Additionally, a lab tech who handled specimens in Dallas left the US on a cruise. She is now under voluntary quarantine on the cruise ship until they can get her and her husband back to the states. The ship has been denied entry into Belize.
Post by cattledogkisses on Oct 17, 2014 9:01:13 GMT -5
I was wondering about the fiance, because presumably he had close contact with her, so if he doesn't end up contracting it then it seems unlikely that she would have infected anyone on the plane. Still a terrible idea to fly though!
pugz do you work in Houston? We have the same 21 day PTO determination. It is the consistent standard because people voluntarily went to those countries. If someone goes on business travel we will treat that differently. I know it's hard though. We have a couple of people in quarantine because they have family who traveled from an affected country now becoming ill. And one employee. We have a leave sharing program though. I volunteered to donate some PTO to the nurse who said, "hey I have a family member who came from one of those countries and is now showing signs. I show no signs but I think I should be in quarantine just in case." But she doesn't have 21 days of PTO. She is putting patients and coworkers ahead of herself so I want to help her.
I think our person administering leave sharing is about to get busy, or at least i hope!
Post by orangeblossom on Oct 17, 2014 9:34:39 GMT -5
I've mostly stated out of any Ebola posts, because I know what it can be like when an outbreak is going on and how crazy things can get as you are literally getting new information hourly or more.
I will say this, it's hard enough to prevent infection of any kind at a hospital, doing your typical standard precautions and then add in transmission-based precautions, it gets even harder. All this to say, if you don't already have good infection rates and control/prevention practices, you're already behind the curve when dealing with something like Ebola.
As an aside if you want to know more about hospital infection rates, you can go to Hospital Compare and/or your state public health site, if they are publicly reporting them. CDC also has them.
The only thing I'm side-eyeing is CDC in that they didn't send in a team right away, but that is a very tricky thing and happens politically behind the scenes. They have to be invited in, and I can absolutely see the health department and other powers that be, that make that final decision, not to let them in initially.
Beyond that, they are doing what happens in an outbreak. It is fluid, no matter how much preparation you have.
I've mostly stated out of any Ebola posts, because I know what it can be like when an outbreak is going on and how crazy things can get as you are literally getting new information hourly or more.
I will say this, it's hard enough to prevent infection of any kind at a hospital, doing your typical standard precautions and then add in transmission-based precautions, it gets even harder. All this to say, if you don't already have good infection rates and control/prevention practices, you're already behind the curve when dealing with something like Ebola.
As an aside if you want to know more about hospital infection rates, you can go to Hospital Compare and/or your state public health site, if they are publicly reporting them. CDC also has them.
The only thing I'm side-eyeing is CDC in that they didn't send in a team right away, but that is a very tricky thing and happens politically behind the scenes. They have to be invited in, and I can absolutely see the health department and other powers that be, that make that final decision, not to let them in initially.
Beyond that, they are doing what happens in an outbreak. It is fluid, no matter how much preparation you have.
Nanny nanny boo boo i already posted detailed instructions on how to do this. :-P
I've mostly stated out of any Ebola posts, because I know what it can be like when an outbreak is going on and how crazy things can get as you are literally getting new information hourly or more.
I will say this, it's hard enough to prevent infection of any kind at a hospital, doing your typical standard precautions and then add in transmission-based precautions, it gets even harder. All this to say, if you don't already have good infection rates and control/prevention practices, you're already behind the curve when dealing with something like Ebola.
As an aside if you want to know more about hospital infection rates, you can go to Hospital Compare and/or your state public health site, if they are publicly reporting them. CDC also has them.
The only thing I'm side-eyeing is CDC in that they didn't send in a team right away, but that is a very tricky thing and happens politically behind the scenes. They have to be invited in, and I can absolutely see the health department and other powers that be, that make that final decision, not to let them in initially.
Beyond that, they are doing what happens in an outbreak. It is fluid, no matter how much preparation you have.
Nanny nanny boo boo i already posted detailed instructions on how to do this. :-P
Ha! I meant to take that out, as I copied this from a local board, and remembered you posting it!
This is crap - not bc of the guy, but bc we should have a Surgeon General who guides this and decides who the Ebola Czar should be. Not saying that the acting Surgeon General doesn't know what he's doing, but it does seem weird that we can't get a Surgeon General approved, but we can get an Ebola Czar.
This is crap - not bc of the guy, but bc we should have a Surgeon General who guides this and decides who the Ebola Czar should be. Not saying that the acting Surgeon General doesn't know what he's doing, but it does seem weird that we can't get a Surgeon General approved, but we can get an Ebola Czar.
it's all such BS. I'm still annoyed over all the posturing at yesterday's hearing
This is crap - not bc of the guy, but bc we should have a Surgeon General who guides this and decides who the Ebola Czar should be. Not saying that the acting Surgeon General doesn't know what he's doing, but it does seem weird that we can't get a Surgeon General approved, but we can get an Ebola Czar.
Maybe someone here will know more about this.
I remember up thread, maybe it was ESF, said there was an issue of people managing hospitals without healthcare experience, only really looking out for the bottom line (I'm clearly paraphrasing). This czar doesn't have healthcare experience, but they said this is considered a management issue. What?!
Does anyone with healthcare or hospital experience have any input on how this person makes sense vs a doctor with infectious disease control experience? Thx
This is crap - not bc of the guy, but bc we should have a Surgeon General who guides this and decides who the Ebola Czar should be. Not saying that the acting Surgeon General doesn't know what he's doing, but it does seem weird that we can't get a Surgeon General approved, but we can get an Ebola Czar.
Maybe someone here will know more about this.
I remember up thread, maybe it was ESF, said there was an issue of people managing hospitals without healthcare experience, only really looking out for the bottom line (I'm clearly paraphrasing). This czar doesn't have healthcare experience, but they said this is considered a management issue. What?!
Does anyone with healthcare or hospital experience have any input on how this person makes sense vs a doctor with infectious disease control experience? Thx
Yeah, that was me and the article I linked.
Why the fuck doesn't the Ebola Czar have public health experience?
Honestly, I wasn't at panic mode yet, but the more I read about the incompetence both in leadership and in selecting leadership, I am getting increasingly concerned that we are not going to be able to effectively contain this.
This guy is no more qualified for Ebola Czar than Brownie was qualified to run FEMA.
Something I learned during the first two years of the Obama administration, when the staff infighting was at its worst: if you wanted to get somebody to say something nice, ask them about Ron Klain.
Klain entered the administration as Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff. This was, itself, notable: Klain has been chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, too, making him the only person to serve in that position for two different vice presidents.
But the esteem for Klain wasn't based on his resume. Rather, he had a mix of policy, political and bureaucratic chops that everyone agreed was rare. The policy people spoke admiringly of his policy savvy, and they all agreed he lapped them in political instincts. The political people admired his political instincts, but recognized he was better at policy. And everyone agreed Klain knew how to run an interagency process.
EVERYONE AGREED KLAIN KNEW HOW TO RUN AN INTERAGENCY PROCESS
"He understands the intersection of politics and policy better than anyone I've ever worked with," says economist Jared Bernstein, who worked closely with Klain in Biden's office, "and is thus uniquely effective in getting things done."
Today, the White House will announce that Klain is being named "Ebola czar". It's a good choice because it shows a healthy respect for how hard the bureaucratic job of coordinating the Ebola response really is.
The Ebola response involves various arms of the Department of Health and Human Services (particularly, though not solely, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, President Obama's office, private stakeholders, and many, many more.
The "czar" position requires someone who knows how these different agencies and institutions work, who's got the stature to corral their efforts, who knows who to call when something unusual is needed, who can keep the policy straight. The need to rationalize a massive process is something Obama focused on in his remarks Thursday night:
Those of you who don't know, Lisa Monaco, who does a lot of my counterterrorism work as well as national security work, has been working with our Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tom Frieden at the CDC. It may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person, not because the three of these folks have not been doing an outstanding job — I should mention, and Susan Rice, my National Security Advisor. It's not that they haven't been doing an outstanding job really working hard on this issue, but they also are responsible for a whole bunch of other stuff.
So Lisa is also dealing, as Susan is, with ISIL. And we're going into flu season, which means, by the way, that people should be looking to get their flu shots. We know that every year tens of thousands of people potentially die of the flu, and a hundred-thousand or more may be actually going to the emergency room and hospitalized because of the flu. So that's something that Tom also is responsible for.
So it may make sense for us to have one person, in part just so that after this initial surge of activity we can have a more regular process just to make sure that we're crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's going forward.
It would have been tempting for the Obama administration to nominate an Ebola czar who sounded good: someone with a long list of medical credentials to her name, or someone with a reassuring public profile. But the federal government has plenty of skilled epidemiologists, and this position needs to do more than the Sunday talk shows.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS PLENTY OF SKILLED EPIDEMIOLOGISTS, AND THIS POSITION NEEDS TO DO MORE THAN THE SUNDAY TALK SHOWS
I've seen some people arguing that there would be no need for an Ebola Czar if the Senate would simply confirm Dr. Vivek Murthy, Obama's nominee for surgeon general, who's being blocked because the National Rifle Association doesn't believe gun violence is a public-health issue. Murthy should be confirmed, but it would be a mistake to make him Ebola czar; he's a newcomer to government, and would need to learn, on the job, how to manage the various agencies and principals involved in the response effort. He'd likely get sidelined as players with more weight and bureaucratic skill began going around him.
Actual government experience is badly underrated in Washington. Politicians run for office promising that they know how to run businesses, not Senate offices. "Bureaucrat" is often lobbed as an insult. But in processes like this one, government experience really matters. Nominating Klain suggests the White House is thinking about this correctly: as an effort that requires the coordination of already ample resources, where the danger is that the federal government will be too slow in sharing information across agencies and getting the resources where they need to go.
Post by Scout'sHonor on Oct 17, 2014 11:49:17 GMT -5
To go along with what epphd said, check out the Notifiable Diseases and Mortality Report. There is more plague, EEE, hantavirus, tularemia (which is bad in my area), typhoid fever, etc than ebola.
To go along with what epphd said, check out the Notifiable Diseases and Mortality Report. There is more plague, EEE, hantavirus, tularemia (which is bad in my area), typhoid fever, etc than ebola.
Am I reading this right? 599 people have died this year of measles??
For the most updated information on the Ebola virus we recommend that you visit www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola. The CDC and other leading health organizations are recommending the use of EPA approved hospital-grade disinfectants for surface disinfection in hospital settings to help prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. Lysol products like Lysol Disinfectant Spray and the other products listed here are approved as hospital-grade disinfectants and though not specificallytested to kill the Ebola virus, based on their ability to kill similar as well as harder to kill viruses, these products are likely to be effective against the Ebola virus.
To go along with what epphd said, check out the Notifiable Diseases and Mortality Report. There is more plague, EEE, hantavirus, tularemia (which is bad in my area), typhoid fever, etc than ebola.
Am I reading this right? 599 people have died this year of measles??
Those are just 599 cases, I went searching and it looks like no deaths up to April, but I can't find anything since then.
OK it's been said a million times, but I'll say it again: the hysteria is really out of control. I went to read up about the cruise ship incident. The passenger "may have" handled specimens, but they don't know for sure. The passenger is not showing any symptoms. And it's near the end of the 21 day incubation period for symptoms to begin. So the passenger is not contagious, and odds are excellent that they don't have it. And yet, by the headlines everywhere, you'd think this person was vomiting and pissing ebola all over the buffet line.
Ebola is pretty much the last disease I want to get. And I'm grateful I don't live in Dallas right now because that hospital is pretty incompetent, so I'm happy to have a bit of a buffer zone, and I don't blame people in that area who are a bit nervous. I have to go to a hospital next week, as someone I know is having surgery, and even though there's no ebola in my state, I'll probably be a little nervous. So I get it.
But at the same time, JHC. All these sensationalized reports are equating "may have been in contact with" and run of the mill "symptoms" with "HAS EBOLA HOLY SHIT RUN FOR YOUR LIVES."
What's frightening is that the panic could contribute to the spreading of not just Ebola but viruses, flus, etc. We are going to start seeing hordes of people running to the ER and doctors offices like never before. Waiting rooms are going to be filled an increased number of otherwise healthy people with minor conditions that are going to have increased exposure to measles, the flu, and other conditions. ERs in particular are notorious for being poorly run, to think of all the additional people in there, the increased wait times, etc - those waiting rooms are going to be petri dishes for all sorts of shit.
For the most updated information on the Ebola virus we recommend that you visit www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola. The CDC and other leading health organizations are recommending the use of EPA approved hospital-grade disinfectants for surface disinfection in hospital settings to help prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. Lysol products like Lysol Disinfectant Spray and the other products listed here are approved as hospital-grade disinfectants and though not specificallytested to kill the Ebola virus, based on their ability to kill similar as well as harder to kill viruses, these products are likely to be effective against the Ebola virus.