<p>Great. No one thought that it might be important for doctors to see what the nurses recorded.</p>
<p>Uhm, including the doctor who is examining a guy with a West African accent and a fever. Hello.</p>
<p>busdriver, the patient may have been too sick to tell the doctor. And/or he may have assumed – reasonably – that the doctor had access to all the information which had been given to the nurse.</p>
<p>I posted upthread that I have learned that one sometimes has to be quite assertive in the hospital, especially the ER. But I only learned that the hard way. If you’re not a veteran of American ERs, you wouldn’t know that sometimes you have to jump up and down to get them to pay attention.</p>
<p>News…</p>
<p><a href=“CBS Texas - Breaking Local News, First Alert Weather & I-Team Investigations”>CBS Texas - Breaking Local News, First Alert Weather & I-Team Investigations;
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I’m not sure whether to be offended here or not. I do think you are skating on very thin ice here.</p>
<p>I am not giving this guy the benefit of the doubt. He lied to get into this country. He didn’t tell his significant other that he was exposed. He may have lied about how he was exposed. If he was too sick to even talk for himself, I doubt they would have released him the first time with just antibiotics. If Louise did the talking, she knew full well how to repeat herself and make an emphasis upon the fact that he just flew in from and Ebola infested country. She must have been thinking about that. I wonder if she is enraged at him now, particularly if this guy ends up killing her or her child. Knowingly, not accidentally.</p>
<p>Having listened to the interview with the mom I think that if they have really spoken to him he lies like a rug. It would be more honorable (if that’s what they’re after) to stick with the first story of helping a neighbor in need not realizing that it was more than a miscarriage. To say that he was no where near there and had vacated any Ebola area long before just doesn’t seem to hold water. Yes, the hospital staff should have connected the dots so a failure on that side but his family isn’t helping his cause at this point.</p>
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<p>Yes, but it is spreading faster now even though people know about it, so this is different. We cannot treat it the same anymore. This why there are discussions about a possible airborne transmission form of the virus. Each variant of a virus does not necessarily follow the profile of its progenitor; most often, it does not. This is why we failed at HIV vaccines and at many of its treatments. We assumed the variants were behaving the same. </p>
<p>Basically, the Ebola virus strain of today is not the strain of decades ago or even a decade ago. This may be the problem; we are applying old information to a different form and thinking we are on top of it. </p>
<p>The CDC chief even admitted that touching and casual contact were not necessary and that he would be concerned about someone simply standing 3 feet from an infected person. And interestingly, he also acknowledged that the average person most likely could not spot early symptoms, so there is essentially no protection for the average person until it is too late. </p>
<p>That does not strike me as a healthy policy, i.e., telling people it OK to interact with a possible infected person until too late to help them re exposure. </p>
<p>There is so much wrong with this guys story it’s very hard to know where to start. They lost me with the phone calls first to the CDC and then to CNN with the unnecessarily graphic mess story using only a first name. Have we all gone mad? Now the quarantined family is stashed in an undisclosed upscale location. It’s all just too bizarre.</p>
<p>“Have we all gone mad?”</p>
<p>No, it is just the media created circus. I suggest laying off the booze, turning off the TV, and going to bed. :)</p>
<p>^Agree, actingmt. There are a lot of things that make you go “say what, now?” Whatever it is, it sure doesn’t seem to be inspiring confidence in the American public, myself included.</p>
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<p>Do people even realize what is being said here and what is being done elsewhere, such as in hospitals?</p>
<p>The instructions are saying to the average person that It is OK to pick up and clean clothes, sheets etc that have the fluids of an Ebola victim on them. But, down the street, medical personnel would not go near that same person or touch that patient’s clothes or anything in his room without full protective gear.</p>
<p>So, the medical personnel gets the protective gear, but the average guy who cannot tell what is dry and safe and what is not is allowed to pick up laundry and cart it around the house. </p>
<p>Anyone is free to follow this advice if you want. I will follow what the doctors and medical personnel are doing, and it is clear they are talking no chances. Actions speak a whole lot louder than words. </p>
<p>Re: DA looking into charges. The guy picked a wrong state! According to TX laws, one can get charged with a crime for knowingly transmitting a deadly disease. However, unlike a Liberian prison, a TX prison is not equivalent to a death sentence. He might prefer to be tried here prior to extradition to his native country that is building a case against him. </p>
<p>Here is some information re Ebola that is being discussed among people who practice molecular genetics. Currently, this is being discussed at molecular genetic conferences and the biochemistry forums. </p>
<p>The main point is the unknown of whether this is functionally the same virus and if treating it like some 20 - 40 years ago is relevant to reducing transmission, as the increased transmission rate is still unexplained among people who know how to avoid it. This is something the CDC is not telling people. </p>
<p>There is a lot we do not know currently. </p>
<p>Pull Quote:</p>
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<p>We actually know that genetically the virus is not the same, and that is where the danger in thinking what we know about its predecessors applies equally to the strain of today. The use of DNA sequences etc., which I posted about earlier, is mentioned in the last two paragraphs below. </p>
<p>Pull Quote:</p>
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<p>The 64,000 questions are how fast it is changing and how it is changing, not that it is changing. </p>
<p>The huge unknown is if this change represents a functionally different infectious method(s). The increased rate of new infections suggest something of the sorts, and still needs to be quantified.</p>
<p>Lots of cool scientific questions here.</p>
<p>There should be absolutely NO comparison anywhere in this ridiculous discussion between the start of the HIV epidemic and this. </p>
<p>We didn’t know what HIV was. We know what Ebola is.
We didn’t know how HIV spread. We know how Ebola does.
There wasn’t widespread knowledge about how to contain HIV. There is with Ebola.
HIV can be spread while a person isn’t showing symptoms. Ebola cannot. </p>
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<p>That is the current assumption re Ebola, but given the genetic mutations observed, there are growing voices that these genetic changes can (or may already have) changed the mode of transmission; similar changes, which have been observed in other viruses. Thus, given these observed genetic changes, it is really only assumed that being symptomatic is STILL required for ALL strains of the disease. </p>
<p>However, the unexplained increased infection rate of this current outbreak seems to indicate that visible symptoms may not be required for all strains anymore or there is a different mode that makes transmission easier.</p>
<p>As for HIV, the analogy was we thought we knew what we were doing there as well - this is even after 20 years of research. Even after 20 years, our assumptions on treating HIV were flawed in one way or the other. Similarly, there is ample “increased infection rate” evidence to now review current policy re Ebola because our assumptions could easily be flawed there as well; flawed in a different way, but still flawed. </p>
<p>Genetic mutations rarely happen without changes in the general behavior, rate of replication, incidence rate of infection, binding sites, or the alteration of the vector necessary for infection. All that would be needed is a change to a more common binding site making the infection faster and easier. </p>
<p>Therefore, assuming that transmission is still identical to the viruses of yesteryear could be just plain wrong and lead to unnecessary deaths, which could be prevented. We know we are wrong somewhere because of the generic mutations. But, the problem is we have not a clue where we are wrong. The virus, as true with mother nature, is steps ahead of us. </p>
<p>Duncan’s character is irrelevant to me. What’s alarming is that this case was botched at every level from day one. Whatever you think of his actions before or after he became symptomatic, no one disputes the fact that he made hospital personnel aware of his recent arrival from Liberia. No one disputes that even given that fact, no alarm bells were raised ([the</a> hospital is now saying](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/us/containing-ebola-cdc-troops-west-africa.html]the”>Dallas Hospital Alters Account, Raising Questions on Ebola Case - The New York Times) that the doctors did know of his travel history when they treated and released him). Once he was diagnosed, it took days for someone to decide to decontaminate the apartment, and days for someone to decide to get food and lodging for the family. It took days to figure out who should be quarantined. It’s disgraceful and inexcusable and rather terrifying, because I doubt that any American city would have done much better. That’s what we should be debating, not whether or not to send Duncan to the slammer.</p>
<p>Not reassuring:</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. Nurses Say They Are Unprepared To Handle Ebola Patients](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>U.S. Nurses Say They Are Unprepared To Handle Ebola Patients | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>"The hospital said “the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (E.H.R.), including within the physician’s workflow.”</p>
<p>Okay, they are not saying the physicians knew, they are saying they had access to the information. These are not the same thing. And, the whole apartment decontamination situation is not so clear either as the highlights come from highly questionable sources, imho. The food and lodging stuff is particularly phony since we know health officials were visiting daily, but apparently they wanted more and called the press. Interesting. When did quarantine mean you get moved to a nicer house and government officials deliver dinner? I also find it worth noting that the hospital initially blamed the mistake on EHR and then backtracked or “corrected” themselves. Gotta wonder who’s rewriting press releases and why. That said, mistakes were obviously made. And, the patient and some of his associates seem to be scheming liars at best. Both can be true. And, none of it is reassuring at all.</p>
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<p>Thanks for the link. </p>
<p>This is not surprising though. We have never dealt with anything like this here.</p>
<p>Two simple questions:</p>
<p>If the treatment of an Ebola patient requires complete isolation to make sure others are safe from infection, yet the identification of symptoms requires checking for fever and the like, which includes direct physical contact with the potential infected person, exactly how are nurses or any medical personnel suppose to check people safely without some sort of protective gear ahead of time?</p>
<p>And with flu season coming up, how do you tell the difference before infectious exposure? </p>
<p>The answer is you probably cannot, until it is too late. And possibly soon it could be anyone, so the demographic aspect of being from West Africa will be useless in determining risk.</p>
<p>This is not the flu that if you catch it the chances of survival are 98%+, after just a few unpleasant days. This is serious stuff, and it is time to be very cautious, especially at hospitals, as this guy Duncan surely proved.</p>
<p>“This is a great example of how we have lost the sense of what it means to be a sovereign nation, and leadership has forgotten that the first edict of government is to protect its citizenry and its borders from harm, whatever that harm may be.”</p>
<p>Texans should be banned from traveling outside the state. </p>