Ebola on the horizon?

[T.Lex]

That's kinda funny.

I mean, it might have some merit if there was any indication that an SG would be doing a better job than the CDC.

Methinks it is just one big echo chamber, though.

 

[hooky]

Surgeon General | SurgeonGeneral.gov

There's already Ebola info on their site. There is an acting Surgeon General in place. It's not like the entire department is just sitting around doing nothing. Well, maybe they are, but it's not because there is a nominee that can't get through the senate.

 

[singlesix]

IMF reporting the est. cost for Ebola is 32 Billion if contained by 2015. I don't own a but this one is really getting scary.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Went to BW3 tonight. Cousin is a nurse here in Indy.

She went to b-room feeling sick, puking.

Left to the ER, not able to walk.

So uh... I'll give you an update if something changes.

 

[bradmedic04]

Went to BW3 tonight. Cousin is a nurse here in Indy.

She went to b-room feeling sick, puking.

Left to the ER, not able to walk.

So uh... I'll give you an update if something changes.

YOU HAVE EBOLA! REPORTED (TO THE GUBMINT).

 

[pudly]

Officials admit that they are being defeated by Ebola in Sierra Leone and patients families are basically on their own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/world/africa/officials-admit-a-defeat-by-ebola-in-sierra-leone.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1

 

[irishanimal917]

So I saw this news story posted on FB by a coworker.

Ebola precautions in place in Indiana - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

The responses to the post were all the same from several Emergency Workers in Indianapolis. We haven't received any memo, orders or protective equipment. As a matter of fact, 2 days after this news story was published when I got to work, we were all searching our rigs to find the protective equipment stated was in place (1:48 in the video), result, there was none to be found!

We were dispatched to several "sick people" calls that day and there was no communication from dispatch in the notes on the computer as far as what to expect where an Ebola threat was concerned! Now that can go 2 ways, either they are not screening for it when the call is received or they are not adding notes or verbal communication if it is not necessary because they have been screened. Either way, we don't know because there's been no communication on the matter which does not sit well with a lot of us where our own lives and lives of our family members we return home to are concerned!

Another thing... (1:58 in the video). They state that once inside the Patient's will be isolated in the ER separately... How are there any precautionary measures being taken to isolate them from spreading the disease this way? Case in point being a post by the Canadian CDC suddenly changed...




It seems quite clear that no one, not the Goberment, CDC or any other organization has a clue as to what exactly it is they are supposed to do!

And another thing... WTH are we doing sending our troops over to W. Africa to help for? It is not their place to be there when they are clearly not "trained and certified" Scientists, Doctors, Nurses, PA's, Emergency workers, CDC Personnel or HAZMAT Personnel! It sickens me to DEATH that they are being put in harms way for no damn reason at all! And NO, humanitarian reason is not valid in my opinion! They should send their own soldiers and people to take care of whatever it is that's needing done where simple man power is concerned.

101st Airborne soldiers gear up to fight Ebola outbreak

 

[DanSwanky]

 

[T.Lex]

Brazil patient tests negative for ebola. Man, if there was an uncontrolled outbreak in the favellas, that would truly be hell on earth.

Mixed reports from Paris. Not clear if they are all talking about the same patient or not.

Several more potential cases in Spain are quarantined.

 

[HeadlessRoland]

Having a very thorough understanding of the logistics and structure of the healthcare system in this country, let me reassure you: there is no way in hell the average hospital could appropriately isolate patients with Ebola before they would have the opportunity to infect literally dozens of people. The only way to do so would be to devolve to fail-safe, always-ready-for-it personal protective equipment, and that's too expensive to do 24/7 or even some of the time and no health system in the country is going to invoke that cost without things getting a lot more intense, and maybe not even then. EMTs, fellow patients in the waiting room/triage room, nurses, physicians, pharmacists on rotation, laboratory personnel culturing/incubating blood samples, pharmacy technicians delivering daily medications - there's not a chance in hell of an unsuspecting hospital being able to properly respond to any Ebola carrier before that patient has had the full opportunity to infect several dozen people. So relax: things are just as bad as you imagine they are. Maybe even slightly worse. Everything is fine: government said so! You trust government, don't you?

 

[T.Lex]

Great stuff, HR - kinda confirms some things I was curious about.

So the hospital in Dallas that turned Duncan away when he was sick the first time. He was symptomatic, so likely contagious. He exposed all those roles you listed. Is it blind luck, then, that we haven't heard of more infections?

I think one difference is that the mid-upper income culture is now all about those alcohol wipes/gels. Medical facilities use the foam almost all the time. Is that a significant mitigator?

 

[Cldedhnds]

]
Or is it?

 

[HeadlessRoland]

Great stuff, HR - kinda confirms some things I was curious about.

So the hospital in Dallas that turned Duncan away when he was sick the first time. He was symptomatic, so likely contagious. He exposed all those roles you listed. Is it blind luck, then, that we haven't heard of more infections?

I think one difference is that the mid-upper income culture is now all about those alcohol wipes/gels. Medical facilities use the foam almost all the time. Is that a significant mitigator?

Could very well be luck. Could be a media blackout. Could be that miraculously all appropriate precautions were undertaken even in the absence of indications to do so. Could be divine intervention. As for disinfection procedures, hospitals are a dual-edged sword. Yes, they have disinfecting agents, some of the best. However, anything that will kill ALL bacteria and viruses is too harsh to use with human beings. If one is lucky, the agent used to disinfect human skin for surgeries, or human skin for scrubbing in, et cetera, will have a log-6 cell-kill. 99.9999%. Which sounds like a lot until you realize this means that of 1,000,000 bacteria or viruses, that at least one will survive, generally speaking. Bacteria generally have logarithmic reproduction, they double themselves, at a rate of roughly every 10-30 minutes, depending on species and whether ideal conditions are present. So after ten to thirty minutes, that bacteria is doubled to two, after twenty minutes to an hour there are four - and by the end of the day you're left with something like septillions of bacteria present.

Viruses, needing a living cell for their reproduction - being a lifeform that is strictly speaking neither alive nor dead - will remain at one in the absence of a host in which to replicate itself. However - and this is also true with the bacteria - since they have survived, they are now innately resistant to the disinfectant that failed to originally killed them due to minute variations in their viral RNA, or bacterial DNA, respectively. So will all subsequent replications be resistant, until and unless another spontaneous mutation somehow renders them more susceptible, or unless another disinfecting agent is utilized. It doesn't matter how effective any particular agent is - and they all have varying degrees of effectiveness - based on how long the contact time is, and conditions surrounding their use. For instance, some proteins will inactivate quaternary ammonium compounds, which are otherwise some of the most effective disinfecting agents around. Think Lysol. However, in the presence of organic proteins, much of those compounds' effectiveness is diminished down to virtual uselessness, depending on concentration, how much protein is present, and which specific compound is in question. Iodine and alcohols are actually more effective diluted than full-strength, for instance, for reasons that still aren't fully understood, although there are theories as to why this should be so. There are a bunch of factors that have to be accounted for, including routine disinfection, for any disinfectant to have optimal usage and outcome. Sadly, many of these factors are completely overlooked. I will reiterate that since it bears repeating: many of the factors that specifically make any particular disinfectant effective are completely overlooked in hospitals. Many of the personnel utilizing disinfecting agents are not aware of the requirements for optimal usage for those agents. Most healthcare systems' training regimens do not include such information, relying instead solely upon manufacturer instructions, which may or may not be ambiguous, incomplete, or otherwise contra-indicated. And, as with any suboptimal usage of any disinfecting agent, this only provides opportunity for resistant bacteria to arise and develop and to continue to reproduce, and in practice it is simple Darwinism to bacteria and viruses: only those strong enough survive, and those strong enough to survive tend to be those which are especially good and well-adapted at kicking us in our teeth.

Compounding the problem are physicians who prescribe antibiotics which may or may not be effective before cultures are drawn and susceptibility isolates performed by lab personnel. For instance, let's say you go to the ER and have what turns out to be a very severe infection of staphylococcus aureus, or what appears to be a simple staph infection. Simple enough, it stains, and so while waiting for the lab to culture it and to perform susceptibility tests, the doctor prescribes some nafcillin and ceftriaxone. Okay, fine: that would be an acceptable course of treatment, given that information alone. But when cultured and susceptibility tests performed, let's say it turns out to be methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Now, resistance does not mean invincibility, and there is still a chance that regimen might work, but what has just happened is that a very serious infection has been treated sub-optimally and given a chance to further develop resistance. Based on the new information as to what that infection is likely susceptible, you would then probably - hopefully - be prescribed new, more effective antibiotics, and hopefully the new would be effective and combined with your immune response, the infection goes away and you heal up and back into the community you go, maybe with a prescription after you're released from hospital that you don't quite take to completion, since you feel much better. Since the course of treatment was not finished, a few MRSA bacteria survived and now a new even more resistant MRSA culture asymptomatically dwells within or upon you, as a carrier, to be passed along the next time you shake hands with a business client. So it goes.

All of which isn't to say that hospital personnel are incompetent or don't care - most are generally at least minimally competent due to continuing education and company-lead in-services, and most do genuinely care. It's just that the task which faces them is almost Sisyphean. They're truly pushing the boulder up the hill, except with each attempt, more dirt clings to the boulder and it gets more heavy with each shove, as it were. The limited era of human dominance and superiority over nature is rapidly approaching its pre-destined outcome, and there are many factors all contributing to it, but one day, one day soon, we will no longer have any great say in the course of our microbial fate.

 

[HeadlessRoland]

http://www.newsweek.com/health-officials-respond-ebola-marburg-virus-276621

 

[paintman]

Texas health care worker tests positive for Ebola

second positive case

 

[HeadlessRoland]

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Breaking: Texas health care worker who treated ?patient zero? tests positive for Ebola | Twitchy

Person now with Ebola wasn't considered in the "high risk pool".. These idiots have no idea what they're doing.

 

[Expat]

Just saw the news conference. The worker was wearing full protective gear as outlined by the CDC when he came in contact with patient zero.
So they don't know what to think.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Just saw the news conference. The worker was wearing full protective gear as outlined by the CDC when he came in contact with patient zero.
So they don't know what to think.

The hospital employee with Ebola had been working up until the last 2 days.

We're all dead.

[video=youtube;NoBFhdeR9PE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoBFhdeR9PE[/video]

 

[DanSwanky]

It seems inevitable that more people are going to show up at other hospitals needing ebola treatment. It was reported that it cost a half million to treat Mr. Duncan. Will a person that is treated successfully be responsible for a large part of the cost of their treatment? How hard will insurance company's fight to not pay? How many cases can even the large conglomerate hospital systems handle before they are financially crippled by the associated costs? Will there be a controversy over the gov bailing out the hospitals but not the people that are still getting a large bill every month?