Ebola: "Out of Control in West Africa"

Last night's news stated that she was in touch with the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital and called in her temperature readings while she was here. I believe the last temp before she left was supposedly 99.5. I still do not believe her.

I have had several viruses that I have never had a temperature but I still was sick as you know what. Why is the temperature of the person so important when I know people who will run a temperature and others that do not while being sick with a virus. Plus using Tylenol, Motrin, and Advil can lower the temperature so effectively? Right?

Plus people around here are still in shock because they haven't been able to fully trace her whereabouts yet?

Originally Posted by Broadsword2004

I don't know if she was trying to hide anything because otherwise, why call the CDC in the first place? Why not just hop onto a plane and not say anything?

It turns out now that she might of been infectious on Friday of last week. Accordingly, more people who had been in her presence at the Bridal Shop (around the corner from me), and more of her family and including a person who had contact with her and sent her child to school are now being quarantined. If you watch the CDC's version she was lying and shouldn't of been allowed to travel here. There is so much BS going on around the CDC and this nurse that you need wings just to stay above it all. So who's really telling the truth is beyond me. All I know is that if another person contracts the disease either here where I live or in Dallas, I think we will now have a very real dangerous situation. If this person gets the disease and had contact with Ms. Vinson, people here are really going to go nuts!

[Old Dog New Trick]

Watching this calamity unfold is like watching a slow motion train wreck and the Diector of the CDC (Dr. Tom Frankenstein, (sic) the Engineer driving the train right now) much like the last Director of HHS (ObamaCare) and fill in the blank for a few other three and one four (USSS) letter agency directors' making decisions that affect all Americans is becoming farcical.

This train is going to run off the tracks pretty soon and it's going to crash in a well populated under prepared location.

I hope FEMA has finished building some of those "camps" they are going to be needed to house either the sick or the healthy.

[glebo]

Somebody on here, maybe not this thread mentioned the creation of an "Ebola Czar".....

Guess what I heard on the news this AM???...yup, he's thinking about it.

Do we really need another highly paid "appointee" to manage this?? Why not just hold the persons acountable who can direct measures now???

Holy crap....

But, it does make him (POTUS) feel good, so therefore, it will work...

Someone else to put the blame on, and buffer himself...

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by glebo

Somebody on here, maybe not this thread mentioned the creation of an "Ebola Czar".....

Guess what I heard on the news this AM???...yup, he's thinking about it.

Do we really need another highly paid "appointee" to manage this?? Why not just hold the persons acountable who can direct measures now???

Holy crap....

But, it does make him (POTUS) feel good, so therefore, it will work...

Someone else to put the blame on, and buffer himself...

We have an Ebola Czar.....Tom Frieden

Originally Posted by Old Dog New Trick

This train is going to run off the tracks pretty soon and it's going to crash in a well populated under prepared location.

This is what the O-Show is hoping for, and they are hoping an antidote miraculously appears just in time to save humanity and to prove that Obama is President of the World.....if it doesn't work out that way the O-Show will have proved that America is not exceptional, Americans can get Ebola just like everyone else and that now America can truly feel the pain of Africa.

[Paslode]

*snip*

By Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Thursday, October 16, 2014

Top public health officials have collected $25 million in bonuses since 2007, carving out extra pay for themselves in tight federal budgetary times while blaming a lack of money for the Obama administration’s lackluster response to the Ebola outbreak.

U.S. taxpayers gave $6 billion in salaries and $25 million in bonuses to an elite corps of health care specialists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 2007, according to data compiled by American Transparency’s OpenTheBooks.com, an online portal aggregating 1.3 billion lines of federal, state and local spending. The agency’s head count increased by 23 percent during that time, adding manpower and contributing to higher payrolls despite relatively flat funding.

From 2010 to 2013, all federal wages were frozen because of budgetary constraints, but CDC officials found a way to pay themselves through bonuses, overtime, within-grade increases and promotion pay raises.

SEE ALSO: Obama OKs military reserves for Ebola fight

Donald Shriber, deputy director of policy and communication at the CDC’s Center for Global Health, received the highest bonus in the six years analyzed — $62,895 in 2011 — netting $242,595 in take-home pay in a year when wages were supposed to be frozen.

Mr. Shriber was one of 54 employees governmentwide, and one of four in the Department of Health and Human Services, recognized with the Presidential Rank Award for his leadership abilities that year, which accounted for the bonus, said Donda Hansen, a media representative for the CDC.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ys-millions-i/

[Paslode]

And the hits keep coming....you can't make this shit up!

BioFire Diagnostics, a Utah-based firm that produces disease detection technology, confirmed that the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital did in fact have one of the machines (possibly for as long as two years) sitting on the shelf when Duncan came in.

But unless hospitals agree to use the machine specifically for research purposes, rather than actually diagnosing patients with Ebola, they can’t look for Ebola in samples.

The FDA rules in what are called “research use only” machines are far more lax than for machines that must provide clinical diagnosis. According to representatives from BioFire, even after the FDA approved the use of the machine for Ebola screening and allowed workers at the hospital to acquire the proper kit for Ebola testing, a 10-20 day “validation” procedure would kick in before they could change the machine’s use from diagnostics to research — and the results would have to go to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation.

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/20.../?oref=d-river

[tonyz]

Originally Posted by Paslode

We have an Ebola Czar.....Tom Frieden

This is what the O-Show is hoping for, and they are hoping an antidote miraculously appears just in time to save humanity and to prove that Obama is President of the World.....if it doesn't work out that way the O-Show will have proved that America is not exceptional, Americans can get Ebola just like everyone else and that now America can truly feel the pain of Africa.

'Murica, facing down the Obola outbreak since 2008...

[Richard]

Lots and lots of rings in this circus - sounds vaguely familiar - and so it goes...

Richard

A Guide To The Ebola Blame Game
Time, 16 Oct 2014

The Ebola crisis in Texas has resulted in the death of one patient, the infection of two health care workers, and an endless round of finger-pointing—all of which is yielding a flurry of conflicting news accounts and a very confused public.

Here’s a rundown of who has been blaming who, and when.

The player: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Who they’re blaming: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, an infected nurse, and the CDC itself
•CDC Director Tom Frieden on Sunday blamed a “breach in protocol” for allowing the infection of nurse Nina Pham.
•Frieden admitted on Tuesday the CDC could have done more: “We did send some expertise in infection control but think in retrospect, with 20-20 hindsight, we could have sent a more robust hospital infection control team, and been more hands on at the hospital on day one about exactly how this [case] should be managed. We will do that from now on any time we have a confirmed case.”
•Frieden, commenting on the infection of the second nurse, Amanda Joy Vinson, said: “She should not have flown on [a plane].”
•But a CDC spokesman later explained to TIME that the agency had actually asked Vinson to travel: As officials widened the net of people who needed to be monitored, Vinson was in Ohio and the CDC told her to go back to Dallas. Her temperature was 99.5°F, the spokesperson said. “Most doctors would call that a slight temperature, not a fever,” he said. “At that point, she was asked by CDC to come back to Dallas so she could be monitored, and she came back.”

The player: Dallas nurse Amber Joy Vinson
Who they’re blaming: The CDC
•Vinson said she was cleared by the CDC for travel, which a spokesman later confirmed. She traveled to Cleveland to plan her wedding.

The player: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital
Who they’re blaming: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and National Nurses United
•The hospital originally released Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient diagnosed in the U.S., who later died. Later, after his diagnosis, the hospital offered a number of reasons for not treating him immediately. At first, the hospital said a computer glitch was responsible for his travel history not being communicated to staff, and then said a nurse did not provide Duncan’s travel history to a physician. Finally, the hospital admitted it made a mistake.
•The hospital refuted claims from a nurses’ union that nurses weren’t adequately trained: “The assertions [of National Nurses United] do not reflect actual facts learned from the medical record and interactions with clinical caregivers. Our hospital followed the Centers for Disease Control guidelines and sought additional guidance and clarity.”

The player: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital
Who they’re blaming: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and National Nurses United
•The hospital originally released Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient diagnosed in the U.S., who later died. Later, after his diagnosis, the hospital offered a number of reasons for not treating him immediately. At first, the hospital said a computer glitch was responsible for his travel history not being communicated to staff, and then said a nurse did not provide Duncan’s travel history to a physician. Finally, the hospital admitted it made a mistake.
•The hospital refuted claims from a nurses’ union that nurses weren’t adequately trained: “The assertions [of National Nurses United] do not reflect actual facts learned from the medical record and interactions with clinical caregivers. Our hospital followed the Centers for Disease Control guidelines and sought additional guidance and clarity.”

The player: Emory University Hospital
Who they’re blaming: The CDC
•Sean G. Kaufman, who oversaw infection control at Emory University Hospital, told the New York Times that the CDC’s guidelines are “absolutely irresponsible and dead wrong,” and that he tried to warn that they were not stringent enough and “they kind of blew me off. I’m happy to see they’re changing them, but it’s late.”

The player: National Nurses United
Who they’re blaming: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the CDC
•A statement from the union cites “confusion” and “frequently changing policies and protocols” at the hospital: “No one knew what the protocols were or were able to verify what kind of personal protective equipment should be worn and there was no training.”
•RoseAnn DeMoro, the union’s head, contested the CDC’s claim that nurses didn’t follow protocol: “The protocols that should have been in place in Dallas were not in place, and that those protocols are not in place anywhere in the United States as far as we can tell.”

The player: Republicans
Who they’re blaming: Frieden, an open border, Democrats, President Barack Obama
•Mitt Romney, the 2012 presidential candidate: “Look this administration couldn’t run the IRS right, and it apparently isn’t running the CDC right. And you ask yourself what is it going to take to have a president who really focuses on the interests of the American people.”
•Republican Rep. Thom Tillis, a Senate candidate in North Carolina: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an Ebola outbreak, we have bad actors that can come across the border. We need to seal the border and secure it.”
•New Hampshire Senate candidate Scott Brown addressing his opponent’s record: “I think it’s naive to think that people aren’t going to be walking through here who have those types of diseases and/or other types of intent, criminal or terrorist. And yet we do nothing to secure our border. It’s dangerous. And that’s the difference. I voted to secure it. Senator Shaheen has not.”

The player: Democrats
Who they’re blaming: Republicans
•The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an ad targeting GOP congressional candidates: “Republicans voted to cut CDC’s budget to fight Ebola.”

The player: Dallas Nurse Briana Aguirre
Who they’re blaming: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital
•Aguirre told NBC that she “can no longer defend [her] hospital at all.” She said infection control was far too lax, waste was not properly taken care of, and the hospital didn’t provide any mandatory education or information about Ebola outside of an optional seminar before Thomas Eric Duncan arrived at the hospital.

They player: National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins
Who they’re blaming: Budget cuts, Congress
•“NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It’s not like we suddenly woke up and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'” Collins told The Huffington Post. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”

http://time.com/3513274/ebola-cdc-ob...c-obama-blame/

[Snaquebite]

I find it strange that none of Patient 0's family or friends who were in close contact with him after he arrived have yet to show any signs of contracting the disease. They were definitely in contact with him unprotected longer than anyone who treated him after he was diagnosed.

[Pete]

The real Ebola Czar - nobody has heard of

"...What’s particularly interesting about this discussion, then, is that nobody has even discussed the fact that the federal government not ten years ago created and funded a brand new office in the Health and Human Services Department specifically to coordinate preparation for and response to public health threats like Ebola. The woman who heads that office, and reports directly to the HHS secretary, has been mysteriously invisible from the public handling of this threat. And she’s still on the job even though three years ago she was embroiled in a huge scandal of funneling a major stream of funding to a company with ties to a Democratic donor—and away from a company that was developing a treatment now being used on Ebola patients..."

http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/14/...-where-is-she/

"...Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”

Last year, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013 which keep the programs in effect for another five years...."

"The Invisible Dr. Lurie

So, we have an office for public health threat preparedness and response. And one of HHS’ eight assistant secretaries is the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, whose job it is to “lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters, ranging from hurricanes to bioterrorism.”..."

[Patriot007]

As an emergency doc without epidemiology expertise here's my 2 cents...

I had a "rule out Ebola" case the other day of a patient with flu like symptoms including vomiting that had contact with a friend from west Africa who also had flu-like symptoms. Immediately placed a mask on them and placed them in isolation. It was a particularly busy day with wait times in the hours and triage was overflowing. My first question- how long was this patient waiting/ in triage? My thought was how many people in waiting room have been exposed including those with minor complaints that left without treatment and will NEVER be tracked down.

My job was to gather a detailed history to determine whether the patient was " high risk" or not. I then discussed the case with infection prevention which is our protocol. We decided based off of the history that the patient was outside the incubation period since the friend was last in Africa over 60 days ago.

Now here's my point. To get this history I had the patient call her friend. We then deemed her " low risk" entirely off the history because we can't test. Therefore currently our strategy for public health when it comes to Ebola is literally "hope". Hope that people will be honest about travel history or contacts. The patient didn't come in thinking she had Ebola but because of the sign we had up volunteered she had a sick contact from Africa. If she had known her ED visit would be complicated by this protocol good chance is she would have omitted that info.

This is a completely unacceptable strategy. I may be preaching to the choir but we needed to restrict travel 2 months ago. Without restriction we are literally crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

True the risk of even my fellow healthcare workers is low right now but this may not be the case 2 months from now.

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Pete

"...Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”

Yup. There was an article in the online Rochester MN paper yesterday about a lady who was concerned about some symptoms & called EMS, having recently been in TX. Turned out to be 'just' a genuinely bad case of flu.

Noteworthy to me was that local EMS turned out prepared for the worst immediately, they had protocols developed locally with Mayo who had developed a plan as discussed above (remember the Avian Flu?) and had kept it updated. Relatively small overall response but they were focused (and certainly weren't pressure-washing vomit off the sidewalk). Probably safe to say that some smaller & larger towns have these. I know before I retired we developed one (in presumed role supporting civil authority) in a very multi-discipline approach and roped in everyone from Mayo across the river to the local PH folks to the nearest guy that could lease reefer vans.

So an "ebola tsar" (aka, another layer to make sure messaging isn't untidy) doesn't bode well. As a friend proferred yesterday, when personnel start to exceed 150 the Stupid goes up exponentially vs. Get It Done.

[Dohhunter]

Originally Posted by Snaquebite

I find it strange that none of Patient 0's family or friends who were in close contact with him after he arrived have yet to show any signs of contracting the disease. They were definitely in contact with him unprotected longer than anyone who treated him after he was diagnosed.

He probably made it a point to spare his family and only shit himself in the emergency room, the ambulance, the parking lot, the public restroom and in the nurses' tea.

I'm not sure pink is required.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Snaquebite

I find it strange that none of Patient 0's family or friends who were in close contact with him after he arrived have yet to show any signs of contracting the disease. They were definitely in contact with him unprotected longer than anyone who treated him after he was diagnosed.

Contagion goes up greatly as the disease worsens, but I agree that it is surprising the family has not gotten sick yet.

TR