Yet Another Ebola Case In Dallas (With Addendum)

Confirmed: another healthcare worker who took care of pathogen-carrying, pathogen-spreading criminal Thomas Eric Duncan has Ebola.

Now there are two cases from an individual index patient. An outbreak is not contained until there are fewer than two additional cases from any one individual index case.

As if the above isn't bad enough...No hospital 'protocols' for Ebola treatment: US nurses' group.

Nurses Union Releases Statement That Ebola Patient Duncan Was Left In Open Area of the ER For Hours

FoxNews

A statement from National Nurses United also says Thomas Eric Duncan was left in an open area of an emergency room for hours. 

A spokesman for the group says nurses were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments. It's said that the patient had explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. 

In a conference call with reporters executive director RoseAnn DeMoro says the allegations are based on revelations from "a few" nurses and that the claims were vetted. 

The nurses also said that Duncan's lab samples were allowed to travel through the hospital's pneumatic tubes, opening the possibility of contaminating the specimen delivery system. The nurses also alleged that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling.

AND HERE'S THE GUY WHO IS LEADING US:

CDC Director Frieden: If the US Bans Travel From West Africa Ebola Will Spread



Meanwhile, some 4500 West Africans with visas enter the United States every month. How many new index cases are among them?

Additional reading...Ebola Preparation ‘Will bankrupt my hospital!’ Director Reacts to CDC Prep Call.

ADDENDUM

Tammy Swofford's comment this morning at my blog site:

I have discussed with AOW for literal weeks (since the Ebola numbers climbed in W. Africa) that we were unprepared for Ebola in America.

This morning I called her. Tears are streaming down my face and I do not cry easily. When I saw images of nurses with their necks exposed on videos, supposedly "ready" for Ebola, I knew we were doomed. Having trained constantly and consistently in the USNR for chem-bio scenarios wearing MOPP IV gear in sweltering heat, I KNOW what it takes to train and be safe. The military, does it right. Period. They set the standard. They set the standard in many things in medicine.

For weeks, I have brought this concern to my own hospital. Finally, we will provide training for critical care nurses. Now that a unit of labor is down, and nurses may flee the hospitals in Dallas, we will train. And then, in an act of bureaucratic genius, we will have "daily briefings" on Ebola.

We cannot talk Ebola to death. We can only contain Ebola by proper gear, worn by healthcare workers with weeks (not one damn session) of training in wearing the gear.

How many nurses will die because of bureaucratic incompetence and callous disregard for our lives? Naturally, my own hospital will continue along with their yearly holiday tradition of gratitude for our labor. We get a fifteen dollar Target card to cover Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Yeah, now you understand the sacrifices that nurses make for you every day.

And how many clients did the nurses infect after they cared for Mr. Duncan?

Tammy Swofford
Reporting from the hot zone

In August 2010, Obama Scrapped Tougher Bush-Era Quarantine Rules Designed to Halt Spread of Epidemics

Obama Contemplates The Little People

From Ace of Spades:

First, a little background on Bush's thinking in 2005 when he proposed the rules. 

Bush Weighs Strategies to Counter Possible Outbreak of Bird Flu 

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - President Bush said today that he was working to prepare the United States for a possibly deadly outbreak of avian flu. He said he had weighed whether to quarantine parts of the country and also whether to employ the military for the difficult task of enforcing such a quarantine. 

"I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he said at a White House news conference. 

The president emphasized that he was not predicting such an outbreak. "I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it," he told reporters, "and we are. And we're more than thinking about it, we're trying to put plans in place." 

"Since 2003, the avian flu has killed about 65 people in Southeast Asia who had been in contact with infected fowl. So far the virus has not mutated into a strain capable of transmission from one human to another. If it does, scientists say that it could kill millions of people worldwide, reminiscent of the 1918-19 Spanish-flu pandemic, which claimed more lives than World War I. 

Because the virus is new, humans have little or no defense against it. It kills about half of those infected, and an outbreak could spread around the world in days. 

Now watch this drive: 

More than 30 Democratic senators, including Mr. Obama, sent Mr. Bush a letter today asking him to release the administration's final plan for dealing with a pandemic influenza. 

The group expressed its "grave concern that the nation is dangerously unprepared." So Democrats and Obama were forward-leaning on outbreak control when Bush was president. 

Gee I feel like I've seen this movie a few times before. 

Flash forward to April 2010, after Obama became president, and reviewed the 2005 rules. 

He "quietly" dumped them. 

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers. 

The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. 

They also would have expanded requirements for airlines to report ill passengers to the CDC and mandated that airlines collect and maintain contact information for fliers in case they later needed to be traced as part of an investigation into an outbreak. Airline and civil liberties groups, which had opposed the rules, praised their withdrawal.