Ebola in Texas

Nurses COVID

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Specializes in Hospice.

Indeed.

According to the "small government" crowd, the private sector is supposed to kick in sometime and solve all our problems. Wonder how much that's going to cost - not to mention who's gonna pay for it.

Social Darwinism at its finest.

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

nursej22's post made me think of the cartoon I saw recently of a man dressed in complete protective gear labeled CDC; he was saying, "Trust us, ( the same people who lost track of all that smallpox )"

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Specializes in PACU, ED.

The CDC is just playing politics now. They say they took a 5% hit from the sequester cuts. Did they really only need to apply 5% more resources to stop/prevent this Ebola outbreak? I think that is doubtful. A better use of the CDC's time would be to focus on better containment efforts. The FDA should work to streamline the development and testing of effective treatments. Finally, we need to figure out how people who are not doing direct patient care are becoming infected (the cameraman and the researcher).

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Specializes in L & D; Postpartum.

I think the cameraman has lived there for 3 years, so it is possible he was exposed in some way other than his work.

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Specializes in PACU, ED.
I think the cameraman has lived there for 3 years, so it is possible he was exposed in some way other than his work.

The incubation period is reported to be from 2 - 21 days. So his exposure happened within the 3 weeks preceding his illness. I'd like to know if he was just running the camera from afar or helping move patients. The answer could explain why the CDC likes to wear full coverage bio suits.

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Specializes in L & D; Postpartum.
The incubation period is reported to be from 2 - 21 days. So his exposure happened within the 3 weeks preceding his illness. I'd like to know if he was just running the camera from afar or helping move patients. The answer could explain why the CDC likes to wear full coverage bio suits.

Right, but if someone is living there, perhaps they would be in situations in their life outside work where they might be esposed. After I posted that, I saw where they say he might have been exposed while cleaned a van where a patient had died. And that begs another question: The cameramen clean vans that transport patients?

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Specializes in PACU, ED.

Firestone has a model that seems to be working. Firestone Did What Governments Have Not: Stopped Ebola In Its Tracks : Goats and Soda : NPR

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Specializes in PACU, ED.

The first case contracted outside of Africa, a Spanish nurse. I pray for her recovery and that they are able to figure out how she contracted the virus.

Nurse In Spain Gets Ebola, Officials Say 'We Followed Protocol' : The Two-Way : NPR

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato urged the country to remain calm."We followed the protocol and we don't know how she got infected," Mato told a news conference.

"We know she entered the infected priest's room twice — once to treat him and once after he died to collect some of his things," said Dr. Antonio Alemany, a health officials from the regional government of Madrid. "As far as we know, she was wearing a protective suit the whole time and didn't have any accidental contact with him."

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.

JAMA Network | JAMA | The Ebola Outbreak, Fragile Health Systems, and Quality as a Cure

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Ebola represents a pressing global health crisis, but more are certain to follow. The outcomes of the next several months will reveal the capacity to forge effective partnerships across borders and disciplines, and the extent of the commitment to value all human lives equally. By responding to the crisis with a surge of stopgap solutions, it is possible (although unlikely) that such an approach could eventually stem the epidemic and end the morbidity and mortality for this current outbreak. Alternatively, responding to Ebola with a broader approach that involves meaningful investments in the provision of health care staff, resources, and systems could succeed now and help create sustainable models for the future. If the approach involves reengineering health systems around the patient, there remains an opportunity to bring lasting progress for those who need it most.

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

Perhaps not all budget cuts are good.

Perhaps not, but it is laughable to imply that but for 5% of the budget, there would be no Ebola here or elsewhere. The biggest crisis regarding this virus is the mis-information being spread by our supposed leaders:

"Like so many other events during his presidency, in grasping Mr. Obama’s approach with Ebola, we have two options: Either he and his team deliberately chose to mislead the American public about a dangerous situation, or he is actually clueless. Either option tells the American people that endeavoring to believe what we’re told by those in charge of this nation is a fool’s errand.The moment it was revealed the United States had its first diagnosed Ebola case, the main message from various officials centered on the insistence that we are not to panic or become hysterical. Information was limited to repeating the narrative that Ebola could only be transmitted if you were in direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids with someone, according to the CDC guidelines, “who is very sick.” This meme was repeated over and over again by officials at the CDC and many in the mainstream media. Until it began to unravel.

The CDC’s Ebola happy talk, usually delivered by Director Tom Frieden, was finally exposed on CNN. Dr. Frieden was speaking with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, also a physician, once again to reassure everyone that everything was A-OK. A news anchor asked the doctor to reassure viewers that Ebola wasn’t “highly contagious” so as to help the American people “back away from the panic.”

Dr. Frieden happily complied, “It’s not like the flu, not like the common cold, it requires direct physical contact.” Then the anchor chimes in and says, “If he sneezes on you, it’s a different story.” With that one statement, Dr. Frieden was compelled to admit existing CDC guidelines do warn simply standing within a three-foot radius of someone with Ebola poses a risk of infection."

Read more: BRUCE: Containing the facts about Ebola - Washington Times

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.

Only two options eh? The first option is that Obama is intentionally misleading the American people and the second option is that he is clueless. There must be value in encouraging panic and hysteria that Obama is missing.

Simply standing within 3 feet of an ebola victim does not put you at risk, coming into contact with their body fluids does put you at risk. If a person with any acute viral infection sneezes on you, or vomits on you, or poops or pees on you, etc, you will be at risk to develop that viral infection. You actually don't have to be within 3 feet of an individual to get ebola, the virus can survive outside the host in both liquid and dry material for as much as 20 days.

There is plenty of reason to be freaked out by ebola if one prefers to be freaked out. In the absence of the desire to be freaked out, there is good reason to be confident that this deadly disease will be reasonably well controlled in the US, IMHO. Yes, I imagine that some people may die from it. People will also die from influenza this season and we have a vaccine that could prevent some of those deaths that people opt not to obtain.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Ebola isn't actually "highly contagious", so I'm not sure there's really been any incorrect descriptions of the situation. I think we sometimes confuse modes of transmission with likelihood of transmission. One thing that is concerning for most people about Ebola is that it's difficult to avoid exposures compared to other diseases such as HIV or Hep C. Of course the other major concern is the fatality rate if you do contract Ebola.

But even though exposure can occur in more "everyday" interaction with others and the environment the chance of contracting the virus with an exposure to the virus is relatively low, and the majority of exposures with the potential to transmit the disease don't.

Usually when we're talking about how contagious something is we refer to what's called the "Ro", which refers to the number of people an infected person will spread the disease to. Ebola's "Ro" is one of the lowest of all diseases.

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