I think it’s high time we began a list of Americans who are panic-stricken about Ebola. Here’s a start:
Andrew Cuomo
Chris Christie (ibid.)
Connecticut Department of Health
Georgia’s DeKalb County School District
Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools (ibid.)
New York City Department of Health (ibid.)
Nominations for new candidates gratefully accepted.
Why are they panic stricken if they are placing people in quarantine? This was the topic of pretty intense discussion last night when I was on call. There are two groups at high risk. West Africans from the affected countries and health care workers exposed to Ebola. As I said before, we don’t have, I think, a good handle on exactly what to do with health care workers (HCW). I think that we are in a gray area without enough data to make a certain decision. While the CDC appears to be following what MSF has done in the past, this is affecting many more HCW in the past.
Also, I find it a little disappointing that two of the three HCW appear to have had pretty clear constitutional symptoms consistent with a viral prodrome and still went out into confined public spaces. While it is looking as though the virus is staying true to what we think we understand, i.e. it is not easy to catch via casual contact, I don’t think that means we can know for sure right now. Therefore, I think there is room for divergence on how to handle HCW.
I will regard it as panic when we start doing what my Fox News watching nurses were advocating for last night. They want everyone who has gone anywhere in Africa to be quarantined or outright banned from returning to the US. If we start quarantine on more and more distantly related people, that would also be a panic driven action right now.
Steve
Someone suggested on TWITTER recently that we need a Czar of Not Panicking. I suggested Steven Wright for such a roll.
You can probably put CNN at the top of the list.