Ebola - Everybody Panic!!!

Considering how much the hospitals have cut back on training, staffing and support, why am I the least bit surprised by this?
It's all about the money and training for something like ebola isn't worth the cost.

If you make sure you have have enough people to handle any problem, that they are trained well, that your facilities are in the best possible shapes, that procedures are being carried out consistently and well, your hospital will be the best place to go and there will be no outbreaks.
But it won't make money!

 

Yes, indeed, on all levels.

 

At some point do I get to use a handgun or handtool to deliver killing blows to the head when the victims come back to life? Or at least meet a girl from the UK/Philadelphia using a southern US accent that sounds natural? Either one of those things would be a silver lining at least.

 

Well lets hope it does not become airborne. I guess it depends how bad the puking and diarrhea is, and I read it is pretty bad.
I read an article last year stating that the flu virus can travel further when there is less humidity in the air. Cough droplets become missiles, over the bow and into the nose or mouth of a coworker.
People keep the three feet rule when you're sick. I would prefer a 10 feet rule.
I got my flu shot last night, along with a booster Td. I feel like the girl in the Seinfeld skit, she never moved her arms.

 

Ted Cruz, US senator from TX, is proposing that we ban flights into the US from west African nations. That dipshit would do anything to get some media attention.

 

Was it KGW that had Lars Larson as an anchor? It has been a "few years" since I have actively lived in that area...which reminds me, I especially remember watching Ramblin' Rod and the "It's time for another cartoon!"......I don't expect anybody not raised within range of Portland area stations to have any clue what I am referring to there.

 

Today's Very Good News on Ebola - That You Probably Haven't Heard

 

The situation is awful in those countries, yes. It is going to take a massive effort (from the U.S., U.K., France, etc.) to control the epidemic in Africa. And that is starting to happen.

Again, that's an environment where there are nowhere near enough hospital beds or resources to go around. Dying patients -- throwing off volumes of infectuous blood and vomit and diarrhea -- are in their homes, in makeshift clinics, or on the street. Even one such case would be a problem; tens of thousands of cases mean it's completely out of control.

Consider also the pre-existing public health situation in West Africa. A large percentage of the population already have untreated conditions of some kind. A person with chronic infection or disease has less ability to survive something like Ebola.

Sanitation matters. Public health conditions matter. What with skin diseases, insect bites, lesions, sores, etc., and no ready supply of simple things like Band-Aids, people are MUCH more likely to pass along bloodborne diseases. This is why HIV spreads readily through heterosexual contact in Africa, but not in the developed world.

For the West to promote and fund basic public health measures in places like Chad or Malawi is not just altruism.

 

We might have more advanced healthcare here in the US, but we would have the same problems if 10,000 people contracted Ebola here. And the pre-existing health problems of US citizens is probably just as bad.

We do have better sanitation though. Yea!

 

No, the situation is not even remotely similar, and I'm appalled that you don't see the distinction.

 

I don't know that I'd be too confident that the US healthcare system could effectively handle any sort of large scale Ebola outbreak.

 

Okay, then, walk me through this. How would a "large scale Ebola outbreak" occur in the United States? Step by step. What would be the transmission route?

 

The US healthcare system is full of cracks. A lot of people don't have insurance and a lot of these same people also can't afford to miss work (or could lose their job for missing work) and a lot of these people also work in food service. A lot of these people also read haughty explainers about how Ebola can't catch on in the US.

I don't know whether Ebola will catch on here, but if it does I am confident it will have been aided immensely by the assumption that an epidemic was impossible.

 

In the case of the fictional Project Blue/Captain Trips in The Stand those would be factors that helped spread it. Of course a 99.6% mortality rate (top of my head after reading that numerous times over 20 years, not confirming that via internet search) and spreading as easily as the common cold make that a truly nightmarish scenario on every level.

 

I've seen the mortality rate range from 15% to 90%. It depends on which population if people you're referring to.