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NY Doctor Recently Back From West Africa Tests Positive For Ebola
An anonymous reader writes An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. It's the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation. From the article: "The doctor, identified as Craig Spencer, 33, came back from treating Ebola patients in Guinea about 10 days ago, and developed a fever, nausea, pain and fatigue Wednesday night. The physician, employed at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, has been in isolation at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan since Thursday morning, the official said."
My friend works at Bellevue, my other friend took the 1 train (train the doctor took to go bowling last night while experiencing "sick symptoms") the same night he did and I take the 1 train every day to and friend work.
There are people who live and are stuck in Africa who have a millions times more the reason to be concerned than I am, I understand this.
What I don't agree with are the people who are using things like Malaria and HIV statistics to try and show how the media is playing up this issue.
Both are less serious and more controllable diseases with much bigger sample sizes. As/if more Ebola cases arise, the contractions will increase exponentially and they'll stop comparing this to "more serious diseases".
What I don't understand is why they are letting doctors who work on Ebola patients back into teh country without being screened?
There are people arguing to shut down all travel from West Africa, even if that's too much in your opinion, at least screen these doctors.
Customs: What was your reason for leaving the country?
Doctor: I was treating patients with Ebola.
Customs: Due to national security, we can not let you into the country until you've been tested and cleared.
Doctor: But I have plans to go bowling in Brooklyn in about week!
Customs: You're retarded.
Chances are, the conversation wouldn't happen like that and the doctor would be understanding of the situation.
So why aren't we just doing that to begin with?
Or maybe the limited resources in the area of the outbreak make it impossible to be 100% perfect in your procedures and you do the best you can in a difficult situation.
The answer to stemming the tide of people taking Ebola elsewhere is to get it under control in Liberia/Sierra Leone/Ghana so there's no Ebola to take elsewhere. Until we do that the danger to other countries will continue regardless of what you do.
Another thing, it's starting to look like if you discover and start treating it early and aggressively that you have a good chance of surviving Ebola. If L/SL/G had as good a medical system as the US I suspect the survival rate would be much better.
Is the irresponsible asses. Anybody coming from these regions should be put in at minimum a 2 week quarantine, and ideally a month, just to be sure.
It's not like that's a huge concession for helping people and it ensures, especially for practicing doctors, that they won't be accidentally spreading this to patients.
For fuck's sake this is a perfect example of which TSA/DHS/CDC etc should be trying to profile and protect us from. If *NOT* then they really *ARE* useless and the money might as well be spent as 'welfare', since that's basically all those jobs act as.
Well that and feature creep with all those VIPR teams.
Technically, yes. As doctors define direct exposure that's true. However, doctors and normal people don't define it the same way. If I have Ebola and get bodily fluids on a doorknob, then you come along an hour later, touch the doorknob and then rub your eyes... you can become infected. That fits the CDC's definition of "direct exposure", because you've been directly exposed to my bodily fluids.
So don't get complacent thinking as long as you don't actually touch an infected person you can't become infected.
Afaict in the core countries of the epedemic the problem is a lack of resources. Ideally you would use a new protective suit each time to minimise the risk of material transferring from outside to inside and you would work very slowly and carefully to make sure you didn't puncture the protective suit (remember medical treatment almost inevitablly involves sharp objects coming into contact with patients bodilly fluids but when you are short of time and materials you can't do that and still treat all your patients.
In cases like texas the problem seems to be that there is a delay between the infected patient showing up and the hospital realising what they are dealing with and how seriously they need to take things.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
If you're working day in and day out with ebola under chaotic often difficult to control conditions then you decide to travel home before say quarantining yourself for 2 weeks in your room before travel this is in my book very reckless. There is a difference between being well intentioned and being heroic. A person that carelessly knocks someone into traffic while chasing a purse snatcher is not a hero.