Ebola in America

DavidJames said:
Wow, just wow.
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I know, right? How can they expect people who've had direct contact with Ebola patients to inconvenience themselves by not riding public transportation to restaurants and bowling alleys? What's the point of doing charity work if you can't brag about it?
 
Sam.I.Am said:
Then they are poorly named, "Center for Disease Control" pretty much says that they are there to help CONTROL diseases which is a pretty specific job description. Their name pretty much describes what their primary mission should be. That, to me anyway, means that they are there to come up with responses to things like this as well as help develop vaccines and other cures.

The Health Department (from the Surgeon General on down) are there to implement the recommendations of the CDC and others, by force if needed (that's why health department officials are officially considered the equivalent of officers in the military just so they can give legal orders).

If you meant that there has been mission creep from controlling disease into other areas at the expense of their primary mission I wouldn't disagree but to say that it's not in their normal job description I would have to disagree.
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They are poorly named. As those books lay out they are pretty much just in the business of studying diseases then passing on very basic recommendations. They have no crisis response team. No control center. No real way to coordinate with hospitals or other healthcare facilities.

Most of their work is just boring bulletins that are largely ignored anyways. In the case of HIV they hit on the transmission vectors pretty quickly and did come up with ways to try and control it only to watch as political and business interests stepped in and made sure their recommendations were not implemented for a long time.
 
Sam.I.Am said:
Then they are poorly named, "Center for Disease Control" pretty much says that they are there to help CONTROL diseases which is a pretty specific job description.
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Unless they are using the other definition of "control".

"to test or verify (a scientific experiment) by a parallel experiment or other standard of comparison. "

I don't know.
 
New Jersey has decided to pander to panic by quarantining anyone who treats and Ebola patient. Does this apply only to those like Kaci Hickox who worked in Africa?
 
That strikes me as a very sensible policy. Even then, I'm not sure it's necessary, but it certainly can't hurt, and the availability of income compensation will mean that people willing to go and treat people at great risk to their own lives will not have to worry about going broke when they do it.
 
The problem with the Kaci Hickox situation is that she isn't being quarantined, she's being forcibly detained in hospital isolation without any indication of disease. That's medically inappropriate and totally unnecessary. Enforced isolation is for people known to be contagious. It's not for people who might potentially be infectious at some point in the future. That's what quarantine is and quarantine and isolation are supposed to be implemented very differently.

The state has every right to restrict her movement within the limits spelled out by the CDC, but they have no right to hold her captive in a hospital environment with no access to her own clothes or belongings when she has no symptoms or indication of disease and thus cannot be infectious. She has no fever, it only appeared so at first because the workers at the airport were using forehead strip thermometers, which are notoriously inaccurate, on a woman who was flushed and upset. When taken with proper instruments, she has no elevated temperature. Even if she has Ebola, she cannot be communicable without a fever. Even with a fever and minor gastrointestinal and muscular symptoms, an Ebola patient is minimally infectious. They are only highly infectious once they are desperately and very obviously ill.

The appropriate response is to release her and send her home with the understanding that she is to limit her exposure to the public out of an abundance of caution and that a health care worker will be sent to her home twice daily to take her temperature and monitor her for symptoms until the incubation period has passed. Keeping her locked up behind plastic sheeting wearing paper gowns when she doesn't even have a slightly elevated temperature is beyond absurd and a terrible waste of medical resources.
 
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Kestrel said:
New Jersey has decided to pander to panic by quarantining anyone who treats and Ebola patient. Does this apply only to those like Kaci Hickox who worked in Africa?
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And New York followed New Jersey's example...until Obama got on the phone to Cumeo.
That joint news conference of Christie and Cumeo....Bipartisan Pandering.
 
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Kestrel said:
New Jersey has decided to pander to panic by quarantining anyone who treats and Ebola patient. Does this apply only to those like Kaci Hickox who worked in Africa?
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Let's be fail. Cumeo of New York was just as fast to pander to fear until the White House got on the phone.
 
Joke aready going around:

"Why are the New York Jets the only people in New York City who don't have to worry about cathcing Ebola"

"Because the Jets can't catch anything"....
 
Meadmaker said:
That strikes me as a very sensible policy. Even then, I'm not sure it's necessary, but it certainly can't hurt, and the availability of income compensation will mean that people willing to go and treat people at great risk to their own lives will not have to worry about going broke when they do it.
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It seems part of my post was cut off.

The first part of my post was in response to Governor Cuomo's change of policy, in which it was declared that the quarantine period could be spent at home, and compensation would be paid to the quarantined person.

That struck me as a very sensible policy.


And if he only did it due to pressure from the Obama administration, then once more, good job, Obama administration.
 
yodaluver28 said:
The problem with the Kaci Hickox situation is that she isn't being quarantined, she's being forcibly detained in hospital isolation without any indication of disease.
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You seem to be confused about the definition of the word "quarantine". People whose health status is unknown (as this woman's is) are quarantined. If the person is known to be sick, they aren't quarantined, they are isolated. The fact that she didn't have any indication of the disease is the reason that her detention was a quarantine.

Even with a fever and minor gastrointestinal and muscular symptoms, an Ebola patient is minimally infectious. They are only highly infectious once they are desperately and very obviously ill.
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Technically not correct. "Infectious" describes the disease itself, and refers to how much of the virus is needed to produce the disease. It does not change with the status of the patient. Ebola is always, always, incredibly infectious.

The word you want is contagious.
 
I'm sorry nurse Hickox did not enjoy her time in quarantine. But if she wants to blame someone, she should start with Dr. Spencer who showed that "self-quarantine" lasts about as long as it takes someone to swing by his apartment and grab his subway pass and bowling shoes.
 
shuize said:
I know, right? How can they expect people who've had direct contact with Ebola patients to inconvenience themselves by not riding public transportation to restaurants and bowling alleys? What's the point of doing charity work if you can't brag about it?
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Evidence they were bragging about it please.
 
DavidJames said:
Evidence they were bragging about it please.
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I know, right? Just because Dr. Spencer only stayed in Guinea long enough to get some good Facebook photos and then couldn't bother to "self-quarantine" longer than it took to lace up his bowling shoes, that doesn't mean his burning need to get out and meet friends (possibly exposing them and everyone else riding near him on the subway to Ebola) had anything to do with a narcissistic need to brag about his selfless charity work.
 
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