A healthcare worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who died of Ebola in Dallas, has tested positive for Ebola:
A health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the Ebola patient who died there last week has tested positive for the deadly virus, authorities said Sunday.
The care-giver reported having a fever Friday night and was hospitalized, isolated and referred for testing within 90 minutes, Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive and its Homeland Security director, said at a news conference.
“While this is obviously bad news, it is not news that should bring about panic,” Jenkins said. “We knew it was a possibility that a second person would contract the virus. We had a contingency plan in place.”
I’ve just been listening to a commissioner from the Texas Department of Health and the the head of the Centers for Disease Control blame the the poor healthcare worker for contracting the disease. I find that premature. When the data contradict your hypothesis you should take at least a second to inhale and consider whether there’s something wrong with your hypothesis before jumping to a conclusion. They simply don’t have all of the facts necessary to prove conclusively that the healthcare worker violated protocol.
I’m not preaching panic. I’m advising humility.
I like this. The general public has nothing to fear. The only people that need to be concerned are highly trained professionals with lots & lots of safety gear and protocols. No cause for even the slightest bit of concern!
The bottom line to Ebola is that it’s a relatively new virus for us to nationally comprehend and handle here in the US. It’s high fatality rate, contradictory reports on how it’s transmitted only increases peoples’ uneasiness about what the real ramifications and contagiousness is of this virus. Couple this with the already high mistrust most people have of our government’s words regarding “what is” and “what is not,” in all areas of domestic policy or analysis of threats around the world, and people are kind of swimming around in foamy confusion and helplessness. Plus you have some medical ‘experts’ discussing possibilities of Ebola mutating and becoming even more virulent as an air-bourne virus.
Basically, it’s the fear of the unknown that is exponentially on the rise, right now.
What Dr. Frieden does not appear to comprehend is that in the United States it is inevitable that 90% of those who will encounter Ebola in the wild here will not be Ebola specialists and won’t have specialist training or attitudes.
The challenge should be avoiding encountering Ebola in the wild here rather than turning every healthcare professional into an Ebola specialist.
1) I think that in general we should expect that professionals would not promote panic. It is not that we have nothing to worry about, as we will have some cases of Ebola and some deaths. We just need to keep it in perspective. With everything that we know it still remains highly unlikely that this will cause near the damage that the flu does every year.
2) I guess I should point out that the same people who promote distrust in government are the same ones promoting panic over Ebola. We continually see it with the flu. When the CDC comes out with warnings about strains of flu that may be more likely to cause harm, we immediately have that questioned by the usual anti-government types. God forbid you even try to talk to a Fox geezer type about getting a flu shot. It is all part of a govt plot according to them.
Steve
I missed where Fox News brought in the race aspect concerning Ebola and its treatment. Is Jesse Jackson a Fox geezer? Is CNN promoting distrust?
“God forbid you even try to talk to a Fox geezer type about getting a flu shot. It is all part of a govt plot according to them.”
I listened to a physician led debate on Ebola on FOX this morning. One doctor’s perspective was to be more cautious and circumspect, as a medical professional, in discussing the introduction of Ebola here in the US, so as to not encourage fear (very much along your thought lines). The other doctor passionately called for a more prudent approach, to avoid miscalculation of the virus’s reach. IOW, not to underestimate our potential vulnerability, or the risk factors within that vulnerability, should the Ebola virus spread further into the population. By presenting both sides of this medical issue it became both informative and thought provoking, without all the hysteria implied by you in your last post.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that the infected didn’t perfectly comply with protocols. My concern is that 100% compliance is not something we should rely on or expect in the broader view.
I think that in general we should expect that professionals would not promote panic.
No, and one of the ways to do that is to not make statements that they cannot confirm. They are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN it was a breach of protocols, even though they have no idea which one. They’re making categorical statements without proof, which by itself will create suspicion.
“At some point, there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection,” [Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the CDC] said at a news conference Sunday. “The (Ebola treatment) protocols work. … But we know that even a single lapse or breach can result in infection.”
That absolute certainty sounds ridiculous. He could have said something along the lines of “We’re very confident that our protocols are effective and believe that one or more of these protocols were likely breached resulting in this additional case. We are working with the infected nurse and her coworkers to determine exactly what happened and what we need to do to insure no further breaches, or if we need to improve our protocols.”
That would have covered the bases without sounding like Kevin Bacon’s character at the end of Animal House.
TB- I am talking about tray to day practice. When I ask patients if they have had a flu shot I usually get 4 answers. Dotn remember, yes, no and hell no because I don’t trust the govt.
Steve
Nice moon walk, Steve.
Damned crazed Fox geezers…..
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/12/salon-interview-compares-trayvon-martin-michael-brown-to-symbolic-killing-of-obama/
Drew- This actually kind of fun. You can post stuff said by people no has ever heard of, and I can do the same. My turn. Some stuff from your base.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gays-are-possessed-putrid-smelling-demons-even-pigs-wont-tolerate
@steve
You intentionally included the word Fox, and I assume you mean Fox News not Megan Fox. There was a reason for this.
CNN is playing the race aspect, and Jesse Jackson is blaming racism.
Perhaps, you need to start seeing a different demographic.
Agree that the CDC statements shouldn’t be definitively claiming that the nurse’s infection was due to a breach of protocol, but at this point that is by far the most likely explanation.
TB- The race hustlers like to remind people about Tuskegee. Which was at least real. It may influence some black people to not seek the flu vaccine. I don’t know as I never hear that as a reason. I do hear older patients tell me they aren’t getting a flu vaccine because they don’t believe what the govt says about the flu and about vaccines.
Steve
CStanley, I definitely agree with you. And here’s why the CDC should NOT be so categorical in their statements. Taken from the President’s remarks on September 16, 2014:
Within three days, an asymptomatic person with the infection was on his way to the USA via plane. So much for the consensus view of the experts.
Wrong. See previous comment. The methodologies for screening were so rigorous that lying and Ibuprofen could beat it. Given how easily Duncan entered the country, the chances of this happening were not “extremely low.”
This one appears to be true. Thank God some of it was.
So prepared that they got an Ebola victim and sent him home with anti-biotics. And so prepared that according to the CDC itself the medical staff at the hospital in Texas were too poorly trained to implement the procedures correctly.
Three out of four sentences wrong, although at least the President’s speech writers stuck in a slight qualifier in the first sentence.
This is why the CDC should not have made the categorical statement they made regarding the new case in Texas. By doing so they look arrogant, and look especially stupid in light of the President’s comments from September 16th, which were no doubt made after the relevant people had made their views known to the President and their staff. As it is, they look like the jerk-off NASA administrators who said that the chance of a shuttle failure resulting in catastrophic loss of life & equipment were one in millions or less. It’s eroding their credibility, not reassuring the public.
That was an interesting breakdown of lies and truth Ice. Add to that a major proportion of nurses have not been clued into Ebola protocol, and what you might have is a disaster waiting to happen.
Jan, they weren’t lies if they believed them to be true. In this case I give them the benefit of the doubt, and unless someone can prove later that the various people involved KNEW their statements to be false, I will continue to believe that THEY believed their statements. Which is an indication of extreme arrogance on the part of the experts or their political masters.
But this does erode the credibility of those experts, and of the government officials that NEED to get their act together.
How I wish I could edit comments.
Shorter reply to Jan:
Being wrong isn’t the same as being dishonest. Being wrong continually and insisting one is above error? That’s pure arrogance, and eventually people will tune out whether they should or not.
Ice, good reponse, and one I can’t disagree with. Continuing with the Ebola conversation though….
There is a lot of interesting “stuff” in this Washington Post article explaining the various Ebola myths. However, these two paragraphs caught my attention:
And…when discussing the possibility of Ebola mutating enough to become airborne:
All worthy considerations to ponder, also following suite with Ice’s speculation of arrogance in the mix.
Ice, I definitely agree with you about the poor messaging.
Regarding the real danger if the disease itself, I’d be far more concerned if any staff members at Emory or the Nebraska Medical Center become infected. They are trained and experienced in the procedures and if a break occurs there it could still be human error but the odds would be higher that the virus was mutating in ways that might “beat our system”.
The protocol for protection of health care workers is not hard to understand, but is hard to do correctly 100% of the time. You would think that with one’s own life at stake one would be more likely to perform well, but that pressure can also make people more prone to error. I would think they should be considering common sense backups, like having a second person observe each healthcare worker as he/she unsuits. Even doing it in front of a mirror would probably help. Practice drills, of course….but somehow all we hear is handwringing about budget cuts.
Reading between the lines, I get the sense that CDC is generally quite displeased with the Texas hospital’s handling of the case. Also get the sense that this is warranted. It’s pretty hard to extend the benefit of the doubt after the way they bungled the initial assessment of the patient. The other criticism I’m noting is on procedures that were done during the late stages of his illness which were unlikely to help him but put the healthcare workers at higher risk (dialysis and intubation.)
The impression I get is that there ought to be more oversight and coordination with CDC. But the political bureaucrats aren’t the only ones guilty of arrogance and hubris- I expect we’ll see problems with coordination stemming also from physicians and hospital administrators unwilling to follow guidance.
@steve
If you have that many people who think the government is out to get them, you are dealing with a very narrow demographic. I suspect you are exaggerating. In any case, the government has given a lot of people a lot of reasons to distrust it. White middle and upper income people are the exception.
Decades ago, I got into Malcolm X and Minister Farrakhan, and it opened my eyes. I do not necessarily agree with them, but from what I have seen, I get where they are coming from. Later, I learned about Tuskegee and more details about the Native American treatment, and Japanese Internment. Just recently, I learned about Malaga Island.
I know black folks think AIDS and crack are government conspiracies. I would like to think they are wrong, but I have not trusted the government for a long, long time. After a few minutes of speaking, the Fox geezers start backing away from me, slowly.
You could have used these conspiracies instead. I am guessing that would be racist.
NSA spying, Eminent Domain, Civil Forfeiture, police searches, I could go on, and on, and on. The list of reasons to distrust the government is becoming long, and people are beginning to notice.
When the government says do not panic, the first thing I think is what are they trying to hide? Second, who are they trying to protect? Third, how badly am I going to get f*cked? I know the poor bastards below me are going to be worse off, and they know it too. When I say the same thing to them, they do not back away slowly. They shake their heads and agree. “You got that right.”
You may not get it, but some of my people reading this are shaking their heads and saying, “yep, you got that right.”