<p>They were having a press conference at 12:30. Did it not happen? I guess it’s too early to know.</p>
<p>Thanks, zm. I hadn’t heard of him before the current crisis.</p>
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As I said, he is very smart. Very caring. Very devoted.
But his priorities can sometimes be questioned, as wel as his competence. He is the guy who put the nanny in Bloomberg’s nanny state. </p>
<p>Someone suggested yesterday (I can’t remember who, but I don’t think it’s releveant) that a true crisis communications specialist should be brought on board to tail Dr. Frieden and provide the voice for the necessary information because the doctor simply is not good at that and makes things worse.</p>
<p>Good letter from Salovey.</p>
<p>Yes, great letter.</p>
<p>I guess smart people can get sloppy wearing a bureaucrat’s hat. During the congressional hearing someone posted pictures of him donned in full PPE complete with a gas mask ready to be hosed with chlorine before taking it off and the inadequate PPE gear he recommended in the protocol that exposed skin. To me, he has a deeper issue thanjust not being good at communicating.</p>
<p>Salovey, at least, is a good communicator.</p>
<p>Nina Pham’s GoFundMe has exceeded the goal of $70000. Amber Vinson’s GoFundMe has dissppeared.</p>
<p>The reason I think communication matters so much is that there is now even a school in California evacuated because a student became ill after having contact with nurse Vinson on the plane, as well as 7 people voluntarily quarantined in Ohio. Had clear, straightforward guidelines been set and passed through the CDC and through the hospital in question, she wouldn’t have flown and there wouldn’t need to be an abundance of caution. No, I don’t think people caught Ebola from her, but I do think the inconveniences of being absolutely sure should have been avoided.</p>
<p>Hopefully, care for both Ms. Pham and Ms. Vinson will be fully covered by their insurance. If not, IMO the hospital should step in and pay the rest. Neither of these women, or anyone who gets sick because the hospital didn’t provide them with proper training/equipment, should have to pay a dime for their care.</p>
<p>In fact, the hospital would also be very smart to pay the nurses their full regular pay until they can return to work. </p>
<p>Love that phrase, “the inconvenience of being absolutely sure”</p>
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</p>
<p>I really disagree with this. Telling people how they should feel is one of the markers of emotional abuse.
People have a right to their own thoughts and their own emotions.
We can tell them what the facts are, we can tell them what our analysis of the facts are. That’s it.
The public has a right to information. The public does not need emotional programming or pablum or disinformation.
Bringing this back to Ebola, I wish the authorities would spend less time on reassuring and more time on addressing the actual disease.</p>
<p>^Very true. We know how to read facts and draw conclusions from them.</p>
<p>
The fact that they’ve gotten so much wrong makes me wonder what is really going on in the background. Whether it is incompetence or dishonesty.</p>
<p>
What I meant was that we know it’s not likely that anyone caught the disease form Ms. Vinson, but since we can’t be absolutely sure, unnecessary and inconvenient and expensive measures have to be taken that otherwise wouldn’t have.</p>
<p>Yes, good letter from the Yale psychology professor. I have to note that he had an advantage - a prepared letter can be edited and proofread while something a person says in a Q&A session can’t be.</p>
<p>As one of my professors used to say, “communication is not a soft skill!” As practice shows again and again, brilliant scientists are oftentimes poor communicators and cannot digest the complexity of their field to an average person. The average Joe is at a complete loss with all this info being thrown around by the media. I think that having a well spoken Surgeon General who could make some public appearances and Q&A conferences would be very, very helpful. Let the CDC scientists do their “science thing” and have a well spoken expert present their findings and other info to the public. </p>
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<p>I have serious questions about this evacuation if you believe the article below:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/Student-at-Southwestern-College-under-quarantine-for-Ebola-279453812.html”>http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/Student-at-Southwestern-College-under-quarantine-for-Ebola-279453812.html</a></p>
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<p>So this sick kid came into contact with someone who was merely on this woman’s flight? Is this “friend” ill? A friend of a friend is sick 3 days later and all hell breaks loose? </p>
<p>Something is wrong with this article, or people are being inappropriately “hysterical.” </p>
<p>
I wouldn’t say hysterical, I would say unnecessary. And if Ms. Vinson hadn’t flown, it wouldn’t have come up at all.</p>
<p>I heard snippets of Frieden’s testimony on the radio as I was driving around. His justification for not imposing a travel ban on people from the hot zone was ludicrous. He said that the way they enter now ‘we can track them’. Really!!! No one tracks anyone once they come into this country. If we did there wouldn’t be so many people here who have overstayed their visas. </p>
<p>And what did he mean by ‘tracking’? The Ebola carriers will not be known until they show up in some ER. </p>
<p>A congressman from Missouri called him out and said that while some might try to slip in undetected, that would surely cut the number down from 100 plus per day to a much smaller number and thus lessen the odds that one of them was carrying Ebola. </p>
<p>If true, this is scary, and I have no reason to doubt her account. Another case of bottom line outweighing safety</p>
<p><a href=“Texas Health Presbyterian nurse: 'We never talked about Ebola'”>Texas Health Presbyterian nurse: 'We never talked about Ebola';