5 ms·

Impressive, but not sure we are seeing the results. I am not a kid any more. Titles and position no longer impress me. Actions and results do. Here are the

Impressive, but not sure we are seeing the results. I am not a kid any more. Titles and position no longer impress me. Actions and results do. Here are the facts: We have a bunch of agencies who purport to be looking after various aspects of these kinds of problems. Some from the research perspective and others in execution. We have an impressive array of people involved with and running these organizations. All of them have budgets in the billions. Yet we did not have the systems, personnel, technology and response capabilities to keep ONE patient from infecting two nurses who cared for him. One patient. Would they have been ready for twenty? The gentleman running the NIH told Congress during the hearing that the NIH facilities have TWO, count them, TWO beds suitable for the isolation and treatment of highly infectious patients. I stopped watching the testimony once the politicians started talking. They are disgusting, on both sides. We are lucky in that we do not have a really serious problem in our hands right now. There is no reason to panic. This is currently limited to just two people and a few in observation who are not sick. I hope I am not wrong when I say that this is, at this point, contained. My problem is with what is seems to have revealed: That we are truly not ready. And that the agencies that are supposed to be ready to go on this at the drop of the dime have to figure things out during an event rather than being ready to go before it happens. That should be disturbing to all. If twenty or fifty cities had cases it sure looks like we'd be in serious trouble. Again, I hope I am wrong. I am not impressed by intelligent sounding speeches in Congress. Everyone has political angles to protect of push forward, including some of the Doctors running these organizations. In that sense the entire thing is disgusting. What's important is to watch what they are actually doing and what results they are producing. A virus is a heartless and has no political alignment. It really does not care if you believe in big government or total anarchy. It just is. It does what it does while you burn time playing games. The only time it stops is when you destroy it. In that sense, it is a really brutal performance review.

pcrh 12y ago
Your opinions border on panic. It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled. In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled. The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems. Keep calm and carry on.
- hga 12y ago
  Yeah, it's just a total coincidence that any time now the Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence will have 0 Ebola patients, because they've done such a bang up job with their first 2. And that right now (this very minute if they're not late), Dallas County is discussing declaring a state of emergency. And the public lead in this, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is lying through his teeth just about every time he's at a microphone, in one telling case contradicting himself from one sentence to the next: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-can-give-can-t-get-ebola-bus http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-ca... Believing things are serious does not equal "border[ing] on panic". Neither panic nor Panglossian bromides are called for right now.
  - pcrh 12y ago
    OK, bromides may be uncalled for. However, declaring a "State of Emergency" is hyperbolic. There have been cases of Ebola in the UK and France, which were contained without causing the national panic that appears to have gripped the US. One concern I have is that if this panic is allowed to gain enough political headway it will lead to expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions, mirroring those that created the TSA.
    - hga 12y ago
      Not Duncan "Ebola Tourist" cases. In those two countries, plus Norway and Spain, they are all medevacs, along with 4 of the US cases. I.e. the hospitals knew ahead of time they'd be receiving a case and the people were sent to specialist wards. And yet Spain's isolation failed, perhaps because the government closed the infectious disease ward some months earlier, and only restarted it on an emergency basis when the first missionary became sick. All we know is that their PPE protocols were not up to snuff if the stories about closing gaps with adhesive tape were correct. I also just notice on Wikipedia as of today there's a nurse who treated the French patient who "developed a high fever and was transported to the same hospital for treatment for suspected Ebola" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa#Countries_with_medically_evacuated_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_A...). "expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions" Specifically what? I'm not aware of any that would be "ineffective", or ones that would necessarily be "expensive" to the US. This is of course assuming "panic" enhanced by more Dallas failures, or other imports from West Africa does not grow massively. How many Americans have to get and die of Ebola before "oppressive" policy decisions happen---as if the current clowns running the show at the national level would continence them?
hga 12y ago
The picture you've derived from these hearings matches what I've independently arrived at. As for Dr. Lurie, the point I left out was what brought her to my attention, the fact that despite all the things I mentioned, putting as good a face on them as I could, people are asking where the bleep is she? Are you sure about the number of beds at the NIH? The word up to now is that they have 7, but that ward, or maybe there's more than one, has multiple uses, including things like live virus vaccine tests. So maybe they can only dedicate 2 to this sort of thing, which means the national capacity is under 20 as I first heard, a total of 18. 4 of which are in use, because the first nurse, Pham, is being moved from the ex-Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence to the NIH. (Emory got nurse #2 Amber, and is handling another medevac, and Omaha has the NBC cameraman.) Per the always energetic Daily News (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795480/texas-presbyterian-nurse-cared-ebola-stricken-colleague-reveals-protective-suit-gaping-hole-neck.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795480/texas-presby...) that might be because even after Duncan, Dallas Presbyterian did not have proper PPE (e.g. a big gap below the chin), and I've heard rumors its ER is shut down by a walkout, with the ICU almost to that point. Which these nurses' reports buttress. And don't forget Dallas Presbyterian is an above average hospital, everything I'm hearing is that normal ones are just not architecturally, let alone culturally or equipment wise set up for pathogens this bad. Emory's lessons learned from their first two patients shows even they had to improvise and adapt, but not with PPE and the like. Ah, I should mention I got some experience at one of my local ERs when my father got sick in the spring of last year. They were very good, but he was non-contagious (anemia). As for "twenty or fifty cities", do you believe Duncan is the last Ebola tourist we'll receive on our shores? "A really brutal performance review" indeed. I'll close by noting that it sure looks to me like the heads of the CDC and NIH are acting like politicians, and not doctors or researchers.
- hga 12y ago
  CORRECTION: It turns out the nation has only 11 "Ebola beds": the Omaha and NIH wards can only treat 1-2 and 2 patients with something this bad out of the 10 and 7 total beds they have. Which leaves 7 free at the moment.
  - robomartin 12y ago

pcrh 12y ago

Your opinions border on panic. It is clear that the CDC and other agencies have procedures in place to deal with the outbreak of infectious disease, and that you are 1) unaware of these, and how they work, and 2) prepared to agitate for a wholescale overhaul without understanding how disease is both spread and controlled. In the present situation, the only obvious failure of the system to contain a disease outbreak is the fact that Amber Vinson traveled while infected. Note that she did not have symptoms of Ebola when she traveled. The only rational alternative to her traveling would have been to quarantine every single person who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a possibility that does not require radical overhaul of any existing systems. Keep calm and carry on.

hga 12y ago
Yeah, it's just a total coincidence that any time now the Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence will have 0 Ebola patients, because they've done such a bang up job with their first 2. And that right now (this very minute if they're not late), Dallas County is discussing declaring a state of emergency. And the public lead in this, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is lying through his teeth just about every time he's at a microphone, in one telling case contradicting himself from one sentence to the next: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-can-give-can-t-get-ebola-bus http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/cdc-you-ca... Believing things are serious does not equal "border[ing] on panic". Neither panic nor Panglossian bromides are called for right now.
- pcrh 12y ago
  OK, bromides may be uncalled for. However, declaring a "State of Emergency" is hyperbolic. There have been cases of Ebola in the UK and France, which were contained without causing the national panic that appears to have gripped the US. One concern I have is that if this panic is allowed to gain enough political headway it will lead to expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions, mirroring those that created the TSA.
  - hga 12y ago
    Not Duncan "Ebola Tourist" cases. In those two countries, plus Norway and Spain, they are all medevacs, along with 4 of the US cases. I.e. the hospitals knew ahead of time they'd be receiving a case and the people were sent to specialist wards. And yet Spain's isolation failed, perhaps because the government closed the infectious disease ward some months earlier, and only restarted it on an emergency basis when the first missionary became sick. All we know is that their PPE protocols were not up to snuff if the stories about closing gaps with adhesive tape were correct. I also just notice on Wikipedia as of today there's a nurse who treated the French patient who "developed a high fever and was transported to the same hospital for treatment for suspected Ebola" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa#Countries_with_medically_evacuated_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_A...). "expensive, oppressive and ineffective policy decisions" Specifically what? I'm not aware of any that would be "ineffective", or ones that would necessarily be "expensive" to the US. This is of course assuming "panic" enhanced by more Dallas failures, or other imports from West Africa does not grow massively. How many Americans have to get and die of Ebola before "oppressive" policy decisions happen---as if the current clowns running the show at the national level would continence them?

hga 12y ago

The picture you've derived from these hearings matches what I've independently arrived at. As for Dr. Lurie, the point I left out was what brought her to my attention, the fact that despite all the things I mentioned, putting as good a face on them as I could, people are asking where the bleep is she? Are you sure about the number of beds at the NIH? The word up to now is that they have 7, but that ward, or maybe there's more than one, has multiple uses, including things like live virus vaccine tests. So maybe they can only dedicate 2 to this sort of thing, which means the national capacity is under 20 as I first heard, a total of 18. 4 of which are in use, because the first nurse, Pham, is being moved from the ex-Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence to the NIH. (Emory got nurse #2 Amber, and is handling another medevac, and Omaha has the NBC cameraman.) Per the always energetic Daily News (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795480/texas-presbyterian-nurse-cared-ebola-stricken-colleague-reveals-protective-suit-gaping-hole-neck.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795480/texas-presby...) that might be because even after Duncan, Dallas Presbyterian did not have proper PPE (e.g. a big gap below the chin), and I've heard rumors its ER is shut down by a walkout, with the ICU almost to that point. Which these nurses' reports buttress. And don't forget Dallas Presbyterian is an above average hospital, everything I'm hearing is that normal ones are just not architecturally, let alone culturally or equipment wise set up for pathogens this bad. Emory's lessons learned from their first two patients shows even they had to improvise and adapt, but not with PPE and the like. Ah, I should mention I got some experience at one of my local ERs when my father got sick in the spring of last year. They were very good, but he was non-contagious (anemia). As for "twenty or fifty cities", do you believe Duncan is the last Ebola tourist we'll receive on our shores? "A really brutal performance review" indeed. I'll close by noting that it sure looks to me like the heads of the CDC and NIH are acting like politicians, and not doctors or researchers.

hga 12y ago
CORRECTION: It turns out the nation has only 11 "Ebola beds": the Omaha and NIH wards can only treat 1-2 and 2 patients with something this bad out of the 10 and 7 total beds they have. Which leaves 7 free at the moment.
- robomartin 12y ago