You won’t see any commercials like this:
“You’ve just handled an infectious disease, now what are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna go on a cruise!”
Sigh:
A Dallas health care worker who handled clinical specimens from an Ebola-infected patient is on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, with the worker self-quarantined and being monitored for signs of infection, the State Department said in a statement.
The unidentified female worker departed on a cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, Oct. 12 and was out of the country before being notified of active monitoring required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the government statement.
The monitoring was established as two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, tested positive for Ebola.
The hospital worker on the Carnival Magic cruise ship did not have direct contact with patient Thomas Eric Duncan, but may have had contact with his clinical specimens, authorities said. The employee, who has not been publicly identified, has not had a fever or demonstrated any symptoms of illness, authorities said.
“The worker has voluntarily remained in the cabin and the State Department and cruise line are working to bring the worker back to the U.S. out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of State said in the release.
God bless Texas.
I really don’t think this person is actually contagious- I can’t imagine lab specialists are at a particularly high risk for catching Ebola, but for FFS, they do wear lots of protective equipment in labs for a reason, so why take the chance? You might have it.
And we’re dealing with a public confidence crisis and media generated hysteria. This kind of behavior is not helping. Even if the person is not contagious, it’s going to case a panic and at the very least, ruin a trip for how many other thousands of people. At the worst, well, we’ve now got a floating Ebola colony. For a couple of weeks, at least, until it burns itself out.
I doubt very seriously thatmuch will come of this in terms of actual health risks, but in our current media environment, it is going to be a disaster. Especially when you have idiots like this out there whipping up fear in an attempt to score points politically:
Sen. Rand Paul said Ebola is “not like AIDS,” offering what he says is a stark contrast from the White House’s message on the disease.
“[The Obama administration] has downplayed how transmissible it is,” Paul said in an interview with CNN on Thursday morning. “They say it’s the exchange of bodily of fluids. Which makes people think, ‘Oh, it’s like AIDS. It’s very difficult to catch.'”
“If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party they’re contagious and you can catch it from them,” Paul continued. “[The administration] should be honest about that.”
And then there is this idiot (and yes, I still maintain she is an idiot)
A nurse with Ebola may have shown symptoms of the virus as many as four days before authorities once indicated, meaning that she might have been contagious while flying on not just one, but two commercial flights, officials said Thursday.
Amber Vinson was hospitalized Tuesday, one day after she took a Frontier flight from Cleveland to Dallas. Tests later found that Vinson — who was among those who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, at Dallas’ Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital — had Ebola.
Authorities indicated Vinson had a slightly elevated temperature of 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which was below the fever threshold for Ebola, but didn’t show any symptoms of the disease while on her Monday flight. This is significant because a person isn’t contagious with Ebola, which spreads through the transmission of bodily fluids, until he or she has symptoms of the disease.
But on Thursday, Dr. Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in Ohio that “we have started to look at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as Saturday. … We can’t rule out (that) she might have had the start of her illness on Friday.”
So, for the few health care workers out there handling Ebola related issues, is it too damned much to ask that you put off your cruises and wedding planning for a couple of god damned weeks? Keep this up, and the fearmongerers are going to have you all locked in cages like something out of a sci-fi movie. If we had a functioning Congress, we could even set aside ten million or so to reimburse you for nonrefundable travel.
Mnemosyne
Valued commenter and microbiology tech lamh36 has had some interesting things to say about the hospital’s local reputation for its labs. Let’s just say, it’s not a good one.
wmd
The media is just sticking to the tried and true: If it bleeds it leads.
Republicans too – if people are afraid they’ll vote for us.
srv
Those FEMA camps sure would come in handy right now.
orogeny
I have a friend who works at a biotech lab that does government work. On a regular basis, she works with samples of things like anthrax and plague…and we’re going out to dinner with her tonight…less than two hours after she gets off work!!! Oh NOES!
Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland…
SatanicPanic
“If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party”
I know these hipsters are getting creative with their craft cocktails, but this is maybe a step too far
Scott S.
I disagree. You book these cruises weeks or months in advance, and I doubt they give you your money back if you bail at the last second. Telling hospital employees they can never have vacations again because idiots are in a wall-eyed panic is doing exactly what Fox News wants us to do.
Also, Rand Paul should shut the fuck up and go the fuck away. The only way you’re going to get Ebola at a cocktail party is if someone vomits and shits blood all over you while you’re there. I swear to god, I’d like to put my fist all the way through Rand’s skull.
Botsplainer
Jesus, John, turn off CNN for a bit. If you have to watch TV, watch something more uplifting, like Real Housewives or Saved by the Bell reruns.
Health care workers shouldn’t be expected to put off their lives to make Trembly-Americans “feel safe”. There’s a limit that should be expected.
japa21
Far more reasonable than your previous post. And you really hit a key point:
Keep this up, and the fearmongerers are going to have you all locked in cages like something out of a sci-fi movie.
And you will hear calls for the cruise ship to stay in a full quarantine situation, floating around, for a full 21 days, even if no one gets the disease.
And anyone who works in a place which cares for an Ebola patient to wear special gear no matter where they are (not to protect themselves, but the rest of us) for ever.
And Paul is an absolute idiot, but everyone knows that already. Well, I mean everyone here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Scott S.:
Agreed. People need to calm the fuck down.
John Cole +0
@Scott S.:
Did you even read what I said about setting aside a fund. I am fully aware many of these things are planned well in advance.
? Martin
Free market at work. We’ve constructed a system that is so focused on efficiency that we’ve lost the capacity to make it effective. Rachel went through just how fucked we are last night – there are a total of 9 beds at four facilities in the entire country set up to handle Ebola. 4 of those 9 beds are filled. This is perfectly reasonable because more beds would be wasting money, unless of course 6 more people contract Ebola and then we’re just going to have to leave one of them at Dallas Presbyterian because there will literally be no better place to send them.
Are there any facilities scrambling to add Ebola beds? Well, no, that would be inefficient at this time. Can the feds provide funds for this? Well, no, Congress would need to pay for that which is just crazy talk.
Elizabelle
What kind of cocktail parties does Rand Paul go to? (Does he slurp down other people’s drinks when they’re not looking? Is he a swinger?)
Has anyone noticed the quarantined Eric Duncan friends and relatives are not reported to have come down with the disease yet? (And they can thank a nurse within their number, who seems to have realized what ailed Mr. Duncan and warned the arriving 911 responders to glove up and use infectionary disease protocol.)
RSA
“I have to make a personal sacrifice for the good of society? What is this, the Soviet Union?” [sarcasm]
Of course we should make it up to front-line health care workers and others, as John suggests. Instead, I imagine that some people in quarantine will lose income and probably even their jobs.
? Martin
Would it be irresponsible to tell the public that remaining fully encased in a plastic bag would protect them from Ebola? I think it would solve most of our problems.
japa21
@Scott S.: Actually, there is something called trip insurance which will cover backing out at the last instant for medical reasons, and anyone who reserves a trip, specially a cruise, that far in advance, should buy it.
And actually, I think if they spoke with the cruise line about the situation, even if they didn’t have insurance, the cruise line would work it out.
It is important to put this in the perspective that John is talking about. It isn’t about whether or not this person has the disease, it is the public perception of the disease as fed by the Paul’s of the world and, yes, the CNN’s of the world.
If even one time any of these persons do get Ebola and transmit it to someone else while on their trip, it would have severe repercussions.
Elizabelle
I’ve saved the WaPost newspaper to read their coverage, after the fact. This looks like it will be Exhibit 235 of media overkill.
That said, perceptions matter and we live in a 24/7 voracious cable world, and the CDC spokesmen need to realize they’re up against something way more evil and poisonous than Ebola.
The wingnut wurlitzer, 20 some days out from midterm elections.
And us without a functioning broadcast news industry. (Watch other nations’, if you need good reporting.)
John Cole +0
@Omnes Omnibus: Hold loads of strawmen.
I said:
Not forever. A few weeks until people get normalized with the new reality. People will learn to adapt and recognize we are not all going to die.
Think about it this way- the only reason the public seems willing to settle with our deplorable state of gun violence and mass shootings is because it is the status quo. If, all of a sudden, we went from zero gun deaths to 30 in a week (let alone 50k a year), people would be FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Like they did after the Port Arthur massacre in Australia.
For fuck’s sake. Stop being so god damned quick to shit all over me and read what I have actually said.
? Martin
@RSA: On the flip side, if Nina recovers (she seems to be doing quite well) she should be one of the only trained nurses in the US that has a natural immunity to ebola. In a just world she’d have a 6-figure job at Emory waiting for her to work in the infectious disease wing there.
trollhattan
@Scott S.:
To be fair to faux-doctor faux-Senator Paul, that probably describes most cocktail parties he attends.
Tim in SF
99.4 is not a god dammed fever. That’s within a normal range of fluctuation.
Gypsy Howell
Just read that during the time when she may have been symptomatic, the health care worker spent several hours at a bridal salon, which has now been shut down until further notice.
Now ebola is touching the Wedding Industrial Complex.
Mike J
@japa21:
“Hi, I’m a med tech that recently worked with ebola and I have a nonrefundable ticket on one of your cruises. Do you think maybe you could give me a refund after all, or should I call CNN and tell them which ship I’ll be on?”
trollhattan
And another thing: if it weren’t for ISISobola, we’d be hearing the Republicans and their paid media shriek 24/7 about “Obama’s Market Crashgate,” but we can’t watch three shiny things at one time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
IANAnMD, but isn’t this true if you go to the kind of cocktail party where people share glasses and spit in the chex-mix? and who amongst us does not?
Or maybe BabyDoc has a different definition of “cock-tail” party than most. Randian Swingers? is that a thing? Did ol’ Ayn have a kinky streak? I’ve never read those books, and life is far too short and the library far too big to change that fact.
Elizabelle
My new dystopian novel.
Or a very raw garage band.
Elizabelle
@Mike J:
Exactly. Talk about having someone by the —
trollhattan
@Mike J:
It would be even better if you were named Mr. Norovirus.
japa21
@Mike J: Pretty much it. Although one would hope the cruise lines would recognize the potential PR issues it could face without having it made so directly.
Mike J
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Pretty much all the sex scenes in her books are rapes that the woman is happy about.
Roger Moore
@Scott S.:
This. There probably need to be some reasonable precautions about people who have a reasonable chance of being infected, but the last thing we want is to treat our hospital workers as if they’re pariahs because they’ve had to deal with Ebola patients. That way leads to scaring people away from working with patients, which leads to patients not getting treatment when they need it, which leads to the disease spreading.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole +0: I don’t think that pandering to the fears of a bunch of idiots helps anything.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
That’s even better than the cannibal rat ghost ship, which admittedly was pretty awesome.
Belafon
@? Martin: “And the great thing about this plastic encasement aid is that you only have to wear it around your head, as long as you keep it tight.”
? Martin
@John Cole +0: But it effectively will be forever. If a patient comes through, they’ll be there for a month, plus your 21 days at the end of that, so 7 weeks total. If another patient comes through, the clock resets. It would take a total of 8 patients properly spaced out to block everyone from that medical group from getting on a plane or ship for an entire year.
We have to find a reasonable middle ground on this. It seems the problem here is that Dallas Pres has no way of tracking who interacted with a given patient after the fact. Nobody is going to know when the guy arrives if he has ebola or not – that will take 2-3 days to determine. So once determined do they have records to determine who interacted with the patient before quarantine measures were put into effect, and do they have protocols to isolate those people immediately. The answer to both is obviously ‘no’ since we’re just learning of this 2 ½ weeks after Duncan was diagnosed. But once the patient is quarantined and protocols held to, then subsequent health workers should be free to travel.
Sherrell
Gross incompetence by the Texas Hospital, the CDC, and these individuals. After the first nurse was diagnosed with Ebola, the hospital admitted that protocols had been broken in treating the Ebola patient. At that point, why weren’t steps taken the monitor and contain the rest of the team that were involved in his treatment. The 2nd nurse even called the CDC to report her fever, but because it didn’t quite meet the right levels she was still allowed to fly on a commerical airliner. That is indefensible. How is the general public supposed to have faith in the CDC’s ability to contain this problem when decisions like these are being made. Especially by health care workers who by all accounts should know better. Let’s not forget the NBC medical chief who violated quarantine after exposure to go get take out. Through out this process the CDC and everyone involved seem to be making decisions in reaction to new cases. The situation in Ohio and on this cruise were absolutely avoidable had everyone involved been more proactive.
Avery Greynold
@Scott S.: “Telling hospital employees they can never have vacations again”? Yea, that’s what’s going on here. Everyone on a watch / quarantine list is absolutely certain they don’t have it, until they do. The cruse was stupid. Stupid reinforces crazy.
Belafon
@Gypsy Howell: Maybe they’ll have to cater to the gays to make up the difference.
? Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See, my mom warned me that double-dipping would destroy humanity and she was right!
Someguy
Good to see Ron Klain appointed as Ebola Czar. The first thing they need is an effective communications plan, one that puts responsibility for this where it belongs – Congressional Republicans, Texas Republicans, morans from Texas who refuse to do what the CDC tells them, right wing Christian hospital administrators. He’s the man who can do it. Shoot, maybe he can even move the needles a bit in November if he gets those ground truths out.
John Cole +0
@? Martin: No. It won’t. People will get used to the new normal.
chopper
uh, people have been working with pathogen samples in labs for a long-ass time now. are they not allowed to hop on a plane or take a cruise or go to a PTA meeting?
I mean if this poor shrub is working without proper safety equipment that’s one thing but labs are usually pretty protocol-heavy places.
what the fuck, people.
John Cole +0
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know.
If you don’t realize that if we don’t use some common sense and slow this hysteria down now, it is going to continue to spiral out of control faster than the Ebola.
chopper
shlub not shrub. fucking autocorrect.
John Cole +0
@chopper: I know that, you know that. But with our media and our politicians…
kindness
It coulda been worse.
Why the Dallas Health Care Worker who handled specimens could have been front page blogging here at Baloon-Juice.
Then we’d all have been infected. Now I know I’m fine, but I have my doubts about some of you…..
CONGRATULATIONS!
Stupid and useless as it is (ebola is really, really hard to transmit unless you’re actually dealing with the infected patient and their non-stop streams of fluid discharge) we’re about one or two more “incidents” away from this happening as the public panics in the face of the non-stop fearmongering by the usual media suspects (i.e. all of them).
Internment camps. Good for our Japanese-descended citizens, health care workers, and America.
@Scott S.: I used to play in a lot of biker bars. That was called “Wednesday”.
Loneoak
Yes, let’s ask or require front-line medical workers to risk their lives and their families’ lives, and then later give up their personal lives. That should ensure that we have plenty of competent, willing front-line medical workers for a big outbreak. I’m sure that their staffing managers will accommodate rescheduling everything too.
Paul in KY
@John Cole +0: I mentioned in another thread that given our population, a maniac spree-killer would have to kill approx. 1,400 people for it to be like what Port Arthur was for Australia.
Chris T.
“In the news: One hundred thirty nine people died from ebola today. –Oh… wait, I’m getting an update! Sorry about that folks, one hundred thirty nine people died from being shot today. Gunshot wounds, not ebola virus. Zero people died from ebola today, and 139 from being shot.”
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: I hear Carnival is offering several options- the 3 day Norovirus package, the 5 day Flu package, the 21 day Ebola package…
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: ‘Cannibal Rat Ship’ would be a hell of a punk band name.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole +0: Clever rhetoric trick; ha ha. Treat people like adults and they are more likely to act like adults. Or we could just lock up everyone who may have been near the hospital because they may have come in contact with Duncan. Fuck it, let’s just nuke Dallas from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Loneoak
@? Martin:
This + elebenty.
At first it seems easy to just say “it’s just a cruise” or “it’s just a trip to see her sister.” Then you start counting how many weeks, for how many people, and consider the consequences during a genuine outbreak.
The problem is not that these people traveled. It’s that they were exposed in the first fucking place. Let’s treat these folks like human beings who already sacrifice an awful lot for us rather than as careless vectors.
Sherrell
@Tim in SF:
But if someone has had direct contact with an Ebola patient it should cause alarm and warrant action. Especially if protocols were broken in treating that patient.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Paul in KY: with Floating Ebola Colony formed by the drummer who quit CRS after they sold out and got popular. FEC gonna keep it real.
Russ
I know what I am doing this weekend. I still have the plastic sheets and duct tape left from when the Iraq war started. So I am off again to wrap my house not that I’m paniced or anything. I take care of myself, don’t need to goverment help fer chrisakes………..
Danack
This is a pretty obvious result of non-refundable tickets and people on not fantastically high pay not wanting to be the ones bearing the cost of minimising risks.
The CDC / US government or state government needs to step up and create an fund to allow people who have been exposed but aren’t showing symptoms to self-quarantine without being the ones who are bearing the cost for that quarantine.
Even something as simple as doing the grocery shopping for people who have been exposed would reduce the risk of it being passed on.
tybee
@Omnes Omnibus:
+1
? Martin
@John Cole +0: Go turn on cable news and tell me that with a straight face.
moderateindy
So Cole your solution to this problem is what exactly? To have any health care worker that comes in contact with someone that has Ebola, even tangentially to shut their life down completely for a month or so? What the hell is the difference between going on a cruise, and going to the grocery store, or out to lunch at the same place every day? In fact, it is a plus that this person is on the cruise, because if they become symptomatic you will actually have a list of the people they have been around, whereas if they are just doing their day to day routine, there would be no way to know who they have been in contact with.
Your fund idea is asinine, because A, it will never happen, and B, how is something that might be passed, sometime down the line, any help for people right now?
Yet you want people that already have a tough job, that doesn’t pay that great, to give up a few grand, and their vacation, and what? self- quarantine for god knows how long, cause you is ascared. And should everybody that lives with them do the same? after all they are in close contact, and are probaly coming in contact with the bodily fluids of a person that might be infected. Get a grip.
This from a guy that continually whines any time he is slightly inconvenienced.
Belafon
@Sherrell: Here’s what I would like to see as a response:
(Note: Ebola is not transmittable unless you are showing symptoms, and you cannot catch it unless you come in contact with fluids from the infected person.)
1. Did the person show symptoms:
a. Yes – Contact everyone who might have been near. “Did you come in contact with the person? If you did, we need to check you out. If not, you are good to go.”
b. No – Then, you are good to go.
Let’s start this with Duncan.
People affected by Duncan: Family, and hospital staff.
People from them. No one up until the nurse on the plane.
People from them. It doesn’t sound like anyone.
SatanicPanic
@Danack: I’m pretty sure though that if you called the cruise line and said “I was treating Ebola patients, can I get a rain check?” they’d accommodate you. The cruise industry has had enough embarrassing news in recent years.
chopper
@Omnes Omnibus:
your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You definitely know the band scene! The drummer took all that money that CRS made for getting popular. Didn’t give any of it back.
chopper
@John Cole +0:
just because at least half the country are brain-dead hicks doesn’t mean we have to drop all semblance of reason just to humor their irrational fears.
Elizabelle
@Someguy:
shhhhhhhhhh.
but good to hear.
Paul in KY
@chopper: In some of Christopher Rowley’s sci fi books, when The Vang Ormkorwool had arrived on a planet, only nuking down to the bedrock could eradicate them.
d58826
Our Congress in action from Huffington
This level of stupid is not inherited. It is the result of many years of careful cultivating. If it were inherited, homo sapiens would have gone extinct thousands of years ago.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
(sigh)
Please review the NY Times Ebola Facts page.
There have been 8 people in the US with Ebola for treatment. Only the Dallas hospital has had any issues with controlling the infection. People have been treated in Atlanta, Nebraska, and Maryland. Nobody who lived with the patients got infected by them in the US. Nobody who walked by the sidewalk that Duncan supposedly threw up on has been infected. People who shared an airplane or taxi or whatever with the nurses is [not] at any significant risk. This disease is spread by bodily fluids from heavily symptomatic patients.
Of course, contacts and potential contacts are being monitored.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone at Emory who might have had any conceivable contact with the 4 patients there should live in a dungeon for 3 weeks afterward.
Please stop going nuts about this. People who properly handle Ebola contaminated materials or samples aren’t going to infect everyone. Those that did somehow get infected at work will be treated before they can spread it to others. The Dallas nurses aren’t a pair of Typhoid Marys that are going to kill everyone within 100 feet of them by having a low-grade fever. We know how to control this disease. It will be controlled in the US.
People should be much more concerned about what’s happening in Africa with this disease. Somehow, the possibility of 10,000 dying of it in the next few weeks there doesn’t seem to get as much attention, though.
:-(
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
Do we even know for sure that this woman knew she had come in contact with Ebola lab specimens? It sounds like this hospital is the Texas epitome of no or lax regulation. She may not have been informed until after she was already on the cruise. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that they would mix possible Ebola lab specimens with the lab specimens from the rest of the hospital. Let’s hope it wasn’t wheeled all around the hospital sloshing about on a rickety lab cart.
This looks like a case of a hospital that is terribly managed or managed by an absentee invisible hand on a bender.
beth
@d58826: It’s Florida, it’s the heat and the humidity. I swear my IQ went up 50 points when I moved away from there.
d58826
@beth: hmmm. That rules out a trip to Fla. At my age I don’t have 50 IQ points to spare. :-)
Mike in NC
@trollhattan: US Chamber of Commerce has imbecile Rand Paul running anti-Hagan ads here, where he brags about being a physician and tells lies about ACA.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, well since I think lamh36 said her lab is the one that will handle any potential ebola cases in Louisiana, I hope she doesn’t have to handle anything before her upcoming Hawaii trip. It would be awful to have to cancel that birthday trip and that’s certainly not how you want to get your 20 minutes of fame! :-)
Kay (not the front-pager)
@John Cole +0: I think it is important to remember what we (and especially these hospital workers) had all been told about how contagious (as opposed to infectious – it’s very infectious) Ebola is, as well as what the fear environment was back before they started their travel. The MAX crazy was just getting started then. So the wedding nurse did what was prudent and called CDC for advice. The lab tech probably didn’t even think about it because a) she was in protective gear when she ran tests and believed she had taken all precautions necessary to avoid infection, and b) she wasn’t aware yet how bugsh!t crazy everyone was going to get about 3-degrees-of-separation ‘exposure’. When she was notified that she should be in quarantine she quarantined herself in place. As you say, she is no real danger to anyone on that ship at this time.
Can we just require every news outlet to play the Shep Smith clip posted last night every hour on the hour?
Keith G
@John Cole +0: John Cole, given your reactions to what Scott and Omnes have typed, I’m wondering if maybe your words do not reflect the ideas do you have.
Your original passage at the top seems to reflect an increased emotional response and not less. If that’s not the way you feel, then it must be about the presentation.
Sherrell
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dallas-nurses-cite-sloppy-conditions-in-ebola-case
This isn’t a case where Ebola treatment procedures were followed. For that reason, in this specific case, the CDC should of been more proactive with monitoring the hospital employees involved in treating him.
And as the article states, there were problems with his lab deliveries. So monitoring this person on the cruise is warranted.
catclub
@Scott S.:
Be sure to wash hand afterwards. Prion disease in that brain.
John Cole +0
@Keith G: I don’t know how to present this any clearer:
You’ve got people protesting in front of the WH to ban flights because someone died of something unrelated on a plane flight, the front page of my hometown paper is eight people are quarantined because of Vinson visiting neighboring Ohio, and people are freaking the fuck out. If health care workers even remotely associated with Ebola keep running around the country on cruises and plane flights, we are going to have the FEMA camps in full effect, thanks to hysterics in the media and Congress.
How can I make this any clearer? All I’m met with are distortions of what I said (and I believe they are willful) or catcalls that we should ignore stupid people. Ignoring stupid people worked really well in the 2010 tea party midterms, didn’t it.
For a couple of weeks, health care workers associated with Ebola should stop fucking traveling until the public has been calmed down. We should be allocating funds to reimburse people for nonrefundable trips.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
He has somehow rollerskated into national prominence with evidently no scrutiny beyond speculation about what’s nesting atop his pate. It’s mindboggling, if sadly predictable. Heck, I thought (naively) that headstompgate would derail him way back when, but I guess in Kentucky having your own
Schutzstaffelentourage of overfed bully boys is a feature, not a bug for office-seekers.But why, oh why does the same media that scrutinizes which suit the president is wearing not call this asshole on his obvious lies? Is it the power of the Big Lie, or are they in on the fix?
rita forsyth
@John Cole +0: I agree with your commentary regarding the nurse wholeheartedly, last evening I got into a brawl( with my daughter, who is a lawyer and should know better) on this issue , what kind of a trained health care worker, involved in a deadly virus case, being monitored for the disease would get on a PLANE!!! I refuse to listen to the rest its a nonsequitor.
2 weeks quarantine for the sake of all. and she gets on the plane.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole +0: If we follow what you suggest, the new normal won’t be people used to the idea that Ebola does appear in the USA and it can be handled. The new normal will be an expectation that anyone remotely associated with anything that contains the letters e, b. o, l, or a will be quarantined. This kind of ratchet seems to go only one direction. I want to see appropriate medically necessary steps taken and only appropriate medically necessary steps. People will calm down.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Avery Greynold: she wasn’t on watch/quarantine until after she left on her cruise.
It is easy to conflate current knowledge with earlier events. We need to be watchful to avoid it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Medically unnecessary Ebola security theater is as pointless in my mind as most of the security theater at airports.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Chris T.: +1
d58826
@Omnes Omnibus: The ‘ratchet’ may happen anyway given the political gain that the elephant echo chamber can gain. This is different than the anthrax scare because then the president was a GOOPER, therefore he had, by definition, the best interests of the country in mind. If there were conspiracy theories, they were so deeply buried in the fever swamp that no one noticed.
Given the way that the disease presents this may not be practical but maybe we should throw some money to develop a field test that the first responders could use to screen people. Right now a bus load of marines is quarantined in DC because a woman got sick on the bus and told the EMT’s that she had been to West Africa recently. If there was a field test (like the sobriety tests that the cops use) they could get a quick answer and every one could go about their business if it came back negative. .
Kerry Reid
@Scott S.: Obviously you’ve never partied with the Pauls!
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Sherrell: Not alarm. Watchfulness, perhaps stepped-up monitoring. But not alarm. Just because she had a temperature reading (not fever, temperature) of 99.4 for several days (perhaps since she started monitoring) doesn’t mean it had anything to do with her subsequent Ebola. The morning after she returned to Dallas she had an actual fever, as well as headache and other symptoms. That’s when she definitively had the infection. My sons always had temperatures above 99 degrees. Didn’t mean they had any kind of infection, much less Ebola, which is characterized by high fever.
Craig
@Tim in SF: If I have a temperature of 98.5, that is as far above my normal as 99.4 is for most people. Yet I would not trigger any concern. I know people whose usual temperature is above 99. Any criterion which can only flag when the average person deviates from “normal” will generate too many false positives and false negatives. I suspect that to achieve 99.9 percent detection of a temperature elevation that small would require setting the temperature limit at 97.8 or so.
Kerry Reid
@Gypsy Howell: That may in fact be a silver lining. Shutting down the Wedding Industrial Complex, I mean.
Svensker
@Tim in SF:
If I’m caring for a dying Ebola patient and I feel off enough a few days later to call the CDC and ask if I should travel because I’m feeling a low-grade fever I would stay home and monitor my damn fever every half hour. Not get on a frigging airplane. Does this woman not have an ounce of paranoia?
I’ve possibly been exposed to Ebola and I’ve got a headache and a low fever — prolly just a cold. WTF?
Valdivia
Though in the end it makes little difference it should be noted that the nurse did not speak directly with the CDC, she spoke to the Texas Dept of Health. They consulted the CDC and passed the info on to her. But her point of contact wasn’t the CDC. And I trust the Texas Dept of Health very little after everything we have heard and seen from them.
the Conster
@Svensker:
I gotta agree with you, completely. It’s stunning to me, really. She had just been caring for a victim of Ebola that had just died gruesomely, and then gets on a plane? I wouldn’t have done it, period, for anything, ESPECIALLY since I was going to visit my loved ones. Hey guys, I brought you a present from Dallas!!
Elizabelle
@Kerry Reid:
Shut down the Wedding Industrial Complex. Jeebus. And just when gays are getting gay-married.
We have our nexus.
lethargytartare
@John Cole +0:
how dangerous does a disease have to be to invoke your automatic quarantine rule, John?
perhaps all hospitals should have adjoining quarantine hotels. Nurses could come in, work one day, sit in quarantine hotel for 2 weeks, get tested for every infectious disease ever treated at that hospital, and surely a couple more just in case, then go home for a couple hours.
then we’d all be safe.
Elizabelle
@the Conster:
This one don’t got bullets. But it’s got an even more spectacular finish.
I promise.
PS: Can “28 Days” return to the big screen this Halloween season be far behind?
d58826
Next rightwing freak-out – the Ebola czar isn’t really an Ebola expert. He is an expert at implantations according to the WH. The Gooper attack ads practically write themselves, never mind that he might be a very good choice for the job. The word implementations has more than 3 letters so it must be some elitist conspiracy to destroy the real America
lethargytartare
@John Cole +0:
right, because your insistence that anyone who walks anywhere near ebola ickiness should hide in a closet for two weeks is gonna calm shit right down.
lethargytartare
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
hell, it already got Cole.
Booger
How do you tell the person with Ebola on a Carnival Cruise Ship? They’re the only one who isn’t vomiting.
catclub
Betcha it is not paid leave.
Ella in New Mexico
@John Cole +0:
Seriously, I understand where you’re coming from, I really do. Even though I still understand why she did it, I REALLY wish Amber Vinson had not decided to fly home that weekend. It does make her look bad, regardless of the fact that she was being continuously mislead by her employers and the CDC. I would not have done it, but then, like I’ve said elsewhere, I’m old enough not to trust authority and stupid enough to have taken one too many ID classes with my original (Biology)degree.
And I get how simple it might seem to say “anyone dealing with Ebola patients” should essentially be on self-quarantine. But the imagined circle of influence coming out of that hospital has gotten so large at this point that it’s simply ridiculous. A lab tech who processed a vacuum sealed container that was likely triple sealed during transport is not going to catch Ebola, much less give it to anyone on a cruise ship. Unless the fucking thing exploded in her face, which, I am assuming did not happen. Seriously, the various MD and nursing and support staff are all still coming into work, going home at night, taking care of other patients at THPH. No one is or was telling these people to self quarantine. If anything they were/are being told not to worry, take your temps and go about your business.
Is it too much to ask that we focus on the real issues here? In their rush to get America to rubber neck on an hourly basis, MSM is going apeshit by broadcasting each and every stupid, unscientific random fart of a thought out there, forcing sane, sensible people to do completely ridiculous things like close schools 6 states away for possible Ebola in a fourth level contact. Meanwhile, the hospital only barely got the neck-cover hoods for the Tyvek suits for Nina Pham’s caretakers like two days ago, and no one’s hospital is actually ready to deal with Ebola.
It all seems so simple in hind view, and especially when you have never actually been up close in person with these issues. If you had any idea what frigging beehive of 6 degrees of separation everyone is who works in a hospital you’d freak, but for no good reason. Just keep that in mind if you feel the need to ream some poor $12/hr phlebo tech who didn’t even have contact with the damn virus because she took a vacation after working at the same hospital that outright nearly killed the nurses that actually cared for Duncan.
catclub
From the NYT article.
Luckily bars not listed.
I wonder if they will be forbidden from voting? ;)
Ella in New Mexico
@catclub: Holy shit, how are they going to define these people? What do they mean by restricted movement”–do they have to stay in their homes?
Craig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Your $0.02 is worth a lot more than that.
I’m surprised that nobody else has noticed an important piece of evidence around about how uncontagious ebola appears to be, even in the early symptomatic stages. Look at the calendar. Duncan was admitted the second time, after several days of being far more symptomatic than any of the health workers who traveled, on September 27th. It is October 17th, 20 days later (near the end of the incubation period), and none of the 4 completely untrained and unprotected family members who shared the apartment with Duncan for several days have been diagnosed with Ebola.
It looks like, despite all the hysteria, the disease is mostly spread in the very messy end-stage.
We all need to engage our brains before we panic. The governor (Rick Perry) of Texas is proposing a travel ban for people from the affected countries in Africa, despite the fact that only one traveler from there has caused concern. There are two travelers from Texas, where apparently health care standards are below Senegal and Nigeria, who have caused similar alarm. If he had any ability to reflect rather than react, he might realize that his own logic suggests that it is probably more important for the rest of the country to impose a travel ban on Texans than on West African travelers.
Kerry Reid
@Elizabelle: Oh, I think we can grandfather in Teh Gheyz. They should get to annoy everyone for a while with nonstop updates about their wedding plans. Plus, not to stereotype, but I’m betting their weddings are a lot more fun.
Gravenstone
So the latest “possible” exposure patient is aboard a floating petri dish (that specializes in noroviruses). This can only go well …
And no, my hair is not on fire. I just find it somewhat morbidly amusing that she’s in a place where vomiting and diarrhea aren’t necessarily uncommon.
retr2327
@John Cole +0:
What you are saying is that in order to control/prevent worse public hysteria, we should give in to the levels of hysteria that exist now, thereby validating them. Sorry, not a good plan, even if based on good intentions.
Moreover, you write “for the few health care workers out there handling Ebola related issues.” You need to focus a bit on that “few.” What do you think will happen if anyone even remotely working with Ebola patients is barred from participating in public life in any way? And yes, if you’re not supposed to fly or go on a cruise, you shouldn’t go out shopping for food, go to a movie, visit friends, etc. either. Just how many health care workers willing to work with Ebola patients do you think we can spare?
It’s not enough asking them to risk their lives — if something goes wrong and they get exposed — caring for these patients, we’re also going to ask them to put their lives on indefinite hold (and yes, it will be indefinite, because this isn’t going to be eradicated soon) even if they have followed protocols perfectly?
Catering to public hysteria only feeds into it. Stop it.
Oh, and one more thing. Please stop dumping on that unfortunate nurse who flew to Ohio. She asked the CDC what she should do, and followed their advice. That’s what we WANT health care workers, and others, to do. If the advice was bad, blame the CDC, but cut her some goddam slack already.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
As I understand it, she didn’t start running the fever until she was already in Ohio. Not a whole lot of other options at that point — renting a car and driving a thousand miles by yourself doesn’t seem like a great option, either.
retr2327
@rita forsyth: ” what kind of a trained health care worker, involved in a deadly virus case, being monitored for the disease would get on a PLANE!!! ”
As I said to John, I’ll say to you: a trained health care worker who asked the CDC what she should do, and was told it was alright to go. Blame the CDC, not her.
trollhattan
@Craig:
Like anybody who read “The Hot Zone” a decade ago I’ve had a morbid curiosity about ebola, Marburg and the like since, and assumed they’d never make it past remote, rural Africa. But now ebola has and with our planet’s mobile population, it’s spreading and has at least the possibility to spread further.
Knowing all that the genie is still mostly in the bottle and therefore, it’s incredibly important we don’t screw up our chance to throttle its further advance by recorking the bottle. Every person who has anything to do with handling infected patients, and the related support services, needs to be 100% diligent in everything they do, both at work and off. And that requires excellent training and diligent, competent management and leadership, and yes, rules.
So far we haven’t been meeting the bar, at least in Texas.The patients airlifted from Africa were handled competently, so their treatment needs to be the model.
chopper
@John Cole +0:
If we let stupid people’s fears run our policies we would have put health care reform off for another generation because death panels.
catclub
@trollhattan:
== Money.
as I noted, I bet those workers are not getting paid for isolating themselves.
d58826
@trollhattan: Africa, esp. West Africa, is a lot less ‘rural’ than it was 10-20 years ago. These diseaes would burn out once they had infected everyone in the village, couple of hundred people maybe. Now the ‘village’ is a city of millions connected to an international airport . Times have changed.
lethargytartare
@chopper:
we’d also be thanking President McCain for saving us from terrah
Felonius Monk
@Ella in New Mexico:
Except perhaps for this from the statement issued by RNs at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital :
Maybe the lab tech should not have gone on a cruise.
d58826
@Felonius Monk: Hmmmmm. I’n not sure I would let that hospital remove a staple from a sheaf of papers.
d58826
JUst when we thought it was safe to get back in the water. from huffington:
Kay
I just want to know what they’re asking. What’s the top question?
trollhattan
@Kay:
My money’s on “Is it safe to go ebowling?”
Elizabelle
@d58826:
Syracuse University disinvited an award-winning WaPost photog who returned from Liberia three weeks ago. They were hoping more for 42 days Ebola-free; they were concerned there were a small number of Ebola cases that manifest after the supposed 21-day home-free window.
trollhattan
@Felonius Monk:
Jesus, they’re going to have to change the hospital’s name to “Saint Fuckup Factory.” How many stories aren’t we hearing?
Kay
@trollhattan:
They’re making suggestions. I love that. They call a hotline and offer advice. We have to tell them that’s the opposite of calling a hotline for advice :)
trollhattan
@Kay:
Le sigh. How many begin with, “Hi Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller….?
Ella in New Mexico
@Felonius Monk: I believe she was the hand deliverer after they realized that taking the risk of using their routine system was potentially fucking stupid.
At our hospital, which is like most, we double seal our already sealed vac-tubes before we send them through the pneumatic tubes. Nothing that is not sealed in both the specimen container AND two plastic ziplocked bags can go that way– the rest are all hand carried, again sealed in double plastic bagging. The person(RN or Phlebo tech) obtaining the samples uses standard precautions, eg. handwash-gloves-handwash. The receiving lab technician is in full protective gear including face shields and gowns as they process the samples. This is probably the LEAST likely area I’d worry about in terms of transmission, again, short of a huge accident like something blowing up.
Again, we need to focus on ACTUAL exposures, not “potential worst case scenarios” that simply did not happen.
kc
Among the John Coles of the left.
kc
@retr2327:
Seconded.
ruemara
@Mike J: And, she was a swinger.
Elie
@Belafon:
No one from his family or the early exposure when he first went to the ER.Period
So far,and I am feeling more confident everyday, none of the other care givers with intense exposure to Mr Duncan’s vomit, blood or other fluids has become positive (hope that continues). We may be speaking of only two breaches resulting in disease. Though the communicable period is 21 days, and we have to watch that whole period, most people come down with symptoms within 5-10 days.Mr Duncan died on October 8th, 9 days ago, so we are approaching the outer boundary of the average time in which people generally start to exhibit symptoms. This is reassuring but obviously, in an abundance of caution, we have to wait. Now, I guess that people might have been a little exposed to Ms. Vinson, but she was not vomiting or having diarrhea on anyone either on the plane or anywhere else, so its unlikely any of them will get sick.
Unfortunately we will have to endure media hysterics for at least the next 10 days or so.
Pamplemouse
Fully in agreement with Cole on this.
This is the debut/arrival of Ebola in this country. It’s been a bogeyman in western imaginations and pop culture for over two decades. We had the opportunity to deal with this first case appearance in Dallas without any spillover or extended transmission and thereby dampen the potential hysteria and paranoia, but sadly the hospital and the CDC fumbled the ball and two nurses got sick. As soon as the first nurse’s infection story was out all bets were off.
This was a ground zero event. Not a planned importation of an infected patient to a specialty hospital. This was a true test of an every day hospital in responding to this kind of severe infectious disease with standard training and equipment. The message sent to the public by the performance was that they couldn’t even deal with one patient and then it spread to the nurses, the trained professionals.
Then the CDC and/or the TDOH allowed one of the nurses to travel across country on mass transit well within the incubation period of possible exposure. WTF? As a consequence hundreds of people are now quarantined, schools shutdown and a cruise ship full of people possibly quarantined as well. God help us if even a single one of the people from one of those flights gets sick. If you think the hysteria now is bad just wait if we get a mushroom effect from Amber’s ill-advised travel.
This is all from one patient, at one hospital. If one case springs up at various points on the map connected to the flight then its pretty likely that our hospitals and medical facilities will become inundated with people everywhere reporting every flu-like symptom as ebola. The panic will be x11.
The way to get to a measured, reasonable approach to dealing with this disease was to control ground zero with overkill and severity to avoid the feeding the fears that this isn’t something we can control. Instead, the opposite occurred. It feels like the scenario at Dallas Pres hit every scripted point in some B horror flick scenario about how to generate a pandemic.
We need to show competence before we get to move on to confidence and reasonable measures. So far we are pretty far from it.
Elie
@Ella in New Mexico:
Hear Hear!
Elie
I personally favor Martin’s solution for all anxious doubters, the media and Repugs. A plastic bag placed about the head and tightly wrapped then taped tightly shut ought to solve any problems for those individuals and us.
trollhattan
@Elie:
Confess I’m expecting the attention to pivot to some developing country without a good medical infrastructure when an infected person lands there. Seems far more likely to me than an uncontrollable outbreak in the States. Here’s hoping it’s not Mexico City.
Elie
@trollhattan:
Yep.
Again, if folks keep their heads and do early isolation when first symptoms appear, trace contacts and use the precautions with vomit and other liquids, we have a hope that we could contain. Lagos Nigeria, a huge, densely populated city had 80 with 8 deaths and I think tomorrow or so will be declared free of ebola.Even here, Mr Duncan’s relatives carefully handled his and their own soiled clothes with gloves and placed them in bags. That little bit may have helped avoid more cases from the early group. We have to try for optimism and confidence or the fear will make us give up and run for the hills, abdicating any attempt to manage.
schrodinger's cat
Is Dallas hospital a for profit operation?
kc
@Botsplainer:
Got damn, I agree with Botsplainer. That hardly ever happens.
I wonder how many years it will take for Cole to admit he’s wrong here.
(ducks)
Elie
@Pamplemouse:
Human systems are imperfect. Any human and/or biological process that counts on perfection is going to fail. That failure is usually expected by anyone who knows systems. The question is, what do you do about it and how do you work the fix afterwards? Part of a successful fix relies on attitude. Shaming and blame feel good but usually become barriers to learning as people tend to avoid learning anything under those circumstances. Staying awake and alert and actually trying to engage the problem with information is critical. You can’t fully mandate that with rules. Every individual also owns responsibility and awareness for their own actions. Everyone is part of the solution. In this case, the media could be sharing accurate information and not faning flames. Ditto politicians. All you can do is press on.Texas Pres has work to do and to a lesser extent the CDC. That said, I am grateful that we had this snafu and knocked away some of our cockiness to reveal some real issues that we thankfully will have the time and resources to address.
John Cole +0
@kc: OK. We’ll see what happens. The freakout is already in high order, and I predict because of this kind of stupidity, it is going to get worse. Enough so that Obama has cancelled his schedule to “deal” with it, and has now appointed someone with no medical experience to serve as the “Ebola czar.”
When I was at the grocery today I overheard not one, not two, but four separate conversations about Ebola. Headlines are big and in black letters “EIGHT QUARANTINED IN OHIO,” and this is with but only a handful of people infected and one death. You guys can laugh at me all you want for thinking I am crazy or being irrational for telling health care workers to put off their cruises and vacations for a month or so, but people are going to go berserk and the media and the politicians are going to keep stoking this for all its worth.
And the inevitably cries to DO SOMETHING will lead to long-lasting stupidity. Sure, you may be rational, but close to half the population thought it was a good fucking idea to vote for Sarah Palin. Remember, this ain’t Lake Woebegone. There are a lot of stupids out there, and their vote counts just as much as yours, and they are louder. So keep pretending that calm, cool, and collected will win the day and we won’t end up with, I dunno, taking our shoes off in an airport ten years after ONE person tried to blow up a plane with exploding clown shoes.
I honestly don’t know if you seriously believe that calm will win out despite decades of contrary evidence or if you are just having fun taking potshots at me pretending I am being hysterical. I’m not afraid in the least of getting ebola because I don’t intend to have people bleeding, vomiting, or shitting on me. I am afraid of the outcome of the hysteria that you all are blithely ignoring while mocking me for having some sense of memory.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole +0:
The solution to hysteria isn’t more hysteria, or giving in to hysteria and doing what the hysterics want. It’s being firm and saying, These are the things we are doing. Calm the fuck down.
The problem with giving into hysteria is that it only feeds the hysteria and makes it worse. It would really help if our fucking media would stop their feeding frenzy and hand-wringing, but in the meantime we can’t let the government go off and start forcing people into medically unnecessary quarantines because it makes the hysterics feel better for a few minutes.
lethargytartare
@Pamplemouse:
so, the way to get a measured, reasonable approach was to control ground zero with an hysterical, irrational approach?
you and Cole are frickin’ geniuses
Larv
@Felonius Monk:
The statement talks about “potential” contamination. That is, if a tube had broken inside the pneumatic system, that could have been very problematic. Therefore putting them in the tube was not a wise thing to do in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that there was anything unsafe about what actually happened. As Ella mentioned above, there are protocols for handling PIM (Potentially Infectious Material) in that format that make transmission extraordinarily unlikely. The great risk of transmission seems to be in direct patient care, where the sheer volume of fluids makes them difficult to avoid. Just running bloodwork should not require quarantine or travel restrictions absent symptoms. There seem to be quite a few people with experience with PIM here, and I don’t see any of them calling for the sort of quarantine regime John and others are calling for. To call for them in this case is simply panicky overreaction. I regularly work with live, concentrated HIV virus. Should I and all my coworkers permanently abstain from sex because we “wear lots of protective equipment in labs for a reason, so why take the chance?”
As several others have said, working with or near Ebola patients is already scary enough. Why would anyone do it if they also have to hole up in their house for a month anytime they come withing 20 feet of one? Or risk assholes like JC calling them idiots for living their lives? If that’s what you want, then start agitating for a special compensation fund for health care workers who care for Ebola patients. Hazardous duty pay while working, plus time and a half during any mandated quarantine.
Larv
@John Cole +0:
The kind of stupidity that involves freaking out because a lab tech without direct contact with the patient didn’t immediately go into uncompensated seclusion? Yes, I expect that sort of stupidity to increase with each of your posts on the topic.
John Cole +0
@Mnemosyne: OK, FDR. We’ll see where we are in a month. From what I have seen, America has already chosen fear itself.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
JC at top:
As others have noted, you seem most concerned about the optics of this. There are valid discussions to be had about optics and how best to calm concerns from the public.
But Obama and the CDC are really in a no-win situation on this as long as the press is continuing to ratchet-up the freakout. The best thing to do isn’t to give into the “lock it all down!!11” hysteria, but to push-back in the press, in Congressional hearings, and in daily briefings against the panic. To encourage the press to be more responsible. Not to force people to stay at home when there is almost no chance of them being infected or contagious. If he goes too far in trying to satisfy the Crazies, he’ll just make sensible people more nervous (“well, he’s telling people to stay home, I guess it’s more serious than I thought…”).
Obama can’t win against the Crazy. Remember the Birth Certificate stuff. My dad just asked me about it over Columbus day weekend – it won’t go away…
:-(
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
John Cole +0
Speaking for misanthropes, being holed up in my house for a month sounds awesome. That’s why I love snowstorms and bad weather, because I don’t need an excuse to stay home. And I may be an asshole, but Vinson was infected with Ebola and got on a plane. I think she’s a bigger asshole in this situation, regardless of how saintly she might be the rest of the time.
And I am all for that fund. The only good thing about this is maybe nurses will start to get better compensation for the work they do. I doubt it, though.
John Cole +0
@Larv: Oh, yes. I’m the cause of the panic. I’m telling you what people are doing, and you act like I am Glenn fucking Beck selling seeds and survival kits.
I’d bet anything that technician is perfectly a-ok and not infected at all. I’m also betting that the mere presence of that lab tech on the ship will cause a brouhaha. And did. And not because I read about it or talked about it.
Criminy, people. I’m not whipping up hysteria, I’m trying to tell you what I think is going to happen if people in the health care industry and government don’t stop doing this in the short term. It’s not a crazy or irrational or fearmongering attitude to point that out.
feebog
@John Cole +0:
It’s not quite as simple as that. If a health care worker was exposed and is “self monitoring” at this point, you are basically calling for voluntary house arrest. Secondary exposure occurs whether the health care worker is on a plane, on a cruise ship or in a movie theater, shopping at the nearest mall, going to the post office, or out to dinner. As was pointed out upthread, if the exposure occurs on a commercial flight or on a cruise, at least you have a list of those exposed.
Let’s put the blame directly on those who deserve it; the hospital administration, the Texas state Health Department, and the CDC. The nurses and other health care workers who were put at risk by the mistakes of these people do not deserve to be called “assholes” or anything like it. They were and are risking their lives to minister to some very sick people. They are heroes in my view, and don’t deserve to be denigrated by armchair bloggers.
John Cole +0
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I am. I’m really not worried about a widespread outbreak of Ebola. I am quite concerned about the kind of stupidity that will come out of DC.
Remember John Lee Malvo- one sniper shut down NOVA for two weeks. And that is a person with a gun who could be shot. Not a disease that has been presented as the big bad for decades. All sorts of crazy shit is going to happen unless we are super cautious and give people time to deal with the reality of the situation and that they are not in danger.
Are you calling Obama an asshole for realizing this and appointing an Ebola Czar? He understands what is going on here and is taking steps to reassure the public.
Elie
We will see if the new Czar is effective. I disagree that appointing one more doctor would help. Hell, they’ve Docs out the yin yang at the CDC and NIH. What would one more do? Also, the senate rejected Obama’s surgeon general nominee, who would have been the natural czar (remember that?)
Man, I really do hear you about the cray-cray but I am not sure how you put out the fire with anything anyone sane can do — esp since the MSM and repubs explictly want to pump it up to the ceiling…
Bad luck all around for the Pres and us. Maybe he should get on the tv kick some ass — scold some of the fear mongers. I dunno. Pretty tough.
John Cole +0
@Larv:
BECAUSE THE PUBLIC HAS DIGESTED THE FEAR OF HIV INFECTION OVER THE DECADES, KNOWS THE RISKS, UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON, AND IS NOT FREAKING OUT.
Fer fuck’s sake.
Elie
Frankly, the President should take the opportunity at the milestone coming up of the 21 days for Mr Duncan’s family and the early exposed folks being disease free. That means that they can drop off of being surveilled and is an important thresshold. He needs to call attention to every success, that we haven’t had any new cases and each day is a plus… He will have to toot the positive horn cause no one else is. No one. I hope this Klain guy has a good way with words or whatever, cause if he doesn’t he will rapidly make things worse.
Epicurus
The day I trust a self-certified ophthalmologist’s advice on how infectious diseases work is the day I’ll listen to Glenn Beck’s (or Jim Cramer’s) financial suggestions. I will then demonstrate how to make a small fortune; being with a very large one….I will side with Cole here, however. We are more likely to suffer from the panic over this disease than from the bug itself. Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for a bumpy ride. As for the “Ebola Czar”? Who cares, it is one less bullet in the other side’s ammo belt. While he is not a doctor, he apparently has some “management skills.” That’s actually a good thing, imho.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@John Cole +0:
Nope, I’m not calling him names over his handling of this. He’s doing that to have someone in charge of the overall effort. It shouldn’t be necessary – the head of the CDC’s “Office of Infectious Diseases, Deputy Director Rima Khabbaz, MD” would seem to be the person in the organizational chart who should be on top of this, but maybe she doesn’t have the authority to make people in other organizations jump. That’s always a problem when multiple layers of governments and organizations are involved.
Obama does lots of things that are mainly responses to criticisms about the optics of whatever news of the day is generating headlines. All presidents do. But that doesn’t mean that people should be thrown in quarantine for no sensible reason other than optics.
There’s a line, and we need to be careful about crossing it.
I know you proposed a fund to compensate people who you don’t want taking trips. I don’t think that’s good enough. What if someone doesn’t want to be compensated but wants to live their life and there’s no scientific basis for keeping them locked up? I could see lawsuits going on for years, again for no good reason.
If this continues much longer, I would hope Obama would consider another formal speech to update everyone and go around the press…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole +0:
America chose fear itself on 9/12/01. This is just the latest manifestation of that.
lethargytartare
@John Cole +0:
how long should we have put AIDS patients in forced quarantine while they waited for the public to stop freaking out, just out of curiosity?
Larv
@John Cole +0:
Jesus, do you even remember the panic of the early AIDS epidemic? It took years, decades even, for the public to digest. People freaked out over AIDS patients and anyone who came near them for FUCKING YEARS. But you think that asking health care workers to just be ready to put their lives on hold at any time for the next decade or two until that panic subsides is no big thing? You can be really fucking obtuse when you get defensive like this.
SWMBO
Why can’t we get Dr. Paul to take over the care of Ebola patients? He’s a doctor, he gets paid if he shows up or not at his regular job and he KNOWS what to do.
I think we need to remember that there is a median intelligence in this country. Unfortunately, that means half of the country is in the “not smart” category. And the last few years of home schooling and dumbing down the education system is not helping. Stupid feeds hysteria. We’re gonna have a LOT more hysteria before we max out on this.
Ripley
@Booger: Now THAT’S funny. This just in:
John Cole Apology Watch Day 3: Stop Being So Quick To Read What I’ve Said And Shit All Over Me.
Larv
@John Cole +0:
But the only reason it’s causing a brouhaha is because people like you are criticizing her for not bunkering down for a month “just in case” when there is no reasonable cause for her to have done so. Why are you spending more time and words criticizing the decisions of health care workers than those of the media which is stoking this panic?
Gustopher
If Rand Paul is regularly going to parties with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting, someone should inform him that those are not cocktail parties.
retr2327
@John Cole +0: “Vinson was infected with Ebola and got on a plane.”
If the facts here showed that she knew she had Ebola and got on that plane, then I’d change my mind and agree with you. But they don’t. All that’s known (AFAIK), is that she knew she had a slight — very slight – fever.
The fact that she knew she had a slight fever doesn’t establish that she felt sick: as a potentially exposed health care worker, she was required to self-monitor, which includes taking her temperature twice a day. So she did what she was supposed to, both by taking her temperature and by calling someone (maybe TDOH, maybe CDC) to ask what she should do.
Now let’s take a minute to really consider her state of mind. You seem to believe that she was just too self-absorbed to consider the consequences of her actions, and so got on the plane despite the fact that she “should have known” that she might have Ebola, and spread the disease (or at least the panic). Stop and think: does that really make sense to you?
I don’t see health care workers who risk their lives for low money taking care of Ebola patients as self-absorbed. And if I were one of them (which, thank heavens, I’m not), and I had been exposed to an Ebola patient and had any serious thought that I might have caught it, no amount of self-absorption (not even mine) would cause me to put my desire to get on a plane (or a cruise ship) AHEAD OF RUNNING TO THE NEAREST HOSPITAL IN TERROR.
So I’m inclined to believe they did what they did because they were convinced, rightly or wrongly, that they didn’t have it. YMMV.
John cole
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I am not calling for a quarantine. We’re going to get one, though, because apparently asking a couple dozen health care workers to not fly or go on cruises is beyond the pale and a violation of everything we love about this nation.
BTW- How did we even find out about the lab tech? Did they go on the cruise and then decide to tell the staff?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@John cole: We really don’t know what people were told. There have been all kinds of rumors about this whole situation that have not turned out to be true, starting with the stories about Duncan himself.
Don’t ask me how we found out about the lab tech. Google is your friend. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ella in New Mexico
@orogeny:
LUUUUV this. :-)
Original Lee
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (which is, admittedly, speculative fiction) has a prescient bit of narrative where the American tourists trapped in Oxford by the quarantine rail against the infringement of their rights. The British professor absorbing the rant thinks about how the U.S. lost x percent of its population in the last pandemic exactly because of this attitude.
I think that’s a lot of what we’re seeing now.
kc
@John Cole +0:
It seems like you keep moving the goalposts. If you were only saying should impose more restrictions NOW, I wouldn’t argue with that, as long as they are based on, you know, science, and not whether some jerkoffs will flip out.
But that’s not what you’ve been doing, you’re hammering two relatively low-level workers who, as far as I know, haven’t disobeyed any orders or directives that were in place prior to their travels. As far as these two healthcare workers are concerned – the nurse who flew to Ohio and the person on cruise ship – if I’m not mistaken, they both undertook to travel weeks ago, and as far as we know no one in a position of authority or superior medical knowledge told them not to. It’s just pure dickishness to throw up multiple posts calling this nurse an “asshole” and criticizing some lab worker for going about their lives in the absence of any direction or order to do otherwise.
kc
@feebog:
Hell yeah.
kc
@orogeny:
I’m gonna suggest that you refrain from posting here for at least 21 days, to avoid stoking Cole’s irrational fear of other people’s irrational fear. :)
Ella in New Mexico
@John Cole +0:
It’s my impression that overall, you want what all of us want here. Stem the tide, protect the caregivers, learn from our mistakes and keep the population safe.
It’s just sometimes your anger/outrage seems misplaced on the wrong people, relying on hindsight or a misunderstanding of the facts on the ground. Your statements seem to uncharacteristically lack empathy for the more powerless, front line folks who were functioning in a real-time environment in which the rules were changing daily, lacking the proper equipment and information from responsible parties, and who still risked their own safety to try to do the right thing for the patient, yet remain sane and still live their lives.
Like so many of us have pointed out, the track record for the accuracy of what we’ve been told by the hospital, the CDC, the media should give us all pause before we start dehumanizing these health workers. Which is what you do when you make them all sound purposefully selfish and careless—which they clearly are not.
Seriously, fire your big guns at the hospital executives, and their corporate hacks who try to run hospitals on the cheap, suck up all the Obama care early windfalls and fail to adequately staff or support their employees, leaving them with their pants down in emergencies. Save your ire for every person like Tom Frieden who cowardly attempted to blame these nurses for their own infection by using politically laced jargon like ‘breached protocol” when they had no protocol to breach. Blow the dumb-assed Rand Paul’s out of the water with his stupid, stupid, stupid cocktail party comment. They deserve your anger. Then, stick up for the little guys.
kc
@John cole:
His companion on the cruise was wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m With Ebola Boy.”
Jay C
@John Cole +0:
Yep. No sucker bets here……
According to the network news tonight, the Carnival Magic was turned away from, respectively, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico; and forced to return to Galveston, due to Ebola hysteria*. Where, the cruise line assured everyone, it will be thoroughly scrubbed down…
So EH is not just an American pathology: it’s already spread to other countries…..
* i.e., the Dallas lab tech on board
lamh36
JohnC,
Hey, just got home from work and just now reading this post about health workers. If you like, you can put up another Ebola post and I would be willing to answer any “serious” questions from commenters in the comments section to the best of my knowledge as a Microbiology Medical Laboratory Scientist.
satby
@Ella in New Mexico: are you seriously saying that the second nurse, who was concerned enough about her low grade fever to call for advice, bears not a whit of responsibility for getting on a plane in a > potentially< infectious state? Because though I doubt anyone was in danger, you can't have it both ways: either a nurse is a health professional with her own expertise and able to assess situations, or they're helpless droids who do what they're told to.
She knew she was starting to run a temp. Responsible medical professionals would probably not risk getting worse and potentially exposing people. AND THAT'S WHAT COLE SAID.
Violet
I think a big part of the public’s freakout with the travel by the hospital staff (nurses, lab techs) is the overall incompetence of the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital. There have been other Ebola patients in the US, like the doctor and health care worker being brought back after contracting Ebola, the cameraman for NBC, etc. But those hospitals were prepared, the staff was prepared and precautions were taken from the beginning. You don’t see people clamoring for Emory lab techs and nurses to stay home from trips.
In this case it’s clear that Dallas Presby wasn’t prepared and we know Mr. Duncan was sick, sent home while he was infectious (probably for lack of insurance), only to return again. Plenty of mistakes. Plenty of opportunities for exposure.
The public’s confidence in this hospital’s ability to do things right is why the public is freaking out about the lab tech. Had Dallas Presbyterian handled Duncan’s case right from the beginning, the freaking out about the nurses and lab tech travel would be minimal.
The blame is on the hospital, and probably on the CDC for being slow to respond. However, once it was known that the whole thing had been botched, it’s probably best that those involved err on the side of caution and stay home from trips and expose as few people as possible. You’re the heathcare worker. You know your work environment wasn’t safe–look at what the nurses told the nurses union anonymously. How could you have any confidence that you’ll be fine?