COVID-19 and Other Pandemics | Anarchy in the USA

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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

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The Oligarch of Obamebola?
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
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Zack Morris
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Re: Ebola fears

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Private hospitals are setting up death panels. No, not the fake Obamacare death panels, but actual death panels where doctors refuse to treat Ebola patients due to the risk. If you catch Ebola, you'd better hope you don't live near one of these privately operated hospital chains! Save us, Obama!
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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Zack Morris wrote:Private hospitals are setting up death panels. No, not the fake Obamacare death panels, but actual death panels where doctors refuse to treat Ebola patients due to the risk. If you catch Ebola, you'd better hope you don't live near one of these privately operated hospital chains! Save us, Obama!
Nice snake oil Zack Morris. That your own special blend? Actually Obama's CDC said that Ebola patients would be treated in the 4 hospitals that have level 4 treatment facilities for contagious diseases. All 11 bed will be dedicated to treat Ebola.

Which is rather worrisome since they are all public hospitals.

Like the Hospital Carlos III
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Carlos_III
The Hospital Carlos III is a public hospital in the city of Madrid. It belongs to the Servicio Madrileño de Salud, the health service of the Community of Madrid. It was crested in 1990 from the merger of three previous hospitals, and was established as a center of excellence in research and treatment of infectious diseases.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ction.html
Spanish medical staff refuse to treat Ebola patients amid fears of infection

Carlos III hospital, where seven quarantined cases are being treated, drafts in extra staff after nurses refuse to turn up for shifts

Fiona Govan
By Fiona Govan, Madrid

8:49PM BST 09 Oct 2014

Scared medical staff in Madrid refused to treat possible Ebola patients on Thursday for fear of becoming infected themselves, as the condition of the Spanish nurse who contracted the virus deteriorated further.


The Carlos III hospital, where seven quarantined cases are being treated, has had to draft in extra staff after nurses there refused to turn up for shifts.


“There are members of staff who are cancelling their contracts so that they don’t have to enter [rooms with possible Ebola patients],” said Elvira Gonzalez of the SAE nurses union


Although no formal absentee figures have been released, a number of nurses and health technicians have formally resigned from their posts, while others have made excuses to avoid going into work.


“A lot of people are calling in sick,” one member of staff told El Pais newspaper. “They are saying they have period pains, or that they feel dizzy. People are anxious and can’t be expected to work like that.”


Staff members who have agreed to work in the hospital’s isolation ward are receiving psychological counselling.

The row came as Maria Teresa Romero Ramos, the Spanish nurse who is the first person to contract Ebola outside Africa, suffered multiple organ failure and was put on a ventilator.

“Her clinical situation has deteriorated,” said a spokesman for the Carlos III hospital where Mrs Ramos, 44, was being treated, while her brother informed reporters that she had been intubated.

“We don’t have great hopes for her,” Jose Ramon Romero Ramos said in an interview with local television.

Madrid regional president Ignacio Gonzalez told parliament Mrs Ramos “is at this time very ill and her life is at serious risk as a consequence of the virus.”

Meanwhile, one of the doctors who treated Mrs Ramos when she was admitted to her local hospital in Alcorcon on Monday, gave a damning account of the failure to isolate Mrs Romero and protect health workers from infection in an open letter to health chiefs.

Dr Juan Manuel Parra Ramirez, who voluntarily admitted himself into quarantine on Wednesday evening fearing that he too had been infected, said it wasn’t until hours after he first requested “immediate action” to isolate her that she was finally transferred to the specialist unit equipped to deal with Ebola patients at Carlos III hospital.

He also said the full protective suit he was issued with had left his bare skin exposed. “At all times the sleeves were too short,” he wrote.

While the European Commission asked for a fuller explanation as to how Mrs Romero’s infection happened in a high-security ward Madrid health chiefs laid the blame for her becoming infected on “human error” and insisted that procedures to avoid contagion remained intact.

“It’s obvious that the patient herself has recognised that she did not strictly follow the protocol,” Ruben Moreno, spokesman for health for the ruling Popular Party.

Mrs Romero has admitted that she most likely became infected with Ebola after accidentally touching her face while removing the biohazard protection suit after a visit to the room of the missionary priest, Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died on September 25.

Four people were put into quarantine on Thursday, bringing the total number of those hospitalised, including the nurse’s husband and several doctors who treated her, to seven. A further 84 people were being monitored in their own homes.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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“We are still in ascendancy on this thing,” she said. “There is no slowdown.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola- ... er-n233621
Pentagon Dispatches From West Africa Paint Stark Portrait of Ebola Epicenter

By Robert Windrem

Corruption, distrust of outsiders that has led to murder and a thriving black market in blood are adding to the chaos at the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and challenging efforts to stop the disease at its source, according to a series of daily U.S. military dispatches reviewed by NBC News.

Six weeks’ worth of summaries of the crisis by officers assigned to Operation United Assistance, the Pentagon’s aid program, document problems like the loss of front-line medical workers and increasing concerns about the food supply and civil unrest in the hardest hit region.

The unclassified reports reviewed by NBC News, dating from mid-September through this week, paint a stark picture of the many challenges facing authorities at Ground Zero of the epidemic. Each contains maps showing the spread of the disease, fresh intelligence and news -- even weather reports and analysis of how it might affect the delivery of assistance.

While the reports indicate progress is being made in the effort to check Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, they repeatedly state that distrust of national governments among villagers in affected areas is hindering the effort. Aid workers and members of the news media are regularly intimidated, and, in at least one case, a group of health-care workers and reporters were killed in Guinea, according to a Sept. 19 report.

"The group was stoned and found hidden in the village’s septic tank," according to the dispatch, which did not say how many people died in the incident. "The reason for the killings is unknown. It is likely the villagers murdered the group fearing they would be diagnosed with Ebola and removed to quarantine. Press reports (indicate) many locals have the rationale that a diagnosis will result in certain death or being taken away from their families. The onset of civil unrest is sure to increase as fear spreads and the international community endures roadblocks in bringing awareness to the population."

John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and now director of the African program at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that distrust of government is endemic in Africa, but “particularly acute in those three states because they have had civil wars in recent years.”

He also said that a sizable portion of the population in the rural areas live in a “premodern and prescientific environment,” which adds to their fear and mistrust.

A health worker checks the temperature of African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka as he arrives in Guinea's capital, Conakry, on Friday.

“Locals say they aren’t going to adhere to quarantine because they believe Ebola is caused by witchcraft,” he said. “… In cases like that, all the science is fundamentally irrelevant.”

Another report, dated Oct. 18, indicates that burial teams dispatched by the governments to safely dispose of the bodies of Ebola victims also have been subjected to intimidation -- and fallen into corruption schemes.

"Traditional burial practices – including washing and dressing the body for burial, touching the body at the funeral, and communal meals at funerals – expose individuals to the virus and have facilitated the transmission of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,” it said.

"Reports have surfaced in Liberia of burial management teams accepting bribes to leave bodies in communities or provide certificates stating the dead did not die from Ebola, and therefore could be buried traditionally. Families reportedly can get dispensations for proper burials, even for Ebola victims, but this requires political connections."

Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the CFR, said the chicanery came to light early in the current epidemic.

“One of the first clues that something was going on was there appeared to be a ridiculously low death rate from Ebola –- a 49 to 51 percent mortality rate,” compared to a rate of between 70 percent and 90 percent of those infected during previous outbreaks, she said. The difference was that Ebola was not being listed as a cause of death, she said.

The Pentagon reports also note that even efforts to use science – in this case, transfusions – in the rural areas are backfiring, citing the black market in blood from outside the Ebola zone, which has become a very valuable commodity, but one that often carries other diseases.

"The use of blood purchased via the black market increases the risk of spreading HIV/AIDS, malaria and other blood-borne diseases,” said a Sept. 23 dispatch. “The spread of derivative diseases has the potential to divert time and resources originally allocated to control Ebola."

Garrett told NBC that no such black market existed before the current Ebola outbreak.

“Before all this happened, the black market in blood was basically zero,” she said, adding that the blood banking system in poorer countries in Africa is “abysmal.” Such a blood black market existed in the region in the 1970s, when it was used to treat malaria, she said, but the AIDS crisis put an end to it.

Health workers from the Liberian Red Cross wear protective gear as they shovel sand, which will be used to absorb fluids emitted from the bodies of Ebola victims, in front of the ELWA 2 Ebola management center in Monrovia on Thursday.

Other reports by the Pentagon team note that while many countries have sent doctors and other medical experts to the region, rural clinics often lack "low-level" local medical staff, many of whom have already died from the virus. Without such staff, other international assistance is "useless," an analyst wrote in an Oct. 10 report. The analyst added that overcrowding and long waits at clinics is leading many with Ebola to forgo medical treatment, likely resulting in an undercount of the number of victims.

"Cases are likely underreported as many affected residents remain untreated and die in their homes due to overcrowded ETUs (emergency treatment units) in Sierra Leone," the report stated.

Exacerbating the situation are strikes and threats of strikes by local health care workers, particularly in Liberia, the reports say. The issues are, not surprisingly, working conditions as well as pay.

A report from Sept. 18 noted that at one Sierra Leone hospital, 38 staff have died and those remaining hadn't been paid in two weeks. Reports on Oct. 10 and 11 noted that even in the capital cities of Monrovia in Liberia and Conakry in Guinea, clinics were facing possible shutdowns, either because of workers walking off the job or the rising death toll among health care professionals.

Growing concerns about the food supply have surfaced more recently.

A report dated Oct. 14 said that 40 percent of all the farms in Sierra Leone have been abandoned as farmers leave affected areas. The same report quoted a U.N. agricultural official as saying unless the situation is reversed, it could lead to "a hunger crisis of epic scale in West Africa."


“If communities begin to migrate due to failing crops, the spread of (Ebola) could accelerate across Liberia and beyond."

Earlier reports noted that the movement of farmers from rural areas to the affected areas cities also could speed the spread of Ebola.

"The loss of crops due to medical fears will further exacerbate the already strained economic conditions and could lead communities to migrate to areas they believe will be able to provide food and water,” said one. “If communities begin to migrate due to failing crops, the spread of (Ebola) could accelerate across Liberia and beyond."

Ebola Death Toll Nears 5,000 Out of More Than 10,000 Cases

Mali's First Ebola Patient, 2-Year-Old Girl, Dies

New York and New Jersey Will Quarantine Ebola Doctors

Those who stay behind also face higher risk of contracting the disease. A Sept. 25 report notes that the "food supply has been scarce, increasing the reliance on potentially infected bush meat. As females are also the predominant preparer of food, this increases their risk of contracting the virus through infected meat."

Already, the reports note, women make up a disproportionate number of Ebola victims in the three countries, accounting for between 55 percent and 75 percent of the dead. In addition to preparing food, women also often prepare bodies of the dead for burial, potentially exposing them to the virus in Ebola deaths.

Follow NBC News Investigations on Twitter and Facebook.

The dedication of medical resources to the Ebola crisis also is triggering an increase in infant mortality, as women are not receiving prenatal care and are delivering babies outside medical facility, said another dispatch.

Another noted that the three countries lack “a coherent plan for orphaned children," whose numbers are rising with the death of their parents, particularly mothers. The lack of such a plan, it said, will like to lead to more looting and violence across the region.

Garrett, the global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that in their totality, the reports make clear that authorities have not yet turned the corner in controlling the Ebola epidemic.

“We are still in ascendancy on this thing,” she said. “There is no slowdown.”
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
Mr. Perfect
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Re: Ebola fears

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Hoosiernorm wrote:Hey where's all the folks to told me that we had to get government out of the way to solve all of our problems?
Where are the folks that said government can solve all our problems.
Censorship isn't necessary
Mr. Perfect
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Re: Ebola fears

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Doc wrote:
Hoosiernorm wrote:Hey where's all the folks to told me that we had to get government out of the way to solve all of our problems?
If you have not noticed government isn't doing so great on Ebola.
Also if you have not noticed the people that told you that aren't anarchists.
There is a time and place for government outlined and limited in a thing called the constitution. You know the thing that the current head of government pretends does not exist?
He and others are into false binaries.
Censorship isn't necessary
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

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The reason the USPHS isn't doing their job is that we don't have a Surgeon General. Senate Republicans have held up Obama's nominee for a year.

It seems the NRA doesn't like his views on firearms.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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Tracking a Serial Killer: Could Ebola Mutate to Become More Deadly?

Why we need to terminate Ebola 2014 before the virus learns too much about us.

A photo of the Ebola virus as seen through a microscope.

The Ebola virus, seen here through a scanning electron microscope, is mutating as cases increase, raising the odds that the virus could become more transmissible.

By David Quammen

National Geographic News

Published October 15, 2014


Forty years ago, Ebola was just the name of a river. It was a small waterway of no particularly sinister character that flowed through northern Zaire, not far from the village hospital where the first known outbreak of a new viral disease had been centered. That river gave its name to the new virus, and now "Ebola" is a global byword for ugly death, misery, and fear of contagion.


The 2014 epidemic of Ebola virus disease in West Africa is unprecedented in scope, and much attention has been focused, rightly, on how it has gotten so badly out of control.

Behind that question are three others, less obvious, more complicated, and crucial to seeing Ebola in a broader context: Where did the virus come from? Where is it going? What's next? We do well to consider these questions even as we react to the daily headlines, urge our leaders to take more deeply committed action, and support the organizations (such as Doctors Without Borders) that are fighting the epidemic so courageously in West Africa.

Where Did It Come From?

The outbreak began in early December, in a village called Meliandou, southeastern Guinea, not far from the borders with both Liberia and Sierra Leone. The first known case was a two-year-old child who died, after fever and vomiting and passing black stool, on December 6. The child's mother died a week later, then a sister and a grandmother, all with symptoms that included fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. Then, by way of caregiving visits or attendance at funerals, the outbreak spread to other villages.

It wasn't until March, three months later, that local officials alerted the Guinean Ministry of Health about these clusters of a strange, lethal disease in the countryside. By then, human-to-human transmission had started to multiply the case count. But tracing linked cases raises the question of ultimate origin. How did that first child get sick?

Ebola virus is a zoonosis, meaning an animal infection transmissible to humans. The animal in which a zoonosis lives its customary existence, discreetly, over the long term, and without causing symptoms, is called a reservoir host. The reservoir host of Ebola virus is still unknown—even after 38 years of efforts to identify it, since the original 1976 outbreak—although one or more kinds of fruit bat, including the hammer-headed bat, are suspects. There are hammer-headed bats in southeastern Guinea. It's possible that somebody killed one for food and brought it to Meliandou, where the child became infected either by direct contact with the bat or by virus passed on the hands of an adult.

Why are these facts and suppositions significant? Because they remind us that Ebola virus abides endemically in the forests of equatorial Africa. It will never be eradicated as long as those forests exist, unless the reservoir host itself is eradicated (not recommended) or cured of the viral infection (not likely possible). The virus may retire into its hiding place for years at a time, but eventually it will return, as a result of some disruptive contact by humans with the reservoir host. Then it will spill over into us again. All thinking and planning about how to defend against Ebola virus disease in the future needs to take account of that reality.

Another puzzling fact about origins is that the West Africa epidemic involves a species of ebolavirus (that's the label for the group, which includes five species) previously known only from outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its close neighbors.

A different species has emerged in Ivory Coast, another West African country, just east of Guinea and Liberia. According to a study published in Science in late August by Stephen K. Gire of Harvard and a long list of co-authors, the virus in West Africa seems to have diverged from its lineage in Central Africa just within the past decade. It somehow leapfrogged over or around the Ivory Coast ebolavirus in order to situate itself in southeastern Guinea. That suggests the unnerving prospect that the Central African ebolavirus (the only one strictly known as Ebola virus) is expanding its range, either by infecting new populations of reservoir hosts or by migrations of those host animals.

One way or another, it has been on the move.


Fruit bats are sold at an outdoor market in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo. The reservoir host of Ebola virus is still unknown, but one or more kinds of fruit bat are suspects.

Where Is It Going?

The virus has also traveled within living human bodies. We know that it went from Liberia to Dallas within the late Thomas Eric Duncan, from Liberia to Nigeria by way of the late Patrick Sawyer, and from Sierra Leone to Spain by way of two Spanish missionary priests, both also now deceased, who were evacuated for treatment.

And it has been carried to Omaha, Atlanta, London, Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Oslo within infected people, mostly health and aid workers brought home to be treated.

But just as worrisome as the virus's geographic spread is its journey across the evolutionary landscape. Is it mutating in ways that could make it more dangerous to humans? Is there any chance that it might become transmissible through the air, like the flu, the SARS virus, or a common cold?

Although Ebola becoming airborne is the ultimate disease nightmare, that seems to be almost vanishingly improbable, for reasons well put in a recent article in the Washington Post by Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. What is now a fluid-borne virus attaching itself to cells lining the circulatory system can't easily change into one that targets the tiny air sacs in the lungs.

"That's a genetic leap in the realm of science fiction," Garrett wrote.

The virus probably will not go airborne, but it could conceivably increase its Darwinian fitness in other ways, becoming more subtle and elusive.

The genetic study by Gire and his colleagues (five of whom were dead of Ebola by the time their study appeared) found 341 mutations as of late August, some of which are significant enough to change the bug's functional identity. The higher the case count in West Africa goes, the more chances for further mutations, and therefore the greater possibility that the virus might adapt somehow to become more transmissible-perhaps by becoming less pathogenic, sickening or killing its victims more slowly and thereby leaving them more time to infect others.

That's why, the Gire group wrote, we need to stop this thing everywhere as soon as possible. Future spillovers of Ebola are bound to occur, but those freshly emerged strains of the virus, direct from the reservoir host, won't contain any adaptive mutations that the West Africa strain is acquiring now.

We need to terminate Ebola 2014 before the virus learns too much about us.

Kumba Conde cries after her sister Marie, 14, died from Ebola in Koundony, Guinea, in July 2014.
Kumba Conde cries after her sister Marie, 14, died from Ebola in Koundony, Guinea, in July 2014. The current outbreak began in December 2013 in southeastern Guinea, not far from the borders with both Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Photograph by Samuel Aranda, The New York Times/Redux

What's Next?

No one knows, of course, how much worse the epidemic in West Africa will get. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report, in late September, projecting that under the worst-case scenario there could be 1.4 million cases by early next year. The World Health Organization said Tuesday that new cases could rise to 10,000 per week by December, ten times the rate of the previous month. And the World Bank has warned that costs of the epidemic could reach $32.6 billion, which would be an economic catastrophe for the three West African countries that would compound their health catastrophes.

Will the epidemic spread more widely, igniting outbreaks in other parts of the world? We hope not. Will it turn up as additional cases, here and there, among people who have traveled from West Africa unaware, as Thomas Eric Duncan was reportedly unaware, that they were infected before boarding the airplane? Probably.

What's the best way to limit such occurrences? Rigorous screening at airports, quarantine for travelers who test positive, travel restrictions, or perhaps total bans on commercial flights arriving from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone-these measures should help. The most important and effective thing we can do, though, is to provide all possible assistance toward ending the outbreak where it began, in West Africa.

The world won't be free of Ebola 2014 until West Africa is free of it. Even severe restrictions, barring entry to anyone traveling from West Africa, would not make it impossible for the virus to get into America, or Europe, or wherever. To understand why, consider what I call the Nairobi Tabletop Scenario.

Imagine a doctor who departs from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, feeling fine, on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya's capital, in East Africa. In transit he begins suffering a headache-nothing terrible yet, just discomfort, but it's the first hint of Ebola. At the Nairobi airport, in a café, the Liberian doctor coughs onto a table. Five minutes later, an American businessman touches that table. He rubs his eye. He departs to Singapore and spends three days there, in good health, discussing finance for his project in Kenya. Then he flies home to Los Angeles. To the screeners at LAX, he is an American businessman arriving from Singapore, with no history of recent travel in West Africa. But he's now infected with Ebola, carrying it into the United States.

How do you defend against the Nairobi Tabletop Scenario? By doing everything possible to end the epidemic in West Africa, and thereby to ensure that the Liberian doctor is healthy when he visits Nairobi.

Our safety against the menace of killer viruses can never be an absolute safety. There are too many of them, lurking within reservoir hosts amid distant forests or closer to home-viruses such as Nipah in Bangladesh, Marburg in Uganda, Lassa in West Africa, Sin Nombre virus in the American West, all the new influenzas coming out of southeastern Asia, plus many others that haven't yet been identified and named.

And there are too many of us humans, sharing the landscape with the reservoir hosts and with one another. We are too interconnected by air travel and transport. Viruses are simple organisms but well-adapted to the modern world. This year it's Ebola, devastating and scary. Next year it will be something else.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... contagion/
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
Mr. Perfect
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Re: Ebola fears

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Nonc Hilaire wrote:The reason the USPHS isn't doing their job is that we don't have a Surgeon General. Senate Republicans have held up Obama's nominee for a year.

It seems the NRA doesn't like his views on firearms.
Are you sure it's not the Koch Brothers.
Censorship isn't necessary
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Mr. Perfect wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:The reason the USPHS isn't doing their job is that we don't have a Surgeon General. Senate Republicans have held up Obama's nominee for a year.

It seems the NRA doesn't like his views on firearms.
Are you sure it's not the Koch Brothers.
Yup, I'm positive. It was well reported when the nomination was made.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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Nonc Hilaire wrote:
Mr. Perfect wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:The reason the USPHS isn't doing their job is that we don't have a Surgeon General. Senate Republicans have held up Obama's nominee for a year.

It seems the NRA doesn't like his views on firearms.
Are you sure it's not the Koch Brothers.
Yup, I'm positive. It was well reported when the nomination was made.
Your point is moot There is an acting Surgeon General.

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/about/bio ... biosg.html

The real problem here is that the Obama Admin has not been taking Ebola seriously.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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If he really believed he did nothing wrong then why did he lie?
New York City doctor with Ebola reportedly lied about his movements in city


Published October 29, 2014
·FoxNews.com
The New York City doctor who became infected with the Ebola virus last week initially lied to health officials about his movements around the city after he returned from treating victims of the disease in West Africa, according to a published report.

The New York Post, citing law enforcement sources, reported that Dr. Craig Spencer initially told investigators that he had self-quarantined in his Harlem apartment. According to the paper, Spencer's story fell apart after investigators checked his credit-card statement and information from his Metrocard.

Spencer, 33, returned to New York from Guinea on Oct. 17 and was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center on the morning of Oct. 23 with fatigue, nausea, and a 100-degree fever. In the intervening period, he traveled on three of the city's most heavily-trafficked subway lines, visited the High Line park and a Greenwich Village restaurant in lower Manhattan, and went for a three-mile run before going bowling at an alley in Brooklyn the day before he was hospitalized.

Spencer didn't admit the extent of his travels until a New York police officer "got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department," the Post quoted a source as saying.

The doctor had spent the month prior to his return treating people with the deadly virus as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders in West Africa. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that Spencer's condition remains serious but stable. No infection has been found in his fiancee but she remains under quarantine at the couple's Harlem home. No one else has been reported as infected, and city health officials said New Yorkers should not be alarmed about contracting the disease.

More than 4,900 Ebola deaths have been reported this year during the current epidemic, nearly all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/2 ... s-in-city/
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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Internal State Dept. Memo pushes for non US citizens with Ebola to be evacuated to the US.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interac ... -policies/
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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Image
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Ebola fears

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Typhoon wrote:Image
In a perfect world I would agree with you CS>However we don't live in a perfect world and the CDC at this time seems to be least perfect of all when it comes to giving out correct info on Ebola.
CDC admits droplets from a sneeze could spread Ebola


By Bob Fredericks

October 29, 2014 | 4:48am
Modal Trigger
CDC admits droplets from a sneeze could spread Ebola

Ebola's 'science': Why it's so hard to manage

Ebola is a lot easier to catch than health officials have admitted — and can be contracted by contact with a doorknob contaminated by a sneeze from an infected person an hour or more before, experts told The Post Tuesday.

“If you are sniffling and sneezing, you produce microorganisms that can get on stuff in a room. If people touch them, they could be” infected, said Dr. Meryl Nass, of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, DC.

Nass pointed to a poster the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly released on its Web site saying the deadly virus can be spread through “droplets.”

“Droplet spread happens when germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person,” the poster states.

Nass slammed the contradiction.

“The CDC said it doesn’t spread at all by air, then Friday they came out with this poster,” she said. “They admit that these particles or droplets may land on objects such as doorknobs and that Ebola can be transmitted that way.”

Dr. Rossi Hassad, a professor of epidemiology at Mercy College, said droplets could remain active for up to a day.

“A shorter duration for dry surfaces like a table or doorknob, and longer durations in a moist, damp environment,” Hassad said.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/cdc-admits ... ead-ebola/
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

OH BTW

http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/ap- ... 0887e728e0
AP report: US health care system not ready for Ebola

Ebola preparedness
Associated Press

Posted: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 8:13 pm | Updated: 11:14 pm, Wed Oct 29, 2014.

Associated Press |

The U.S. health care apparatus is so unprepared and short on resources to deal with the deadly Ebola virus that even small clusters of cases could overwhelm parts of the system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network.

Experts broadly agree that a widespread outbreak across the country is extremely unlikely, but they also concur that it is impossible to predict with certainty, since previous Ebola epidemics have been confined to remote areas of Africa.

And Ebola is not the only possible danger that causes concern. Experts say other deadly infectious diseases — ranging from airborne viruses such as SARS, to an unforeseen new strain of the flu, to more exotic plagues like Lassa fever — could crash the health care system.

To assess America's ability to deal with a major outbreak, the AP examined multiple indicators of readiness, including training, manpower, funding, emergency room shortcomings, supplies, infection control and protection for health care workers. AP reporters also interviewed dozens of top experts in those fields.

The results were worrisome. Supplies, training and funds are all limited. And there are concerns about whether health care workers would refuse to treat Ebola victims.

Following the death of a patient with Ebola in a Texas hospital and the subsequent infection of two of his nurses, medical officials and politicians are scurrying to fix preparedness shortcomings. But remedies cannot be implemented overnight. And fixes will be very expensive.

Dr. Jeffrey S. Duchin, chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said it will take time to ramp up readiness, including ordering the right protective equipment and training workers to use it.

"Not every facility is going to be able to obtain the same level of readiness," he said.

AP reporters frequently heard assessments that generally, the smaller the facility, the less prepared, less funded, less staffed and less trained it is to fight Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases.

"The place I worry is: Are most small hospitals adequately prepared?" said Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University specialist in health care quality and safety. "It clearly depends on the hospital."

He said better staff training is the most important element of preparation for any U.S. Ebola outbreak. He believes a small group of personnel at each hospital needs to know the best procedures because sick people are likely to appear first at medium-size or small medical centers, which are much more common than big ones.

Jha pointed to stepped-up training in recent weeks but wondered: "Will it be enough? We'll find out."

A high ranking official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that the government does not expect every hospital in America to be able to treat an Ebola patient, but "every hospital has to be able to recognize, isolate and use the highest level of personal protective equipment until they can transfer that patient."

"The moment anyone has an Ebola patient, (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) will have a team on the ground within a matter of hours to help that hospital," Dr. Nicole Lurie, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said Wednesday. She acknowledged "some spot shortages of personal protective equipment" but said many kinds "'are still pretty widely available" and that manufacturers are ramping up production.

Overtaxed system

Without any stress caused by Ebola cases, the emergency care system in the U.S. is already overextended. In its 2014 national report card, the American College of Emergency Physicians gives the country a D-plus grade in emergency care, asserting the system is in "near-crisis," overwhelmed even by the usual demands of care.

According to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, patients spend an average of 4 1/2 hours in emergency rooms of U.S. hospitals before being admitted. The data also show that 2 percent of patients leave before even being seen.

In a CDC study on hospital preparedness for emergency response in 2008, the latest data available, at least a third of hospitals had to divert ambulances because their emergency rooms were at capacity.

Add an influx of people with Ebola, along with those who fear they might have the disease, and the most vulnerable segments of the health care system could wobble.

"Even though there have been only a couple cases, many health systems are already overwhelmed," said Dr. Kenrad Nelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former president of the American Epidemiological Society, referring to new federal procedures for screening, tracking and treating the disease and people who are exposed.

He said that if a major flu outbreak also occurred, "it would be really tough."

"We're really going to have to step up our game if we are going to deal with hemorrhagic fevers in this country," said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert and professor at Georgetown University.

How big of an outbreak would it take to overpower the U.S. health care system?

"It would have to be only a mediocre outbreak," said Gostin. "The hospitals will be flooded with the 'worried-well.' People with influenza or other infections that are not Ebola could jam up the public health system."

Uneven preparedness

National surveys have repeatedly found that while most health care providers are willing to care for people with dangerous diseases like Ebola, they generally feel unprepared to do so.

This summer, health care research group Black Book Rankings sought opinions from hospital administrators, doctors and nurses at all U.S. hospitals and health care facilities about infection control, emergency planning and disaster readiness regarding Ebola. Nearly 1,000 personnel at 389 facilities, including 282 hospitals, participated.

Personnel at almost all hospitals in the Black Book survey said their facilities were not capable of quarantining large numbers of people possibly exposed to Ebola.

Nearly three-quarters of emergency doctors and four in five infection specialists at large hospitals felt their facilities were not adequately prepared to deal with Ebola patients.

Hospital administrators and medical staff had widely divergent perspectives on their facilities' ability to treat the disease. Among medical staff at big hospitals, nearly all who participated in the survey believed their hospitals were not adequately staffed and trained for Ebola patients. About two in three of administrative and financial staff shared that worry.

Among emergency nurses, nearly all worried about the impact of emergency department crowding on the ability to deal with Ebola patients; just more than half of administrative and financial managers felt that way.

Other striking results: Personnel at only 1 percent of surveyed acute care hospitals said they can handle more than 10 Ebola patients at once. That was true at just about one-quarter of academic medical centers.

Supply shortages

Shortages abound, beginning with the fact there are only four specialized containment care facilities set up to isolate and treat patients with Ebola and other very dangerous diseases.

In any sizable outbreak, those dozen or so beds would fill up very quickly.

Appropriate equipment could be in short supply for midsize and smaller hospitals, and even some larger ones.

CDC estimates from 2008, the most recent available national figures, put the average number of protective suits with powered air-purifying respirators per hospital at 10. The average hospital had six mechanical ventilators, which could be needed for Ebola patients with breathing problems.

A recent nationwide survey of state public health departments suggests not all are ready to ramp up quickly.

The 2013 National Health Security Preparedness Index, carried out by CDC in partnership with the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, ranks state health departments on a scale of 1 to 10 on numerous emergency measures. In the category of "surge management," the average score was 5.8.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, says some emergency departments are so consumed by the typical number of patients that a surge of any kind can overwhelm them.

With an Ebola outbreak, he said, "they're not just getting a surge of patients, they're getting a surge of patients with special needs."

The AP review found evidence that the federal emergency public health network, which is designed to step in to prevent shortages of medicine and medical supplies while local response capacity ramps up, is failing to perform as planned.

Since 2007, Ebola has been identified as a potential threat requiring priority attention under the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, which coordinates the development, stockpiling and dispensing of drugs during a massive disease outbreak or to protect against chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has spent nearly $500 million on Ebola research since 2003. At least another $269 million has been spent on Ebola research under a Defense Department chemical and biological defense program. Some of that funding was spent on vaccine research and better diagnostic testing.

But in October 2011, the Government Accountability Office reported that an anticipated budget for drug acquisitions still had not been produced. Without clear guidance about government funding, pharmaceutical and other medical companies might not want to invest millions of dollars to develop vaccines that are less lucrative than other drugs they could make, the report underscored.

The GAO issued another critical report in December 2013, faulting the program for its "almost 10-year efforts and the continuing lack of available countermeasures."

None of that stopped a top federal preparedness official from telling Congress in February that the program is "a model for innovative governance and accountable decision-making."

In fact, the feds' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority did not fund its first investment in an experimental Ebola treatment until this year because that program only supports potential treatments in a later phase of development.

HHS said a relatively modest $25 million has gone to study ZMapp, an experimental drug in short supply that has been provided to numerous infected Ebola patients. Lurie acknowledged Wednesday that funding limitations had contributed to some of the delay in vaccine development.

Given that there is no Ebola vaccine, the government does not have a stockpile of disease-specific drugs on hand, as it has had for pandemic flu.

Also, as of last week, there were no national emergency stockpiles of the waterproof gowns, surgical hoods, full face shields, boot covers or other gear that the CDC recommends for treating Ebola patients.

Training worries

Shortcomings in training and preparedness for health care workers are pronounced, and chronic.

More than half of working registered nurses reported they neither received nor provided emergency training during the previous year, according to a study HHS published in 2010 using 2008 data. Of those registered nurses who did receive or provide emergency training, 44 percent felt somewhat or not at all prepared.

Regarding epidemic response planning, a third of hospitals had no plans for alternate care areas with beds, staffing and equipment, according to a study published in 2011 by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, again based on 2008 data.

Only half had priority-setting plans to get the most use from a limited supply of ventilators. More than a third had no plans for on-site, large-capacity morgues, and a third had no plans for staff absences as a result of the personal or family impact of any epidemic.

A recent survey of 2,500 members of the local health officials' association found that only one in three local health departments had participated in full-scale emergency preparedness exercises or drills.

There is great inconsistency in the frequency of emergency drills. According to the Black Book report, only a quarter of academic medical centers had epidemic or biological warfare drills in the previous year, but just 4 percent of medium-size hospitals ran such exercises, and no small hospitals did.

Kristi L. Koenig, director of the Center for Disaster Medical Sciences at the University of California-Irvine, said every hospital needs to have some basic level of preparation to manage the initial treatment. But she suggested the best solution is to increase the number of specialized biocontainment centers.

Such centers would help keep workers safe and properly prepared, not just for Ebola but also for other very dangerous diseases like SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome — or influenza.

Abandonment fears

Like nuclear radiation, the Ebola virus, which causes massive internal bleeding and organ failure, touches on deep human fears of a fatal invisible menace. Those fears are shared not only by patients, but also by some professionals who treat them.

In the Black Book Ebola readiness survey released in August, some medical staff said they believed they would stay away from work to shun Ebola patients admitted to their hospitals.

Among isolation care doctors and nurses, 14 percent said they would call in sick, and one in four critical care and emergency staff said the same. Among the isolation care staff, 17 percent said they wouldn't work near Ebola patients; half of critical care and emergency staff said the same.

"I think that's a very valid concern," said Dr. Melinda Moore, a scientist at Pardee RAND graduate school who has worked as a global health expert for the CDC. "It's been described in literature and studies."

She said training on safe Ebola treatment and education for health care workers is the antidote.

Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, called the survey findings troubling and contended they show that many medical staffers "are not confident in the infection control procedures at their hospital."
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
User avatar
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Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2012 6:10 pm

Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

OH BTW

http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/ap- ... 0887e728e0
AP report: US health care system not ready for Ebola

Ebola preparedness
Associated Press

Posted: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 8:13 pm | Updated: 11:14 pm, Wed Oct 29, 2014.

Associated Press |

The U.S. health care apparatus is so unprepared and short on resources to deal with the deadly Ebola virus that even small clusters of cases could overwhelm parts of the system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network.

Experts broadly agree that a widespread outbreak across the country is extremely unlikely, but they also concur that it is impossible to predict with certainty, since previous Ebola epidemics have been confined to remote areas of Africa.

And Ebola is not the only possible danger that causes concern. Experts say other deadly infectious diseases — ranging from airborne viruses such as SARS, to an unforeseen new strain of the flu, to more exotic plagues like Lassa fever — could crash the health care system.

To assess America's ability to deal with a major outbreak, the AP examined multiple indicators of readiness, including training, manpower, funding, emergency room shortcomings, supplies, infection control and protection for health care workers. AP reporters also interviewed dozens of top experts in those fields.

The results were worrisome. Supplies, training and funds are all limited. And there are concerns about whether health care workers would refuse to treat Ebola victims.

Following the death of a patient with Ebola in a Texas hospital and the subsequent infection of two of his nurses, medical officials and politicians are scurrying to fix preparedness shortcomings. But remedies cannot be implemented overnight. And fixes will be very expensive.

Dr. Jeffrey S. Duchin, chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said it will take time to ramp up readiness, including ordering the right protective equipment and training workers to use it.

"Not every facility is going to be able to obtain the same level of readiness," he said.

AP reporters frequently heard assessments that generally, the smaller the facility, the less prepared, less funded, less staffed and less trained it is to fight Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases.

"The place I worry is: Are most small hospitals adequately prepared?" said Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University specialist in health care quality and safety. "It clearly depends on the hospital."

He said better staff training is the most important element of preparation for any U.S. Ebola outbreak. He believes a small group of personnel at each hospital needs to know the best procedures because sick people are likely to appear first at medium-size or small medical centers, which are much more common than big ones.

Jha pointed to stepped-up training in recent weeks but wondered: "Will it be enough? We'll find out."

A high ranking official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that the government does not expect every hospital in America to be able to treat an Ebola patient, but "every hospital has to be able to recognize, isolate and use the highest level of personal protective equipment until they can transfer that patient."

"The moment anyone has an Ebola patient, (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) will have a team on the ground within a matter of hours to help that hospital," Dr. Nicole Lurie, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said Wednesday. She acknowledged "some spot shortages of personal protective equipment" but said many kinds "'are still pretty widely available" and that manufacturers are ramping up production.

Overtaxed system

Without any stress caused by Ebola cases, the emergency care system in the U.S. is already overextended. In its 2014 national report card, the American College of Emergency Physicians gives the country a D-plus grade in emergency care, asserting the system is in "near-crisis," overwhelmed even by the usual demands of care.

According to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, patients spend an average of 4 1/2 hours in emergency rooms of U.S. hospitals before being admitted. The data also show that 2 percent of patients leave before even being seen.

In a CDC study on hospital preparedness for emergency response in 2008, the latest data available, at least a third of hospitals had to divert ambulances because their emergency rooms were at capacity.

Add an influx of people with Ebola, along with those who fear they might have the disease, and the most vulnerable segments of the health care system could wobble.

"Even though there have been only a couple cases, many health systems are already overwhelmed," said Dr. Kenrad Nelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former president of the American Epidemiological Society, referring to new federal procedures for screening, tracking and treating the disease and people who are exposed.

He said that if a major flu outbreak also occurred, "it would be really tough."

"We're really going to have to step up our game if we are going to deal with hemorrhagic fevers in this country," said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert and professor at Georgetown University.

How big of an outbreak would it take to overpower the U.S. health care system?

"It would have to be only a mediocre outbreak," said Gostin. "The hospitals will be flooded with the 'worried-well.' People with influenza or other infections that are not Ebola could jam up the public health system."

Uneven preparedness

National surveys have repeatedly found that while most health care providers are willing to care for people with dangerous diseases like Ebola, they generally feel unprepared to do so.

This summer, health care research group Black Book Rankings sought opinions from hospital administrators, doctors and nurses at all U.S. hospitals and health care facilities about infection control, emergency planning and disaster readiness regarding Ebola. Nearly 1,000 personnel at 389 facilities, including 282 hospitals, participated.

Personnel at almost all hospitals in the Black Book survey said their facilities were not capable of quarantining large numbers of people possibly exposed to Ebola.

Nearly three-quarters of emergency doctors and four in five infection specialists at large hospitals felt their facilities were not adequately prepared to deal with Ebola patients.

Hospital administrators and medical staff had widely divergent perspectives on their facilities' ability to treat the disease. Among medical staff at big hospitals, nearly all who participated in the survey believed their hospitals were not adequately staffed and trained for Ebola patients. About two in three of administrative and financial staff shared that worry.

Among emergency nurses, nearly all worried about the impact of emergency department crowding on the ability to deal with Ebola patients; just more than half of administrative and financial managers felt that way.

Other striking results: Personnel at only 1 percent of surveyed acute care hospitals said they can handle more than 10 Ebola patients at once. That was true at just about one-quarter of academic medical centers.

Supply shortages

Shortages abound, beginning with the fact there are only four specialized containment care facilities set up to isolate and treat patients with Ebola and other very dangerous diseases.

In any sizable outbreak, those dozen or so beds would fill up very quickly.

Appropriate equipment could be in short supply for midsize and smaller hospitals, and even some larger ones.

CDC estimates from 2008, the most recent available national figures, put the average number of protective suits with powered air-purifying respirators per hospital at 10. The average hospital had six mechanical ventilators, which could be needed for Ebola patients with breathing problems.

A recent nationwide survey of state public health departments suggests not all are ready to ramp up quickly.

The 2013 National Health Security Preparedness Index, carried out by CDC in partnership with the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, ranks state health departments on a scale of 1 to 10 on numerous emergency measures. In the category of "surge management," the average score was 5.8.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, says some emergency departments are so consumed by the typical number of patients that a surge of any kind can overwhelm them.

With an Ebola outbreak, he said, "they're not just getting a surge of patients, they're getting a surge of patients with special needs."

The AP review found evidence that the federal emergency public health network, which is designed to step in to prevent shortages of medicine and medical supplies while local response capacity ramps up, is failing to perform as planned.

Since 2007, Ebola has been identified as a potential threat requiring priority attention under the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, which coordinates the development, stockpiling and dispensing of drugs during a massive disease outbreak or to protect against chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has spent nearly $500 million on Ebola research since 2003. At least another $269 million has been spent on Ebola research under a Defense Department chemical and biological defense program. Some of that funding was spent on vaccine research and better diagnostic testing.

But in October 2011, the Government Accountability Office reported that an anticipated budget for drug acquisitions still had not been produced. Without clear guidance about government funding, pharmaceutical and other medical companies might not want to invest millions of dollars to develop vaccines that are less lucrative than other drugs they could make, the report underscored.

The GAO issued another critical report in December 2013, faulting the program for its "almost 10-year efforts and the continuing lack of available countermeasures."

None of that stopped a top federal preparedness official from telling Congress in February that the program is "a model for innovative governance and accountable decision-making."

In fact, the feds' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority did not fund its first investment in an experimental Ebola treatment until this year because that program only supports potential treatments in a later phase of development.

HHS said a relatively modest $25 million has gone to study ZMapp, an experimental drug in short supply that has been provided to numerous infected Ebola patients. Lurie acknowledged Wednesday that funding limitations had contributed to some of the delay in vaccine development.

Given that there is no Ebola vaccine, the government does not have a stockpile of disease-specific drugs on hand, as it has had for pandemic flu.

Also, as of last week, there were no national emergency stockpiles of the waterproof gowns, surgical hoods, full face shields, boot covers or other gear that the CDC recommends for treating Ebola patients.

Training worries

Shortcomings in training and preparedness for health care workers are pronounced, and chronic.

More than half of working registered nurses reported they neither received nor provided emergency training during the previous year, according to a study HHS published in 2010 using 2008 data. Of those registered nurses who did receive or provide emergency training, 44 percent felt somewhat or not at all prepared.

Regarding epidemic response planning, a third of hospitals had no plans for alternate care areas with beds, staffing and equipment, according to a study published in 2011 by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, again based on 2008 data.

Only half had priority-setting plans to get the most use from a limited supply of ventilators. More than a third had no plans for on-site, large-capacity morgues, and a third had no plans for staff absences as a result of the personal or family impact of any epidemic.

A recent survey of 2,500 members of the local health officials' association found that only one in three local health departments had participated in full-scale emergency preparedness exercises or drills.

There is great inconsistency in the frequency of emergency drills. According to the Black Book report, only a quarter of academic medical centers had epidemic or biological warfare drills in the previous year, but just 4 percent of medium-size hospitals ran such exercises, and no small hospitals did.

Kristi L. Koenig, director of the Center for Disaster Medical Sciences at the University of California-Irvine, said every hospital needs to have some basic level of preparation to manage the initial treatment. But she suggested the best solution is to increase the number of specialized biocontainment centers.

Such centers would help keep workers safe and properly prepared, not just for Ebola but also for other very dangerous diseases like SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome — or influenza.

Abandonment fears

Like nuclear radiation, the Ebola virus, which causes massive internal bleeding and organ failure, touches on deep human fears of a fatal invisible menace. Those fears are shared not only by patients, but also by some professionals who treat them.

In the Black Book Ebola readiness survey released in August, some medical staff said they believed they would stay away from work to shun Ebola patients admitted to their hospitals.

Among isolation care doctors and nurses, 14 percent said they would call in sick, and one in four critical care and emergency staff said the same. Among the isolation care staff, 17 percent said they wouldn't work near Ebola patients; half of critical care and emergency staff said the same.

"I think that's a very valid concern," said Dr. Melinda Moore, a scientist at Pardee RAND graduate school who has worked as a global health expert for the CDC. "It's been described in literature and studies."

She said training on safe Ebola treatment and education for health care workers is the antidote.

Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, called the survey findings troubling and contended they show that many medical staffers "are not confident in the infection control procedures at their hospital."
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10 ... ruly-scary
Why It's OK To Worry About Ebola, And What's Truly Scary
October 30, 201410:58 AM ET
Nancy Shute
A protester outside the White House demands a halt to all flights to the United States from West Africa.

A protester outside the White House demands a halt to all flights to the United States from West Africa.
Mladen Antonov /AFP/Getty Images

Public health types are getting increasingly annoyed with people freaking out about Ebola in the United States, from governors to the general public. It's easy to see why; when I heard a swim coach was getting questions from parents worried that their children might get Ebola from the pool water, it was hard not to cue the eye roll.

On the other hand, I suspect I'm not the only person whose husband asked her to buy chlorine bleach and gloves the next time I went to the store.

Fear of the new, unknown and deadly is normal; it's what prompts us to act to protect ourselves. The question is, how do we get from misplaced fears, like Ebola in the swimming pool, to the right kind of worry?

To find out, I called up Peter Sandman, a crisis communication consultant who's been working on how people and government officials respond to disease outbreaks for decades, including SARS and H1N1 flu.

So are we idiots for being worried about Ebola in the pool?

It's certainly true in my judgment that the long-term risk to Americans isn't in the high school swimming pool. It isn't in New York City and it isn't in Dallas and it isn't the debate about whether we quarantine or isolate or self-monitor or actively monitor returning volunteers. It's not any of that.

It's in whether we can get some control over what's going on in West Africa, whether we can get the epidemic under control. And it's in whether, if we can't get it under control or until we get it under control, a lot of sparks fly and ignite epidemics in other parts of the world.

There are lots of reasons to think that the United States can put out those sparks. But putting out the spark in Dallas was harder than we thought. It's not easy, it's not cheap, it's not pain-free, but if we have 10 Ebola cases a month we can do it.
Data sources: David Ropeik/Harvard University, National Weather Service, World Health Organization, Northeastern University Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-Technical Systems, National Geographic, United States Census
Goats and Soda
What's My Risk Of Catching Ebola?

But if India has 10 a month, Nigeria has 10 a month, very few people feel they can do it. If the epidemic in West Africa continues, it's hard to imagine that it isn't going to spread. And many of the places it would spread to have health-care systems that won't be able to cope.

It's one thing to argue that we should close the border to travelers from West Africa. But imagine trying to stop people coming in from India. Or worse yet, imagine trying to stop stuff coming in from India. Imagine India in chaos and what that would do to the United States. Now imagine Mexico in chaos. That's what people should be worried about.

(Sandman gets more deeply into pandemic Ebola risks in this column.)

If that's the true risk, why so much commotion over Ebola at home?

When people are coming to terms with a new worry, it's very normal to worry about the wrong things for a while. You personalize it; you localize it; you imagine it's happening here rather than there and now rather than later and to you directly.
How Rational Are Our Fears Of Ebola?

I'd like to see Americans shifting their focus from the risk that's small to the risk that's huge, but thinking the small risk is huge isn't a stupid place to start.

The people who are trying to say stop worrying about Ebola in New York, stop worrying about Ebola at Newark airport, what they're trying to do is lose the teachable moment. If they succeed in getting people to stop worrying, they will regret it, because there's a lot to worry about it.

Calming us down shouldn't be a goal. It would be different if people were panicking in the street.

But the evidence doesn't say that say people are unreasonably, dangerously upset. They're sometimes worried about the right things more than the experts are. I think it's reasonable that when people read that the CDC and WHO say Ebola is characterized by a sudden onset of symptoms to think, doesn't that mean you could be fine at 10 o'clock and vomiting in the subway at noon? Then I think you should stay home. What's irrational about that?

So what you've got are people who are climbing the learning curve, and in some cases learning more quickly than officials — learning that you probably can't get it from someone who doesn't have symptoms, but also leaning that the people who told you that have made some mistakes.

The governors have gotten a lot of heat from the White House and CDC for trying to impose quarantines on returning health care workers. Why is this so controversial?

The public health people are getting it wrong and framing it disingenuously.

There's certainly a case to be made that quarantine is excessive, that active monitoring would be good enough. But it seems to me to be a pretty open debate on whether quarantine is excessive or appropriate, and it depends on how cautious you want to be. Saying that the science proves incontrovertibly that quarantine is wrong — it's bad communication and it's bad science.

The CDC is desperately trying to recruit people to go to West Africa. Nobody asks the obvious question — if you're worried that quarantine is going to hurt recruitment, aren't you biased when you say quarantine isn't necessary?

OK, so we're worried with good reason. What do we do with that fear?

That's a fair question. If a friend said, I buy your argument about sparks, and I'd like to make a contribution, here's what I'd tell them.
A comparison of reproduction numbers, or R0s, for several viruses. R0 is one measure of contagiousness.
Shots - Health News
No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola?

Help put pressure on the government to push harder on vaccine research. They're pushing much harder than they were, but it's way smaller than the Manhattan Project. Get them going on virus time rather than project time.

A second thing I would be urging my friend to is think about is whether you can make a personal contribution or urge a government contribution in the direction of spark suppression.

If the thing that endangers the us most is a dozen epidemics in countries around the developing world, then if you want to volunteer, volunteer to make that less likely. If you want to contribute money, find an organization that wants to do that. Tell the CDC that you don't want 20 CDC experts in New York, you want 20 CDC experts in Nigeria to help get ready to put out the next spark and the one after that and the one after that.

You have reason to worry that your daily life a year or two from now could be significantly worse if Ebola is all over the world. But what you can do in your daily life to protect yourself against Ebola now is absolutely nothing.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Zack Morris
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Zack Morris »

What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by kmich »

Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

kmich wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
I agree with you. Except to say that the Ebola scare in Texas was a great big wake up call for American Medicine. The nurses that got infected are still complaining about lack of preparedness.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Our ER now has two medtechs standing in front of the walk-in door asking everyone if they have traveled recently.
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Our ER now has two medtechs standing in front of the walk-in door asking everyone if they have traveled recently.
I went to the GP the other day. They asked me if I had been to west Africa recently. Then they asked me again a few minutes later.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

kmich wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
Ebola update

[quote]In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science.
The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.[/quote]

Sums it up rather well.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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