2014 Global Ebola Outbreak

[MessiahDecoy123]

I bet most survivalist actually want the ebola to becoma an urban epidemic just so they can say "we told you so".

Lord knows if I spend much of my life learning how to hunt squirrels and build a bomb shelter I'd want those skills to pay off eventually.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

There is no amount of money you could offer health care workers that would make them willing to expose themselves to a vicious, almost-always-fatal, disease.

I've never been in a Liberian hospital but I imagine they're probably low quality and in desperate need of an overhaul. That's really where any money sent to Liberia ought to be going.

Over-paying African healthcare workers wouldn't hurt.

I know I'd be much more willing to help clean up and contain ebola if I were getting paid a ridiculous amount of money.

I think paying to overhaul the entire medical infrastructure of Liberia would be far more expensive and difficult.

 

[BestGirl]

^No you wouldn't be. Not if you ran the enormously high risk of catching a horrific disease which was almost certainly going to painfully kill you. If I were a Liberian doctor or nurse, I wouldn't be going to work unless decent workplace sanitary standards were in place.

 

[Howlett]

^No you wouldn't be. Not if you ran the enormously high risk of catching a horrific disease which was almost certainly going to painfully kill you. If I were a Liberian doctor or nurse, I wouldn't be going to work unless decent workplace sanitary standards were in place.

Seriously. What good is all the money in the world when you're dead?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

You guys are acting like no one takes dangerous jobs.

People take dangerous jobs all the time.

Especially high paying ones.

 

[Feenix]

You guys are acting like no one takes dangerous jobs.

People take dangerous jobs all the time.

Especially high paying ones.

Define "dangerous." People also take dangerous jobs for the excitement. Being surrounded by horribly sick and dying Ebola patients isn't exactly exciting. It doesn't get your heart pumping like a job as a mountain guide would. I would take the money to guide people up Mount Everest because it's an exciting and exhilarating job. I wouldn't take any amount of money to take care of Ebola patients and risk contracting the disease and giving it to someone I care about.

Also, I would rather die from falling down a mountain than from a disease.

 

[Red Mask]

After the end of the last war in Iraq, oil companies were paying African workers loads of money to work the oil fields despite the constant threat of attacks. I think they hired men from countries like Uganda.

But this is a health crisis. Doctors aren't soldiers. They took an oath to care for people, to try to save them. If they start to run away from the sick then nothing has changed since leprosy was major illness.

 

[bullets]

The irony is that in the time it's taken for two people to be infected by ebola, tenfold as many Americans have died as a result of car accidents, gun violence, etc.

It's mind blowing that anyone is still alive at this point. We can just Ebola to the list now.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

The fact is we don't have time or money to rebuild Liberia's medical infrastructure from the ground up and their medical staff is on the brink of giving up.

 

[bullets]

You guys are acting like no one takes dangerous jobs.

People take dangerous jobs all the time.

Especially high paying ones.

I'm in school to be an emt. They don't make much and come in close with numerous diseases. It's crazy to think about

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

After the end of the last war in Iraq, oil companies were paying African workers loads of money to work the oil fields despite the constant threat of attacks. I think they hired men from countries like Uganda.

But this is a health crisis. Doctors aren't soldiers. They took an oath to care for people, to try to save them. If they start to run away from the sick then nothing has changed since leprosy was major illness.

You don't need highly trained doctors and nurses to clean up blood, sweat, excrement and dead bodies but I'm sure that's the dirty work that needs to be done that no one wants to do.

If you can get areas clean, I'm sure doctors and nurses will be much more willing to serve the public.

 

[Red Mask]

Where will they get the money for that? Fear and corruption is driving the Liberians apart. The elite can afford to stay indoors. The poor still have to work but they're now becoming outraged at how bad it's become. Whatever has happened in America after Thomas Duncan died, it already happened in Liberia, with less help to combat it.

 

[ban768]

Well it looks like the families of the infected in Liberia aren't helping matters.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-families-bodies-bribes-153423993.html

 

[Red Mask]

Well it looks like the families of the infected in Liberia aren't helping matters.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-families-bodies-bribes-153423993.html

Yes, social stigma and denial.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I just don't understand if African countries are so susceptible to an ebola outbreak then why hasn't a previous outbreak killed millions of people?

How do they usually contain it without the proper medical staff and facilities?

 

[Anita18]

I just don't understand if African countries are so susceptible to an ebola outbreak then why hasn't a previous outbreak killed millions of people?

How do they usually contain it without the proper medical staff and facilities?

It's always shown up in isolated villages. This is the first time it's spread beyond that.

It requires direct contact, it kills quickly, and you're only very contagious if you're very very sick. (So mostly relatives and healthcare workers would get it.) Not exactly the ingredients for a mass killing epidemic.

 

[Marvolo]

And arent African villages spread apart quite a bit? So after its made its rounds of the village the spread stops and that's that.

In an article, the WHO or CDC, cant remember which, said they expect this current outbreak in Africa to burn itself out by mid January. That could change between now and then, but hopefully this will be behind us in a few months.

 

[Anita18]

I think it's time to learn proper geography. My MIL made my husband cancel a trip he was going to take next week, because yesterday a "sick" passenger "from Africa" arrived at LAX and they freaked out it was Ebola. (He wouldn't have been flying out of LAX, even!)

Turns out the passenger was from South Africa, not any countries in West Africa, which is the equivalent driving distance from LA to NYC...and back. He'd just gotten airsick.

So now every puking airline passenger will be accused of having Ebola. Great.

 

[Farren]

I think it's time to learn proper geography. My MIL made my husband cancel a trip he was going to take next week, because yesterday a "sick" passenger "from Africa" arrived at LAX and they freaked out it was Ebola. (He wouldn't have been flying out of LAX, even!)

Turns out the passenger was from South Africa, not any countries in West Africa, which is the equivalent driving distance from LA to NYC...and back. He'd just gotten airsick.

So now every puking airline passenger will be accused of having Ebola. Great.

My mother is in full gossip mode over the quarantine happening with the Emirates flight in Boston. I tried to assure her that it's HIGHLY unlikely the sick folks on that flight have Ebola since I doubt very many people are routing from West Africa to the US via Dubai and I think it's pretty unlikely the affected individuals would have come into contact with an infected person at the airport without us knowing by now, but she refuses to bend.

 

[Destructus86]

The fact is we don't have time or money to rebuild Liberia's medical infrastructure from the ground up and their medical staff is on the brink of giving up.

And...isn't that the governing body of Liberia's job to begin with?

 

[Destructus86]

I think it's time to learn proper geography. My MIL made my husband cancel a trip he was going to take next week, because yesterday a "sick" passenger "from Africa" arrived at LAX and they freaked out it was Ebola. (He wouldn't have been flying out of LAX, even!)

Turns out the passenger was from South Africa, not any countries in West Africa, which is the equivalent driving distance from LA to NYC...and back. He'd just gotten airsick.

So now every puking airline passenger will be accused of having Ebola. Great.

Thank the media for this. :/ sigh

 

[Red Mask]

And...isn't that the governing body of Liberia's job to begin with?

Of course. Nobody said it was easy to develop a country, especially one that's suffered war with its neighbours. But that doesn't mean we should completely cut off an entire country.

When this is over, I bet nobody will remember how badly West Africa was hit by it.

 

[craigdbfan]

2nd Texas Healthcare Worker Infected with Ebola

(CNN) -- A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan has tested positive for Ebola, the state's health department said Wednesday. The worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated, health department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said.


The preliminary Ebola test was done late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and the results came back around midnight. A second test will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored," the health department said.

"The type of monitoring depends on the nature of their interactions and the potential they were exposed to the virus."

But the pool of contacts could be small, since Ebola can only be transmitted when an infected person shows symptoms. Less than a day passed between the onset of the worker's symptoms and isolation at the hospital. The latest infection marks the second-ever transmission of Ebola in the United States. Both stemmed from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital...

None of the other hospitals had this issue. Piss poor job by the CDC getting that hospital ready for this horrid virus.

From another article:

Hospital officials allowed nurses who interacted with Mr. Duncan to then continue normal patient-care duties," potentially exposing others

 

[craigdbfan]

It gets worse. Nurses from that hospital have told CNN that there was literally no protocol and that Duncan's bodily fluids were all over the place. Wonderful...

CNN: Massive protocol failure handling Ebola patient Eric Duncan

Thomas Eric Duncan wasn't immediately isolated.
On the day that Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to the hospital with possible Ebola symptoms, he was "left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present," union co-president Deborah Burger said.

Up to seven other patients were present in that area, the nurses said, according to the union.

A nursing supervisor faced resistance from hospital authorities when the supervisor demanded that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit, the nurses said, according to the union.

At first, protective gear nurses were wearing while treating Duncan left their necks exposed.

After expressing concerns that their necks were exposed even as they wore protective gear, the nurses were told to wrap their necks with medical tape, the union says. "They were told to use medical tape and had to use four to five pieces of medical tape wound around their neck. The nurses have expressed a lot of concern about how difficult it is to remove the tape from their neck," Burger said.

At one point during Duncan's care, hazardous waste piled up.
"There was no one to pick up hazardous waste as it piled to the ceiling," Burger said. "They did not have access to proper supplies."

Nurses got no "hands-on" training about using protective gear.
"There was no mandate for nurses to attend training," Burger said, though they did receive an e-mail about a hospital seminar on Ebola.
"This was treated like hundreds of other seminars that were routinely offered to staff," she said.

The nurses "feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to and deserted."
So why did the group of nurses -- the union wouldn't say how many -- contact the nursing union, which they don't belong to?

According to DeMoro, the nurses were upset after authorities appeared to blame nurse Nina Pham, who has contracted Ebola, for not following protocols.

"This nurse was being blamed for not following protocols that did not exist. ... The nurses in that hospital were very angry, and they decided to contact us," DeMoro said.

 

[terry78]

Of course.