First, it appears that at the Texas hospital, where two nurses have contracted Ebola, after treating the Ebola-infected Liberian Thomas Duncan, there was no monitoring by the CDC at the hospital and there were no specific protective protocols in place for the nurses.
In other words, a deadly disease that could have been controlled by competent advisement was not so controlled because of CDC failure to truly monitor the situation. Because of this failure, the risks exist of significant new cases of Ebola developing among those who treated Duncan, That is 71 more people--and perhaps beyond.
Further, the second nurse to report Ebola symptoms, Abner Vinson, flew from Dallas to Cleveland and back after treating Duncan. She reports that she had a slight fever of 99.5 on the return flight. The CDC has now put out a statement asking those who flew on the same flight as her, Frontier Flight 1143, to call a CDC hotline number. Get this, CNN is reporting that the wait to talk to CDC personnel who handle calls to the number is 390 minutes. That's 6 hours and 30 minutes.
Because Frontier did not know of the danger that was present by the flight of the nurse on Monday October 13, the airline continued to keep the plane in service and only thoroughly and properly disinfected the plane today.
However, most bizarre, it does not appear that the CDC is reaching out to passengers who sat in the same seat as Vinson, on flights following hers in that plane. Even though this is what the CDC says about Ebola on surfaces:
The role of the environment in transmission has not been established. Limited laboratory studies under favorable conditions indicate that Ebolavirus can remain viable on solid surfaces, with concentrations falling slowly over several days.Never forget this: Government protection of its subjects is largely a myth. It is all show.
UPDATE:
Reports indicate that the Frontier plane that Vinson flew on, made 5 additional flights before being taken out of service.
-RW
The doctors and administration of that hospital in Dallas, should be charged with criminally negligent homicide if anyone dies from being exposed to Ebola connected to Thomas Duncan. What the hell were these people thinking when they allowed the hospital staff to be exposed to such a lethal virus. Oh I forgot, "How Bout Them Cowboys", Ye Ha!
ReplyDeleteNo wonder I have hated the state of Texas
I'm confused by the tone of this article, which I think is suggesting that a gov agency, the CDC, should have had oversight at what I presume is a private medical center. If anyone should be taking heat here, it is the hospital administration where this patient received care. Seventy different care providers!?!? For a patient with an illness whose mortality rate approaches 90%?!? You have got to be kidding me. Minimal staff should have been involved in his care, firstly. Moreover, for safety of other staff, patients, and friends/family, those who did provide care could have been quarantined by the hospital, so that in the event that they did show signs/symptoms of disease development they could have received early intervention. This disease is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids, meaning that a drop of fluid would have to have come in contact with either broken skin or some kind of mucous membrane. Since 70 other folks came in contact with this guy and only 2 (so far) have been diagnosed with ebola, I have to conclude at this time that these infections were the result of either a) improper use of personal protective equipment (PPE), an competency required by OSHA prior to begin working, or b) PPE failure. Having worked in hospitals providing direct patient care for 8+ years collectively, I can attest to the "drift" away from proper procedure in PPE usage. This is not to suggest that these nurses were careless, but sick patients make nurses busy and an inadvertent failure to comply with PPE standards is not unreasonable unless one is hyper-vigilant. Providing direct patient care is not without risk, as this ebola situation is reminding us.
ReplyDeleteOf course, all of this is assuming that it was known when the patient walked in the door that he did, in fact, have Ebola and proper isolation was initiated immediately. If this was the proverbial zebra in the differential diagnosis, I suspect it took some time to isolate him.
Assuming that "Thomas Duncan" isn't a crisis actor in yet another script being played out at our expense, there's only one possible answer to this level of government failure:
ReplyDeleteAnother government agency and lots more tax dollars to fund it!!!!
Isn't that how it always works with "government"?