to teargas.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Wow, you either forgot to post as AC, or are from somewhere so racist that your racism seems casual enough to drop the N bomb into regular speech.
You didn't read until the end of my statement before your rage exploded out of you.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That is actually correct and the only reasonable explanation I could find so far. Parent deserves being modded up.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Would you choose different words were this an on-the-air interview instead of an anonymous Internet post?
No, I wouldn't. I post with my real name here as well, and finding my physical address is a matter of following some links and knowing how whois works, or for my business address, not even that.
You speak as you choose, damn the consequences.
Sometimes I choose the words that others only have in their minds, in order to expose their thinking to themselves. Also, sometimes a bit of provocation is helpful. See the first troll reply, who clearly stopped reading after "niggers".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Using words that you assume others have in their mind as if you're telepathic when you know those words are offensive does not do people a service. You're not a luminary shining light on the true inner workings of human minds, saving the world one racial slur at a time. You're just a narcissistic racist. And what you describe is trolling, so calling those who call you on it "trolls" is laughable.
I don't care enough to try and dox you, but thanks for giving public permission to anybody who might. If what you say is true and you ever decide to run for public office, you're accused of a serious crime, you go through family court litigation, or you face any other circumstance whereby others have incentive to put your character under scrutiny, then God help you.
You're not a luminary shining light on the true inner workings of human minds,
I'm not? Now you confuse me. :-)
Maybe I'm influenced by being a European, so I don't have this history of living-memory slavery of black people and so the word is not such a trigger. But that's not the point. I didn't intend or claim to read peoples minds, but let's be honest here: If the Ebola outbreak were in Italy, the worlds reaction would be quite different. There is a definite element of racism involved in how we treat the matter, including the often made "let's just stop all travel" argument.
I don't care enough to try and dox you, but thanks for giving public permission to anybody who might. If what you say is true and you ever decide to run for public office, you're accused of a serious crime, you go through family court litigation, or you face any other circumstance whereby others have incentive to put your character under scrutiny, then God help you.
You're a bit strange. If you run for office, your private address will be public record almost immediately. Your family can be assumed to know where you live. If you're accused of a serious crime, you're going to be in jail, so it doesn't matter. So whatever point you were trying to make, I'm afraid your rage blurred your rationality.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Arth1 is right. This is what I meant.
this is disregarding the two simultaneous cases we had last month in Atlanta.
I was "discounting" them due to the fact the infections not only occurred outside of the U.S. but the patients were specifically brought to the U.S. for treatment.
It's just as likely aerosolized cough droplets, which is another thing the CDC insisted couldn't possibly happen.
When did the CDC say this? I know People have said the virus cannot become "airborne" but that's different than being shared via aerosolized droplets.
When it comes to a choice if blaming the victim or admitting that their protocol is woefully inadequate, the CDC seems to take the low road.
While I admit NBC has since changed its reporting on the issue I don't see any formal statements by Officials from the CDC "blaming the victim".
Why isn't anyone blaming the administration? The people responsible for drawing up procedures, training their staff, monitoring operations, having the proper resources and facilities to get the job done, yeah those guys.
When did it become the administration's responsibility for all medical knowledge? The CDC is one of dozens, if not hundreds of medical organizations.
Thus proving my point. There is no such thing as truly ideal conditions
Except that's not how your point came across; it came across as "these are conditions ideal enough; therefore, the disease should not have spread".
if your disease management program starts with assuming that things are ideal it is going to fail.
It's not clear this assumption was made.
CDC has already apologized for blaming the victim.
So your failure to see them doing the original blaming, and your apparent failure to see the apology suggests you weren't paying attention.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
But the fact that you used that slur will be used against you by your competition in the campaign. Duh.
I'm not afraid of that. Media and opponents will find something to use against you anyways, and if they don't, they will make it up.
And your apparent deviant character as demonstrated by your racist bigotry online will be used to help convict you.
I pity you for the country you live in. Or maybe I'm just idealistic and believe that whether or not I committed the crime I'm accused of will be used to judge me.
Since you're on the level of ad-hominem attacks now, with no discernable actual content, I'll leave it at that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Labeling your racist slurs as racism and answering your assumptions about my state of mind with assumptions about yours aren't ad hominems. You're wrong because the things you have said fall into the categories of hateful, delusional, and pure bullshit and not because you are you. But just make whatever excuse you need to in order to continue your racist tirades and delusional attempts at online telepathy. If people with your ideas were capable of admitting when they're wrong, then people with your ideas wouldn't exist.
(1) Not relevant to the question of someone getting out of the infected area. And
(2) My #1 passport contains the Muslim countries I've visited, and some of the others. My #2 passport contains American, Israeli visits and many others. The non-troublesome countries I distribute between the two passports as necessary for getting visas.
Why do you only have one passport? Don't you travel much?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Or do what some countries do to this day - put your visa stamp on a slip of paper loose inside your passport.
The visa stamp is a proof of your legal visitor status inside the country (typically including paying some sort of entry tax, and not carrying that proof is a crime punishable by a fine - which disappears into a pocket along with the constable's gun disappearing into his holster) ; outside the country, you don't need it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The visa stamp is a proof of your legal visitor status inside the country (typically including paying some sort of entry tax, and not carrying that proof is a crime punishable by a fine - which disappears into a pocket along with the constable's gun disappearing into his holster) ; outside the country, you don't need it.
The stamps are unnecessary these days. The information is stored in the computer system. A phone or radio call and 10 seconds can confirm legal status. And from my experiences with stamps, the answer will be more clear than a smeared stamp in a passport. They are not required. I've gone in/through plenty of places that don't stamp. Even countries that normally do, people coming in "unusual" places don't get stamped. Ports, and such.
But yes, I've had places where visas are required, and the visa is "invalid" unless properly stamped.
Learn to love Alaska
Thus proving my point. There is no such thing as truly ideal conditions
Except that's not how your point came across; it came across as "these are conditions ideal enough; therefore, the disease should not have spread".
I was saying that the conditions in the hospital were better than could be expected if Ebola got out of control (ie hundreds of people sick in every town). I don't dispute that they weren't ideal enough. My point is that you can't expect hospitals to be "ideal enough."
Yes, it is apparent that under truly ideal conditions you can contain the spread of Ebola. My point is just that so far we aren't doing a great job at it, and if we fail to contain it things will get even worse as hospitals aren't even able to afford the level of rigor they used in Dallas (which again was obviously already insufficient).
You're missing the point. In some countries (not, I take it, America ; assuming you're American, I think we've had this conversation before) your entry and exit of the country is not recorded. Not on computer, not in stamps in anyone's passport, not in face recognition at non-existant border posts. It's simply not recorded.
For starters, I did (counts ...) 10 border crossings in my recent vacation. Only the ones into and out of the UK generated a border crossing datum. The rest, at best, recorded the movements of a hired car. And at least two of those crossings were in someone else's car. And that is in high-tech modern Europe. Go to most of Africa and there is still negligible border security if you're a person. (there's a bit more security if you're a 30-tonne truck, due to being rather more conspicuous and needing a reasonable road surface).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Europe is a single "border". When I went to Europe for a recent trip, my entry into the "country" of Europe was recorded Electronically. As was my exit. Sure, they stamped me with a visa, but anyone who had any question would have been able to get the information from some computer somewhere.
And I travel some. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand scanned my passport on entry and exit. I can only presume that the scans were stored for more than the 3 seconds necessary to compare my name to the list of bad guys. Crossing borders *within* Europe are theoretically uncontrolled, but many (especially the UK) use border crossings as a way of double-checking that the people entering were in Europe legally in the first place, though a person in the EU legally would get no stamp for a visit to England from the mainland.
Learn to love Alaska
CDC has already apologized for blaming the victim.
Do You have a source?
With the exception of Ms. Vinson's potential exposure to ~800 People, I'm not sure how You conclude "we aren't doing a great job at [containing Ebola in the U.S.]" Like Ms. Vinson, the only other two Individuals known to have contracted the disease were not adequately trained by the hospital in Texas. In fact, according to congressional testimony this week, They were not trained at all and the CDC had apparently informed the hospital not only did Workers need to be adequately trained but level 4 PPE was likely necessary, as opposed to the level 2 PPE used. Now, if by "we", You mean the Texas hospital, yes, I agree "we" aren't doing a great job at it. However, this point is not clear from Your statement.
Do you have a computer that can access Google?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
With the exception of Ms. Vinson's potential exposure to ~800 People, I'm not sure how You conclude "we aren't doing a great job at [containing Ebola in the U.S.]" Like Ms. Vinson, the only other two Individuals known to have contracted the disease were not adequately trained by the hospital in Texas. In fact, according to congressional testimony this week, They were not trained at all and the CDC had apparently informed the hospital not only did Workers need to be adequately trained but level 4 PPE was likely necessary, as opposed to the level 2 PPE used. Now, if by "we", You mean the Texas hospital, yes, I agree "we" aren't doing a great job at it. However, this point is not clear from Your statement.
By we I mean every person in the USA.
Diseases don't care whose fault it is that the ball got dropped. They kill people all the same. If people aren't competent to manage a disease, then they shouldn't be managing it. The CDC shouldn't be just sending memos from on high. If a hospital isn't doing enough, then this should be recognized as a national emergency and those who are mismanaging the situation should be placed under the supervision of somebody who knows what they are doing.
Of course, stepping in and actually doing something would mean that we can't just keep pointing the finger of blame at the folks who are bungling things.
People need to realize that the worst possible outcome of an Ebola epidemic isn't that people will stop shopping in malls and that the locally-elected coroner/etc and hospital board might lose some authority temporarily. In a state of emergency that requires coordination at the national level, sometimes you can't leave every decision up to the local level.
Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.
Beyond one degree of separation, border controls are not effective.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.
An American generally has only one passport (About 1% to 5% have more, and most estimates are at the lower of that range). So when he re-enters, they'll see the stamp from Ebola-ville, if they are stamping there. To get US money and visitors, if people returning to the US are turned away for having that stamp, they'll stop stamping.
That and international law prevents the US from blocking US citizens from re-entering anyway.
I think you are trying so hard to show off that you travel that you aren't staying on topic. The question was about whether stamps are necessary, and what information, if any, could be determined from a passport (both in-country and after the fact).
Learn to love Alaska
Well,if you think that will make you impervious, enjoy.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What are you talking about? I don't think you even read the posts you are replying to.
I was originally stating that tracking people through passports is impossible, and people who agreed with my premise argued about specific points. And you come in arguing about everything until you don't even know what you were objecting to.
Great, you proved yourself an asshole. But why did you bother to respond? You obviously don't even understand what my stance was.
Learn to love Alaska
OK
I hinted to antibiotic immune bacteria when I alluded to how we are creating new diseases with industrialized farming we are not allowed to criticize, regulate, etc (it's even against the law to criticize it, remember Oprah? she only got off on a technicality.) If you are unaware of the problem, I suggest you educate yourself about it. There is not just 1 kind of bacteria and as we continue what we are doing there will be new kinds (because evolution is real and it works.) I knew a nurse at a hospital which routinely found such bacteria and as a result they greatly increased their procedures. I myself was almost killed by a common bacterial infection where some new drug was the only thing we had time to try out... obviously it worked, but conventional drugs did not and luckily they knew this beforehand because I'd be dead by the time we ran thru all of those.
I was infected simply by walking around outside barefoot... not near a factory farm either. No foreigners required.
I should rant about cancer... but I won't other than to say in the USA you have a 50% chance of getting it and we DO NOT KNOW clear cut causes for it! No sick foreigners; simply owning a Chinese made product where they dumped radioactive waste into the plastic vat... (that has happened, but i can't disclose the details.) Or it could be many things which impact industries bottom lines so they'll keep it under FUD for decades just like easier problems like LEAD poisoning, tobacco, global warming etc. Plus you don't beat cancer-- you mitigate it; the numbers are quite bad when it comes to getting it back again... you "win" if you don't get it back in 5 years but the odds for your lifespan are so much worse than the baselines they commonly refer to that you'll probably get it back and die eventually--- unless you mitigate it until something else kills you 1st. (a friend who died last year got a new kind of terminal cancer as a result of the "safe" treatment of the 1st cancer she "beat." That isn't winning, it is mitigation; at best.)
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BTW, since we are talking about a virus from Africa, why not mention the obvious one:
AIDS. We can delay it for a long long time but we can't cure it yet. 100% death (although it doesn't directly kill you does it??)
At least with this one you get a fever and it doesn't incubate for many years while you spread around your bodily fluids...
Swine flu was weaker but more contagious; it probably will kill more people in the USA. How deadly is not just death odds but how many people can be infected. We have plenty of incurable unsurvivable diseases which thankfully are RARE. On the other side we have the common flu kills plenty of older weaker people every year...
Don't forget about Hepatitis... B has a vaccine but it still kills millions per year... (likely to go up due to anti-vaccination people) C has no cure but is the cause for liver transplants-- it's slow which is why like a quarter billion people have it already.
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