<p>Israel is very good at figuring out where people have been before attempting to get in. What are they doing?</p>
<p>Secondly, aren’t passports now electronically scanned upon entry? Is it really necessary to “thumb through” a passport looking for “stamps” to see where someone has traveled in the past several days to weeks?</p>
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Yes, it is necessary, because there is no shared global electronic database for tracking traveler entries/exits into countries. </p>
<p>Even thumbing through a passport doesn’t reveal the whole travel history. In the country I am presently living, because I have a residency visa, the host country doesn’t stamp my passport when I go in/out.</p>
<p>I read that the Liberian dude in Dallas is on ventilation & kidney dialysis and getting an experimental drug now. It was a good strategic move on his part for him to lie on his exit questionnaire in Liberia.</p>
<p>^^^^Yeah, that’s true. Sometimes we have had to ask the immigration official to please stamp it for us, so we have that “souvenir.”</p>
<p>. . . and his family was complaining that they didn’t think he was getting the same care as an American patient would. Jeezo Pete! Is this going to be the next phase of medical tourism instead of going to India for hip replacements and Brazil for plastic surgery?</p>
<p>Bill for Ebola Adds Up as Care Costs $1,000 an Hour
<a href=“Bill for Ebola Adds Up as Care Costs $1,000 an Hour - Bloomberg”>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-07/bill-for-ebola-adds-up-as-care-costs-1-000-an-hour.html</a>
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<p>"Yes, it is necessary, because there is no shared global electronic database for tracking traveler entries/exits into countries.</p>
<p>Even thumbing through a passport doesn’t reveal the whole travel history. In the country I am presently living, because I have a residency visa, the host country doesn’t stamp my passport when I go in/out."</p>
<p>As GMT well knows, you can move in between a lot of countries in W Europe without being tracked (Schengen countries). Dumb q - do the countries of Africa have a similar construct to Schengen whereby you aren’t tracked? </p>
<p>It’s been 10 days since Duncan was hospitalized, and 14(?) days since he first got symptoms.
It’s a hopeful sign that nobody else has symptoms as of now, since Ebola typically starts showing signs by the 7th day. Fingers crossed they all make it to day 21.</p>
<p>@GMTplus7 </p>
<p>That is one of my concerns. Yes, our health care system is sort of able to do this in small numbers but with the staffing, procedural and equipment costs of providing care to each patient I would think that it could be easily overwhelmed as well if numbers grew. That’s why it seems even more important to me to take extraordinary measures to contain transmission now. Nurses and entire medical teams were already short staffed and overworked. We have already heard many alarms about the potential for harmful mistakes in understaffed care environments. We have already heard the alarms about the transmission of other secondary infections in the hospital setting. My great aunt went into the hospital with a broken hip and died from MRSA complications. I would rather not test the system to see how it copes with another serious pressure if there are ways to avoid it.</p>
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A couple of year ago, I was seated on a flight next to a CDC guy who just finished business in Bangkok (I was glad to see our public servants flying Economy Class). We chatted about the movie “Contagion”. He said he & his colleagues had seen and discussed the movie. They thought the unfolding of events in the wake of a global pandemic, as featured in the movie, was plausible.</p>
<p>This is my sample set of CDC movie critics. </p>
<p>CNN is reporting that Duncan has died.</p>
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<p>@actingmt This kind of thing is why I keep posting about the circumstances of Mr. Duncan’s arrival.</p>
<p>Just this morning I watched an interview with Anderson Cooper and an international reporter in Liberia. She said, to summarize, that the young woman had been having a troubled pregnancy, that when they tried to take her to the hospital she was not having the classic Ebola symptoms, but others, that it wasn’t until days after Duncan left that she was recognized as an Ebola case and the “patient zero” of that particular cluster after others in the family began to die. You can find the video on this page:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/health/ebola/”>Doctor: Cameraman with Ebola 'stable,' but not in clear - CNN;
<p>Leaving aside the now-irrelevant matter of Duncan’s character, if he did NOT knowingly lie on his exit papers, it shows how easily such a screening measure can fail, even when dealing with well-intentioned travelers.</p>
<p>The directors of Contagion consulted with CDC experts, and parts of the movie were supposed to be filmed on the CDC campus (I think the filming happened elsewhere, if I recall that correctly). Of course, some things had to be exaggerated to create more drama and suspense. </p>
<p>Here are some fact-checks about that movie:</p>
<p><a href=“‘Contagion’ Reality Check: CDC Experts Explore Some of the Film’s Scenarios | PBS NewsHour”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/cdc-experts-examine-the-science-of-hollywoods-contagion/</a></p>
<p>Duncan has died according to WFAA in Dallas.</p>
<p>@Consolation</p>
<p>Actually, I saw that AC report yesterday. When the reporter explained that maybe people thought the girl fell over because she was a pregnant teenager I about fell off my chair. She was 19 in Liberia and her brother was also sick .But, I agree, it’s irrelevant and we will never know for sure. Next, watch for his family to sue anyone and everyone possible for malpractice and discrimination, among other things. They have already indicated that’s the next step.</p>
<p>I have not read all of the new posts, so I do not know if this has been mentioned here yet, but there are reports that the Spanish patient touched her face with gloved hands. This happens all the time, BTW - it is human nature. If you film yourself for several minutes while you are doing routine things, you can count how many times your hands went up to rub your nose, fix hair, etc. - and you have no recollection of ever intending to do this or doing this! </p>
<p>Wow, as soon as the death has been reported, there are already speculations on some sites that there was no intent to ever treat him to the point of cure, that he was used " for experiments", that his blood was drained for vaccine making… WOW. So many crazies out there. </p>
<p>I really, really, really hope Ebola doesn’t make its way to Central America. That would be the beginning of the apocalypse.</p>
<p>Very sad. Poor Louise. I hope that she and the rest of the family beat the odds and remain well. :(</p>
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<p>Well, that’s certainly the American way!</p>
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<p>He was? I had the impression that he was thought to have caught it from her. I also read that she collapsed and was having seizures, which was why they tried to take her to a hospital. There is also the issue of malaria, which is endemic there. When Nancy Writebol first became ill, they thought it was malaria, remember? It took days for her to be diagnosed with Ebola. But then, she isn’t presumed to be a liar, is she?</p>
<p>Jesse Jackson getting involved and saying that Duncan was sent home because he didn’t have health insurance is not helpful when it comes to increasing trust. Unless, of course, he is correct. Would a person with health insurance have been offered tests of some kind, or was it an honest mistake? And even if his lack of insurance played into the doctor’s course of action, it is not necessarily for malign reasons. Doctors do try to avoid expensive tests that are likely to be unnecessary when they know the patient is going to have to pay for them out of pocket. I’ve experienced this myself, had those discussions. I find it very, very hard to believe that a medical doctor in the US would knowingly release a person who might be suffering from Ebola because they didn’t have insurance. What I think probably happened is that the doctor just didn’t bother to read the nurse’s notes. Overworked? Arrogant? Just inclined to be lazy? Who knows.</p>