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NYC Doctor Without Brains lied about self-quarantining.
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The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said.
Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.
“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said.
I know you said Katiana was being a bit defensive in her remarks but you both actually have a point. Remember, the CDC insisted 'any' hospital would be able to care for Ebola with standard infection control practices. This has been shown to not be accurate. So, when CDC says it was a breach in protocol, that does have a bit of connotation that the hospital or nurses intentionally broke said protocol. The CDC has since walked back the claim that any hospital could care for Ebola patients.
So, there is both the overly laissez faire manner in which CDC approached Ebola before the Duncan case and the fact that protocol breaches did happen but the word use is at issue. So, yes, protocol was breached BUT I think Katiana may be expressing frustration with the connotation used by CDC when they first spoke about how the nurses were infected. The CDC shares some significant blame here as well.
OK, I'm taking these two out of order b/c it makes better sense that way. You are exactly right! And I can tell you, my nurse friends feel the same way. Our group at work is a fairly political bunch (some of us anyway) and this whole idea that the nurses did something wrong, no matter, DC, how that wrong came to be, is grating. Certainly Frieden could have chosen his words better, and I'm sure he had time to think them over before he had that press conference where he said that. Many media outlets have commented on how he appeared to be blaming the nurses. It's not that I'm just committing that cardinal sin of mental health, being defensive.
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Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge
A breach in protocols means someone didn't follow the guidelines, possibly because they were unable to do so. Not because they deliberately chose not to follow the guidelines. Not because they didn't do the best possible job with the training, equipment and oversight they had available.
The CDC has "changed their protocols" because the CDC has recognized that their assumption that any American hospital would have the training, equipment and oversight necessary to treat and contain Ebola was a false assumption. The basic premise that the protective gear when properly put on, maintained, and taken off, is, indeed protective, has not changed.
And Duncan's case was particularly instructive, because the cab driver who drove Duncan around Monrovia with the dying woman and her infected brother, did not become sick, even though he was clearly in close proximity to infected and highly contagious persons. Because when Duncan arrived and was not symptomatic, he didn't expose anyone to the virus. Because when he became symptomatic, and was in a small apartment with several other people, sharing a bathroom, breathing the same air, no one in that apartment became infected. We are learning, even more, that casual contact does not spread this virus, that the contagiousness of the virus is closely related to both the viral load in the infected person, and the specific symptoms (ie vomiting and copious diarrhea and hemorrhaging).
Your first phrase says it all. "Someone didn't follow the guidelines". All the rest is just well, I hate to use this word, but blather. It's patronizing, too.
In your second paragraph, the basic premise (in bold) may be incorrect. That is something some on this forum do not seem to be willing to consider.
Now frankly, if Duncan had come to our office first, we probably would have done similar to what the Dallas ER did. The only protective equipment we have is gloves and masks. We don't use gloves unless we're dealing with blood, feces or urine, and we rarely wear masks. Many of our patients come in with the same symptoms as Duncan had. None of them have ever had Ebola. Back at the end of September, it probably wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind that Ebola was a diagnosis to be considered. We have lots of international patients; it's not a novelty for us, either.
I don't really know what Duncan's case is instructive of, as detailed in your third paragraph. Just because those other people didn't get sick, so what? Duncan got sick from his exposure to the pregnant woman. What caused him to get sick and not the cab driver? Who knows? Bad luck, I think. I'm sure this bleeding woman left blood all over the cab, and I'm sure the driver touched his face, which is the latest meme for how some got infected. As far as the bold, to put your faith in that is very foolish. I agree with Dr. Buetler. We don't know all this stuff, 100%. Yes, it's a mystery why no one in Duncan's apt. got Ebola, when surely they were touching contaminated items in their home and then touching their faces. That's what is specualted caused the nurse assitant (it was so important to someone on here to note she wasn't really a nurse) in Spain to get Ebola. And God knows what Nina Pham and Amber Vinson are supposed to have done. If it was that hard for everyone to contract, far more of Mr. Duncan's health care workers should have gotten Ebola as well.
"The conditions that the state of Maine is now requiring Kaci to comply with are unconstitutional and illegal and there is no justification for the state of Maine to infringe on her liberty," he told the Bangor Daily News.
If she happens to not quarantine herself and she "infringes" on the "liberty" of someone else/others by passing Ebola to them, she would also be accused of infringing on the liberty of others and could get her butt sued, yes?
Except when exposure doesn't necessarily mean transmission.
Ebola is not the flu. Ebola is not typhoid.
Right. Ebola is Ebola. All this latest emphasis on "they touched their faces" is really rather humorous. It's supposed to be freaking hard to contract. A casual brush of one's hair back from the face with your fingers supposedly is causing this Ebola in health care workers who are otherwise protected. Yet their intimate household contacts aren't getting it. What gives?
The military isn't quarantining the soldiers for medical reasons. It's the old "abundance of caution" that tells us that they are doing it for political purposes. And the soldiers in quarantine are still "on the job", working, drawing a paycheck.
So, it's o.k. for the military, but not civillians?
ANd yes, they are getting a check, they are NOT on thier job, they are NOT working...
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Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge
Not one medical worker returning from the affected countries has infected anyone else. Not one. They must be doing a good job monitoring themselves and reporting to authorities when they become symptomatic, huh?
But a person from africa did give a person here in the states, right?
If they are doing such a good job, why does the military have to do it, when those who were no where near an ebola patient...
The 1918 flu pandemic was likely more of a combination of young people being ravished by war and the introduction of an unfamiliar stain from china. If you look at the areas hit hardest it was the us and Europe even though the strain started in china. All those young people had been fighting in the worst conditions imaginable. Then Canada shipped 90,000 sickly Chinese laborers in and started the pandemic. The strain was new to people in the us and Europe but not china (kinda like what Obama did with the illegals and enterovirus). So it's not like the 1918 strain was some kind of superbug, it was just a combination of bad circumstances.
Yes, some unique conditions/perfect strom kind of thing. But also remember, we have some unique circumstances today that didn't exist back in 1918 like widespread world wide travel by planes that I think alone can spread some viruses/bacteria far and wide.
At significant personal risk, she made the decision to work very hard to protect YOU from Ebola.
Nurses who work on Ebola patients in this country are told by their boss that they are working on "x" patient. They don't have the freedom to choose usually. And yes, it sounds like she made the decision to work on people in Africa/another country who have Ebola, not me or you.
Right. Ebola is Ebola. All this latest emphasis on "they touched their faces" is really rather humorous. It's supposed to be freaking hard to contract. A casual brush of one's hair back from the face with your fingers supposedly is causing this Ebola in health care workers who are otherwise protected. Yet their intimate household contacts aren't getting it. What gives?
I'm starting to wonder if there are some natural immunities at work here. That would explain quite a bit, in my opinion. I know viral load has plenty to do with the increased chance of getting infected but there seems to be some more casual contact cases (e.g. the NBC camera man) where others have done the same action and not been infected. I don't know if researchers have investigated natural immunities and/or been able to identify if one person or another is more likely to be at risk of infection.
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