The Glade 4.0

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Meh.

Also meh. Dude traveled to the place. Hopefully he didn't give it to a ton of people on the plane.

But since Ebola is fluid based, as long as he didn't lick everyone there or join the mile high club, we should be ok.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I guess there's a reason the CDC is known as "the CDC" and doesn't instead go by its full acronym.

He didn't start showing symptoms until he was already in the US. I think you're only contagious when you have noticeable symptoms.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

USCDCP?

Yeah, its a mouthful.

And as far as symptomatic contagion, that could be a thing. But IANAHCP.

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Holy shitsnacks!

He was misdiagnosed at first, which is really unfortunate. That puts some of the health care workers at slight risk if they were not cautious. Also, it extended the period of time before he got treatment, putting his family at risk and lowering his chances of survival.

There's a pretty low chance of an outbreak, though. It's being closely monitored.

I wonder if he was visiting to escape the epidemic.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /16525649/

Second possible ebola patient now, who had contact with the first.

I had mentioned this in another thread many moons ago that somehow was related to disease and outbreak.

I don't remember the specifics, but my question was to Elmo regarding the tactics and control measures the Government took in the movie Outbreak.

Is a potential outbreak of such a disease here within our borders enough to make the staunchest (is that a word) defenders of personal liberty at all costs, waver in their beliefs? Does the government have the authority and responsibility to quarantine, isolate and otherwise deprive those of liberty who may have been exposed to this disease?

In the movie Outbreak, martial law was declared in a town where the virus Motaba (A play on Ebola) was spreading. If such an outbreak of Ebola were to manifest, should the government act as such and quarantine/isolate a whole town? (Martial law, etc) to prevent the spread?

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

I don't recall that thread, but I know in one of my conversations with Elm on a similar subject years ago, he said that if a planet-killing asteroid was on its way to Earth, and a mandatory tax to pay for a mission to deflect it was the only way to save humanity, he would still oppose that tax. So, yeah, unless Elm has softened his views considerably since then, I'm guessing he would be pretty staunchly opposed to martial law in an Outbreak scenario.

Ebola is not a significant health risk in the United States or most of the developed world. That said, there are a few states in which Ebola going into the wild would be very, very bad. Texas happens to be one of those states, and the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC, and the State of Texas have gloriously mishandled this case and the clean up of the original infected individual's home. The situation has been made worse by incompetent handling by "our world-class health care system." The in-line quote is from Barack Obama. He turned 180 on his position on our health care and called it world-class for the first time ever.

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I'm obviously not Elmo, but I'll respond:

It would be a violation of their rights, but those doing the violating should absolutely do it. Likewise, those whose rights are being violated should absolutely work to infect or otherwise harm those individuals in violation.

I've softened my stance not on the existence of rights, but rather on my own adherence to a code of rights when the world we believe in, largely, does not.

I'm now a firm believer in willfully violating the rights of others, as the law allows, as long as it is to my benefit; and to use the litigious nature of our system, and the resources at my disposal, to bend, as much as I can, the outcome once again to my favor, when I can make even the most minor argument that my rights, or even privileges, have been infringed upon.

In short, I got tired of trying to win the argument, and have become very content to say **** the rest of you (the larger you) where ever our interests don't align.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The reason ebola is not a threat in the US is because we have the mechanisms to diagnose and track the disease. If it were to break out, it would be a problem.

There are rights violations that must be done to combat such a disease. From burial rights, to confiscation of property (sheets, etc), to forced quarantine.

It is not just, but it is necessary. Amends should be made for those who are impacted, and there should be independent oversight of the situation, with an eye on reducing the impact and easing their burden.

That said, if you're going to quarantine a family, you do it IN A PLACE THAT HAS BEEN DECONTAMINATED. You don't force a family to live in an area that is infected. Certainly not because "we didn't get the permit we needed to disinfect the place". Someone should be shot in the face.

Thats a few separate questions. I suppose the easiest way to dis-entangle them would be to start examining what authority the Federal government has according to itself. It lacks the authority to have a CDC so that should be all I need to say.

When one is a known danger to others (say strapped with a ticking time bomb) unfortunately that condition is a danger to others. If you had such a bomb on you and wanted to go into the mall for example it would be the mall's right as property owner to restrict you and everyone around you would have the right to defend themselves from you with force. The same if you are infected and contagious with a deadly disease.

However this doesn't apply if you're in an area where the disease is present and you are corralled by force in order to prevent the spread of disease. If you aren't a threat you get to exercise your rights freely. It's no more justified than is jailing everyone in a bar in which a murder occurred because there is at least 1 murderer present in that population.

That being said Ebola isn't going to something that triggers this kind of response - avian flu would be.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Re Khross' comment about the 'glorious mishandling' of the index case in Texas I wholeheartedly agree.

First, sending the man home from the ER on his initial visit could be just human error and failure of communication, but I believe it is a reflection of the bureaucratic mess that has been imposed in medicine, and indeed in much of the 'first world'. The patient's travel history was noted when he arrived. Either it was entered into the record AFTER the doctor saw him, or it was buried in 40 to 60 pages of mandated documentation in the EHR*. The EHR is designed by administrators and accountants to get the most billing for each 'medical encounter', and for legal protection of the hospital, not for ease of communication of vital information in patient care. What used to be contained in 3 to 4 pages when I was a medical student, now exists in 40 to 50 pages. Heaven help the poor soul who misses the well hidden vital information.

Second, forcing people to be imprisoned in an apartment full of a hot virus, and with no way to wash bedding and clothes.... well that is a recipe to increase the risk for those people to become infected. Many of the hospital workers who became infected did so cleaning up an area the patient was in.

As an unconfirmed aside, the man's stepdaughter, who was one of those people imprisoned in the apartment is a nurse's aid. What I read is that the CDC cleared her to return to work 2 days ago, far before the end of the incubation period. She reportedly refused to go until she completed the incubation period out of concern for her patients and co-workers.

Third, the one way known to aerisolize this virus is to pressure wash an area with body fluids. And that is exactly what they did. So the 'clean up' was done in the worst way possible.


*EHR - Electronic Health Record

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

The Dallas patient is now dead.

I can see how pressure washing with bodily fluids could create a problem.

I also think the daily washings in the patients vomit was a bad idea.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

http://www.defense.gov/news//newsarticle.aspx?id=123359

U.S. Southern Command: "There is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa. If it comes to the Western Hemisphere, many countries have little ability to deal with an outbreak. If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States."

Anyone who thinks that a contagious disease with a (up to) 21 day incubation period can be contained at the border is kidding themselves.

As much as you'd like them to, the Government can't help with this in any meaningful way.

The ignorance shown even by professionals trained in contagious disease containment (see the hospitals and staff in Dallas and Spain) tells me there is no hope of reasonable containment once the disease makes it into the general population.

Children in schools are going to get sick. They are going to bring it home. Many people are going to get very sick. If the treatment options are not adequate, many people are going to die....

Part of the problem will be that nobody will reach a consensus on tough decisions like shutting down borders or military-enforced quarantines. Too much internal bickering. I think the nature of bureaucratic governments makes their populations very susceptible to viral diseases.

I wouldn't say "can't", as I've seen little to no effort in that area. I'd more readily say "won't".

No measures in place to stop it from making it's way to the US - people come here with it, and people die.
Pressure mounts to "DO SOMETHING!!1111!" - Impose temperature checks at airports - useless with 21 day incubation period.
Stop incoming commercial airline flights from infected areas, quarantine all travelers form infected areas? "We couldn't do that, it sends the wrong message!" It might cause civil unrest in the infected areas!"
I really think they believe we're stupid. Yes, cutting West Africa off from the rest of the world might cause more harm than needed, but no one ever suggested that military, and medical teams couldn't go, the key here is "commercial". The cries of, "Travel bans are never 100% effective, so don't do them", are just idiocy. No, they don't stop 100%, but they will stop the vast majority.

Worthless.

Many countries have already closed their borders, and stopped commercial flights, but not us, nope, not here.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Vindicarre:

Patients brought to the United States have been taken places where it could very easily escape into the wild. Clean-up, case handling, treatment, and other necessary control measures have been lackluster. Texas and the Southeastern United States are particularly bad areas of the country to be sending people with Ebola: the South is full of carrier fauna that does not get sick from the virus.

Let me repeat: the South is full of carrier fauna that does not get sick from the virus. More to the point, the South is full of dogs and hogs, and lots of pig farming still takes place down here. Imagine what happens when Ebola gets into a modern American pig mill. Never mind the fact that the American South has some of the largest bat populations in the world.

They can't control it if it gets into the wild, and they know that. They've known that for a decade.

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I'm guessing it also had something to do with the fact that he was a black immigrant showing up at the ER with no insurance, no Medicaid, and symptoms that included vomiting. That's practically a caricature of the kind of patient most likely to be given a cursory exam and rushed back out the door as quickly as possible. Throw in some explosive diarrhea and you'd have hospital staff trading vacation days to get out of having to deal with him.