Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
And, Then, There Were Two . . .
You know that things are getting really serious when Barack Obama cancels a fundraiser for any reason — especially when he cancels two fundraisers and actually calls a cabinet meeting.
The fact that he did so today suggests that he is really worried about something of genuinely vital importance — that he thinks that the news that a second nurse working at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has tested positive for Ebola might have an impact on the midterm elections three weeks from now. In his judgment, no doubt, It makes things even worse that, on the day before she tested positive, after her temperature rose well above normal, the lady in question contacted the CDC, and those who answered her call sanctioned her flying home on a commercial jet from Cleveland.
It was all too predictable that our current President would think that an empty gesture — a promise to dispatch “SWAT teams” from the feckless CDC — would get him off the hook. Empty gestures are his forte, and they have nearly always served him well. My guess, however, is that, before this is over, the President will have to bow to the inevitable and do the obvious — which is to institute a ban on travel to the United States from the countries where Ebola is now widespread. Barack Obama is a bit like the little boy who cried wolf. Nobody with half a brain believes him any more.
Such a ban is, in my opinion, long past due. Nothing that I have read in the interim has caused me to have second thoughts concerning what I wrote on Monday:
There is only one way to prevent the spread of an epidemic, and that is quarantine. No medical professional with any sense would suggest that we should admit individuals from Liberia to the United States at this time, and no medical professional worth his or her salt would say that we can test for the disease when the prospective visitor arrives at Immigration and Passport Control. Like most diseases, Ebola has an incubation period. Early on, there are no symptoms: none at all. There is no reliable way to tell whether those arriving at our ports of entry have contracted the disease or not. If we do not want it coming here, for a time, we have to keep everyone out who has been in that neck of the woods.
One could, of course, argue that such a travel ban is unnecessary and that our medical system is more than adequate to deal with an outbreak here, as did more than one of those who commented on my original post. But I do not believe it for a second. Consider what appears to have happened at the Texas Presbyterian.
When Thomas Duncan first showed up, a nurse took down the appropriate information, entered it into the system, and either the system or the medical personnel dropped the ball and he was sent home. Then, when he came in a second time, desperately ill, the following reportedly took place:
A Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and the nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols . . . . Nurses were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments, worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting, said Deborah Burger of National Nurses United.
It is no wonder that two nurses have come down with Ebola. It would, in fact, be surprising if there were not more. Concerning that, of course, time will tell. What is clear already, however, is that the folks at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital were not prepared to cope with even a single case.
It is conceivable that this particular hospital is a shambles and that, if Thomas Duncan had shown up on the doorstep of any other Dallas hospital, things would have been handled without a hitch. I doubt it, however.
Think about it this way. How many hospitals in this country are equipped to handle, say, twenty such cases? Or ten? Or five? What is required is an isolation unit large enough to accommodate those who have come down with the disease, a staff trained to cope with it, and the requisite equipment. Ten years ago, as I noted in an earlier post, Congress provided the Department of Health and Human Services with some something like five billion dollars to prepare for just such a eventuality, which is a nice piece of change. But, at least at Texas Presbyterian Hospital, the requisite equipment was unavailable, and no one was properly trained and prepared.
I know a little something about isolation units. I was once to consigned to one. Two summers ago, as some of you may remember, I was operated on at the National Institutes of Health for prostate cancer. In the aftermath, there were complications. I developed a lymphocele near my left kidney, and I returned to NIH where a series of futile attempts was made to drain the cavity and dry up the flow of liquid from my lymph nodes. While there, I came down with pneumonia, and there was reason to fear that I had contracted the superbug. Someone else who had checked in the day in which I returned really did turn out to have it. So, until they found out that I had a run-of-the-mill strain, they isolated me and treated me with exceedingly caustic antibiotics.
But here is the point. At NIH, which is as well equipped for emergencies of this sort as is any hospital in the world, there were not a lot of rooms designed for the requisite level of isolation. What, I ask myself, is it like at the ordinary American hospital? What would happen if we had a thousand cases of Ebola in this country?
One of those commenting on my original post who was critical of my position argued that the American medical establishment should be our first line of defense. I would prefer to give them a backup position. My bet is that, if they were faced with a real epidemic of this sort on any scale in this country, they would be overwhelmed. You can be fabulous at what you do and incompetent when faced with the unexpected on a scale unexpected. If you think that there is anything special about the Texas Presbyterian Hospital, I suspect that you are dreaming. After all, that outfit is not much worse than the CDC.
Published in General
Here’s the new CDC Ebola jingle:
I’d rather the inverse. If we must begin rationing, be my guest.
I, and I guess everyone else, had been under the impression that the nurses were infected while wearing hazmat suits. Were that true, it would have suggested that Ebola is so infectious as to be potentially an apocalyptic plague. While it’s outrageous the nurses were exposed to Ebola without proper protection, I am also relieved by this news because it means that Ebola is not nearly as infectious as I had been led to believe. I had worried that we might be facing something like the 1918 flu pandemic, but now that seems unlikely.
However, this revelation should intensify our concerns about the government’s competence. It appears that the CDC, in an effort to appear in control of the situation, exaggerated how quickly they put up their measures against Ebola. Taking the CDC at its word, this meant that Ebola had penetrated the CDC’s best efforts to contain it, once the nurses tested positive. That would be terrifying if it was true. Thus, the CDC’s dissembling made the virus look more dangerous than it is, feeding the panic.
One of the funniest things ever to happen on Cape Cod was the government’s spending time and money first on the study, then on the signs, to establish an “Evacuation Route.”
There are only two small bridges off this peninsula–as anyone trying to leave Cape Cod on a summer Sunday afternoon can testify to, without conducting a major expensive study.
No one ever goes by those signs without laughing, “Yeah, right.”
It’s really hard to have confidence in government.
Memorial Day Monday about 25 years ago saw a 17-mile backup getting off the Cape (we were leaving Tuesday, so heard about it on the radio). That’s about a third of the entire length of Route 6. It was less an evacuation route than a block party opportunity.
Wow. My apologies to all of our visitors. :)
I understand your distress, and share it. But your thinly veiled profanity in this post does nothing to give your passion more energy. Trust me, I can experience the vehemence without the extra characters.
Straighten up or a yellow flag goes on the field. Hitting the keys is so deliberate.
LOL
Why is this thread so contentious? Is somebody here pro-ebola or something?
I think the contention has to do with how easily Ebola is to transmit. That is a reasonable thing to be contentious about.
Besides, contention is fun.
Seawriter
Oh, I couldn’t even tell. It just seemed like there was a lot of anger about something that seems like there ought to be a lot of agreement about. For what it’s worth, my vote is for keeping ebola out of the country and a serious effort to eradicate it where it lives. Is any of that controversial?
It is if you are seriously into PC. Like our President – and the head of the CDC.
Seawriter
Until a meaningful percentage of the ebola patients in the U.S. are other than black there will be no quarantine–and maybe not even then. While we wait for this medically foolish but politically necessary threshold to be crossed, the disease will have sufficiently vectored so that multiples more people will be infected and die of ebola than if it had been treated from the get-go as a deadly highly communicable disease. But hey, it’s only fair that Africa not bear the whole burden of their 3rd world status. C’mon America: let’s make ebola our first truly equal opportunity disease. We can’t dent income inequality, but we sure can do away with disease inequality seeing to it as a matter of government policy that ebola is more fairly spread around.
well, while I mostly distrust it, I did hear a semi-reasonable explanation about the un-garbed-guy (U-G-G) on the tarmac. Because all the other guys are in suits have restricted sight and motion, the U-G-G is specially trained to observe the medical transfer, as is, without the garb.
Not sure its true, but hopefully U-G-G believes it.
only controversial when your common sense observations seemed to be ignored by the ‘trained experts’ we should be able to trust.
of course we don’t trust them, when they do stupid stuff. they are off ‘organizing’ a response instead of acting with intelligence and care.
He is probably the guy everyone else in the office wants gone. So they went to a lot of effort to convince him.
Seawriter
Love this. :)
My son has been calling this guy “Clipboard Guy.” Whoever he is, well, he’s probably headed on a cruise somewhere.
This statement has been bothering me all day. So far ebola victims in the USA have been non white and it also seems to me that an extraordinary care has been taken. Even though not much has really been known about the care that needs to be taken. Ignorance and the color of a person’s skin or their ethnicity, have nothing in common. To imply that care will only be taken when white people start coming down with ebola is shabby, imho.
i heard a report somewhere that someone on a cruise with ebola was in isolation.
http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2014/10/dallas_ebola_cruise_ship.html
surely not clipboard guy, but Obama’s got the spread to the ocean covered.
The job of Obama’s CDC is the same as the job of all Obama appointees, to lavish praise and adoration on his pet prejudices and pretend that any call for the application of basic and proven methods is knuckle dragging racism. Ironically, they refer to it as Don’t Do Stupid Stuff.
I am sure that, per Presidential directive, they pitched the poor guy over the side and now refer to the ocean as “isolation”.
I couldn’t agree more: it is shabby. But not the implication or the saying of it. IMO, if you don’t understand that Africa and “racism” are prime ingredients in this ‘political soup’ you are either not seeing or refusing to see this recipe for disaster. Flights were not immediately stopped and quarantines not immediately imposed for political not public health reasons. IMO.