In case you have not heard, we now have a mandatory quarantine in NY/NJ:
On Thursday night, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sat beside Mayor Bill de Blasio at Bellevue Hospital Center as they offered soothing words to worried New Yorkers: New York City’s first case of Ebola, they said, was no reason for panic.
Less than 19 hours later, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, joined the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and struck a starkly different tone. The governors announced Friday that medical personnel returning to New York after treating Ebola patients in West Africa would be automatically subject to a 21-day quarantine.
The risk, Mr. Cuomo said, was grave. Offering an ominous hypothetical, he raised the precise situation that the mayor and the city’s health commissioner had tried to play down the night before: the danger of Ebola spreading through the subway system.
“In a region like this,” Mr. Cuomo said, “you go out one, two or three times, you ride the subway, you ride a bus, you could affect hundreds and hundreds of people.”
Only if you’re exchanging bodily fluids, but that ship has sailed and we are well beyond that, so whatever.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the multiple Ebola threads here, but if you haven’t, don’t worry, they were typical threads about contentious issues. They had people talking past each other, willful misrepresentation of each other’s point, internet experts, profanity, hurt feelings, talking past each other, a few people remaining on the threads until the very end (me included) because someone is wrong on the internet, apologies, everyone goes to bed, and then everyone has their coffee and starts back in on each other the next day. All in all, fairly typical.
The comments broke down into tribes (even though on most of the larger points we all agreed with each other) that included those who were afraid of the public hysteria and the idiocy and craven political bullshit that would soon follow because this is idiot nation during an election cycle with a hysterical media (my side), those who thought thought you should just let the science and facts rule the day and that if they follow procedures laid out there will be no more infections (the experts who actually work in the medical field), those who feared this would have a chilling effect on volunteers going to stop the crisis where the real problem lies, and those who were afraid of shunning of patients and medical workers, and some other subsets. I’m hear to declare a truce. We were all right. Congratulations.
1. Craven politicians- CHECK:
Within the city, an unexpected policy shift by Mr. Cuomo on Friday appeared to open up a public divide between the governor and the administration of Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, was not informed in advance of the Cuomo-Christie mandatory quarantine order and was “furious,” a senior city official who spoke to her said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, said city officials were not consulted about the quarantine policy because it pertained to airports that are run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Mr. Cuomo’s shift came just 11 days before he will be on the ballot seeking a second term, and on a day when his long-shot Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, seized on the city’s Ebola case to assail the governor for not closing the New York airports to travelers from affected West African nations.
Mr. Astorino, the Westchester County executive, said Mr. Cuomo, along with President Obama, was “playing Russian roulette in the nation’s most clustered population center.”
They aren’t alone:
Speaking to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, Paul questioned whether the Obama administration should carry out its plan to send 3,000 troops to Ebola hot zones in Africa.
“You also have to be concerned about 3,000 soldiers getting back on a ship. Where is disease most transmittable? When you’re in a very close confines on a ship, we all know about cruises and how they get these diarrhea viruses that are transmitted very easily,” he said. “Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?”
And Cruz and his staff had to get in on it:
"Senior Advisor & Dep. Chief @SenTedCruz. Fmr. Director of Coalitions for @HouseGOP" pic.twitter.com/j6RpxYW08k
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) October 24, 2014
As CNN’s Candy Crowley furiously argued the Obama administration’s case in the Ebola outbreak, Texas senator Ted Cruz dismissed the expert advice coming from supporters of the federal response to the crisis.
“The doctors who are saying this are working for the administration and repeating the administration’s talking points,” Cruz said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “And their arguments don’t make sense.”
Speaking to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, Paul questioned whether the Obama administration should carry out its plan to send 3,000 troops to Ebola hot zones in Africa.
“You also have to be concerned about 3,000 soldiers getting back on a ship. Where is disease most transmittable? When you’re in a very close confines on a ship, we all know about cruises and how they get these diarrhea viruses that are transmitted very easily,” he said. “Can you imagine if a whole ship full of our soldiers catch Ebola?”
2. Public hysteria- HELLS YEAH!:
An extraordinary number of Bellevue Hospital staffers called in sick on Friday rather than treat the city’s first Ebola patient — and those who showed up were terrified to enter his isolation chamber, sources told The Post.
“The nurses on the floor are miserable with a ‘why me?’ attitude, scared to death and overworked because all their co-workers called out sick,” one source said.
“One nurse even went as far as to pretend she was having a stroke to get out of working there, but once they cleared her in the ER they sent her back up,” the source added.
And that’s just the people who should know better. There is lots more:
About 200 airline cabin cleaners walked off their jobs at New York’s LaGuardia airport on Thursday, to protest what they say are working conditions that do not protect against potential Ebola contraction.
“When I do bathroom, I come in contact with tampons which I have to grab with my hand, with a glove that’s so cheap that it breaks easily. I come in contact with feces, a lot of feces and vomit. And we have to clean those bathrooms spotless because they audit those planes,”Wendy Arellano, one of the workers, told the Guardian.
“They expect us, that if a little bit of feces stays on the toilet, that we remove it with our hands because [if not] they will say that bathroom is dirty. And I refuse to do it because I think it’s disgusting and I don’t have the appropriate attire, and because I don’t know what that person has.
First off, the tampon bit was TMI. I’d walk off the job if I had to do that with my hand, and ebola wouldn’t even enter into the mix. And I was a bouncer and had to clean the women’s bathroom on Saturday nights and had to burn shit in 50 gallon drums while in the Army. Fuck that. Then there is this:
For Anna Younker, owning a bridal shop means serving customers who are planning one of the happiest days of their lives. It’s a job she loves.
“She’s the salt of the earth,” said her husband, Donald.
But since October 16, the couple’s lives have been turned upside down. Ever since news broke that nurse Amber Vinson had visited their Ohio store just before being diagnosed with Ebola, the fallout has been unrelenting.
The couple’s Coming Attractions Bridal Shop, a business they cultivated for nearly 25 years, is dark, they say, mainly thanks to Ebola hysteria.
“It’s a little hard to believe that something like Ebola from halfway around the world can affect our lives right here in Akron,” said Donald Younker. “The world is clearly smaller than we think.
And on and on and on. You can’t blame some of them, when health officials are simultaneously telling people there is nothing to fear while having everyone run around the city tracking down people who are in no danger whatsoever while cops are dumping protective gear into street corner rubbish bins.
3.) Science and Facts Rule the day- ROGER!
I don’t even need to provide any links, and really can’t, because there isn’t anything to link. Pham, Vinson, and Spencer have infected precisely no one. Not one person. They themselves were infected from exposure to people at their most contagious stages. Pham and Vinson were exposed to Duncan at Dallas Presbyterian because there were no protocols on treatment, inadequate protective gear, and just generally a shit show. Spencer was infected overseas, and while wearing protective gear, was clearly in the middle of the storm and got infected, which isn’t altogether surprising.
4.) Chilling effect on volunteers- YOU BETCHA!
Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.
I had spent a month watching children die, alone. I had witnessed human tragedy unfold before my eyes. I had tried to help when much of the world has looked on and done nothing.
At the hospital, I was escorted to a tent that sat outside of the building. The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. “Your temperature is 98.6,” they said. “You don’t have a fever but we were told you had a fever.”
After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts my neck and looked at the temperature again. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. “Your face is just flushed.”
My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative.
I sat alone in the isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal. Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?
I recalled my last night at the Ebola management center in Sierra Leone. I was called in at midnight because a 10-year-old girl was having seizures. I coaxed crushed tablets of Tylenol and an anti-seizure medicine into her mouth as her body jolted in the bed.
It was the hardest night of my life. I watched a young girl die in a tent, away from her family.
With few resources and no treatment for Ebola, we tried to offer our patients dignity and humanity in the face of their immense suffering.
The epidemic continues to ravage West Africa. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that as many as 15,000 people have died from Ebola. We need more health care workers to help fight the epidemic in West Africa. The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity.
4. Shunning? WE GOT YOUR SHUNNING RIGHT HERE!
And then this:
Children whose parents work with Ebola patients are being disinvited from birthday parties, according to one hospital.
Dr. Mark Rupp, an infectious disease specialist at the Nebraska Medical Center, spoke at the hospital in an attempt to calm fears surrounding the Ebola virus. During his remarks he mentioned that a child belonging to a staff member in the biocontainment unit, where a freelance cameraman is being treated for Ebola, was invited to a birthday party. Later the child was disinvited once the host found out where the child’s parent worked.
Rupp said employees don’t plan on speaking to the media, but earlier on Monday the hospital tweeted about their experiences.
“Children of parents who are working in our Biocontainment Unit are being shunned. This isn’t helpful or appropriate,” read one tweet.
I still maintain that had all the people at Dallas Presbyterian been quarantined or, at the very least, not gotten on planes, this nonsense wouldn’t have reached this level. The health officials knew they were exposed while unprotected, and then clearly did not know what to tell Vinson when she called to ask them whether she should fly or not (and I still think she shouldn’t have, not for medical reasons, but because of the chaos that would follow), but I will admit I shouldn’t have called her an asshole, because I wasn’t ponying up to refund her plane ticket or pick up her groceries. Regardless, if we had nipped this then and there with a few people inconvenienced, it would have given the country time to calm down and hopefully cooler heads would have prevailed. Spencer and his bowling pins were just the last straw, and of course this whole god damned thing had to happen during an election year when the stupid is already dialed up to eleven.
At any rate, Jonathan Cohn sums up where we are now:
Are they right? And is a quarantine worthwhile? It’s a complicated question. The Centers for Disease Control and most public health experts that I’ve consulted do not recommend taking such steps because, they say, they are not medically necessary. Ebola patients don’t become contagious until they have real symptoms, such as fever or vomiting. It’s enough, these experts say, if people at risk of Ebola “self-monitor”—i.e., watch out for symptoms and take their temperatures twice a day, reporting in any problems to public health authorities. That’s precisely what Spencer did and, according to every expert I’ve consulted or seen quoted, it’s highly unlikely he gave the disease to anybody. Spencer is now in a special isolation facility at Bellevue Hospital, getting treatment.
Of course, the argument for quarantine may be less about medicine than it is about mass psychology. Ebola is a scary disease and quarantine’s main, perfectly worthy goal may simply be to calm the public. But in public health, as in medicine, the first principle is Do No Harm. Medical experts and health officials worry, for example, that quarantine might discourage aid workers from traveling to West Africa, at a time when the region desperately needs more personnel to fight the epidemic.
It’s also an open question whether the quarantine reduces anxiety or intensifies it. That’s particularly true in this case, because Cuomo’s statements on Friday, at least as relayed by the press, left the impression that a non-symptomatic Ebola patient could spread the disease on the subway—the very notion that public health officials had spent the previous 24 hours explaining wasn’t true.
That’s one reason that officials from the Obama Administration, the CDC and the New York City Department of Public Health seemed not at all happy about Friday’s announcement. The other is that, based on what I’m reading in outlets like the Times and hearing from insiders, they weren’t so much consulted about the decision as informed of it at the last minute, as a fait accompli. Leaders in all three of those places pride themselves on putting science before politics. You don’t have to be a cynic to think that Cuomo, who is up for reelection, and Christie don’t feel the same compulsion.
None of this means that Christie and Cuomo are clearly wrong on the merits. Truth is, this is one of those questions about which reasonable people can disagree or have mixed feelings. (Here, for example, is a prominent infectious disease specialist arguing for an even wider quarantine.) But it’s probably safe to assume that the two governors weren’t simply thinking about public health when they made their decisions. They were thinking about public perceptions—for the best reasons, the worst reasons, or maybe some of both.
As we all know (and many of you stated as the reason I was wrong and we shouldn’t have quarantined the Texas health care workers who handled Duncan), there is very little chance going back now. We can’t even dial back the police state or engage in meaningful prison reform despite crime rates being historically low. There is no chance that we will roll back what has been done with the mandatory quarantine in NY/NU and even less than no chance that any politician will have the courage to even try. And we’ll get no respite from the media until a plane disappears or a white girl goes missing or they get a chance to call the people of Ferguson thugs and rioters again. I guess we can always pin our hopes on a Benghazi outbreak.
The only question that remains is how much more clusterfuck nation cam mess this up and how much self-inflicted damage we will cause. I’m going to go with “LOTS” for 2000.
Elizabelle
OT, and I will read your blogpost John, but may I say:
I see that NYTimes has a news alert out about the horrors the ISIS hostages went through before they were beheaded. Actually a horror I will not be reading about. Great sympathy for the families, and I never want to see a beheading video.
That said, why that story NOW, 10 days out from Election Day? The NYTimes, we will recall, was willing to sit on a very important story about wiretapping for weeks before GW Bush was up for re-election.
I am just sick about the continuous scapegoating of Muslims, which trumps scapegoating of Ebola victims. And yes, ISIL is some dreadful Muslims. My concern is that too many people don’t make distinctions, and fomenting rage against brown people, somewhere, anywhere, is an election trick for Republicans.
Fortunately, the most recommended comment from a NYTimes reader is this one, from eric selby of Miami Beach:
Baud
I’ve seen too many liberal freakouts to get high minded about this. It’s sad, but it’ll pass assuming the virus doesn’t spread significantly in the U.S., which still seems extremely unlikely. I wish we were doing more in Africa, since we’re so concerned.
Corner Stone
But it just wouldn’t have mattered. It simply would not.
We have people who are paid to deny climate change. Just like their cigarette doctors before them, and who knows what monumental crisis comes next.
That’s what the struggle was, Cole. It simply would not matter. So, inlight of that, why give in to what they all wanted in the first place? Something to fearmonger harder.
As rational people, we shouldn’t smooth the path for those kinds of crazy assholes. Why say we should out-Cruz Cruz or Paul just to stay a step ahead of them? It’s not possible and it never was/is.
So why do that? Why think that’s reasonable?
NotMax
Funny that the nutballs aren’t clamoring for all those FEMA camps to be pressed into use…
Mr Stagger Lee
The media is to blamed for this, Fox is one thing, but CNN is totally irresponsible, and God knows what the major networks are doing. I am surprised there has been no lynchings of Africans in this country(and I mean everyone from Ghana to Somalia)
skerry
Illinois has jumped on the mandatory quarantine bandwagon.
Mike in NC
Our corporate media sees its real job as fear-mongering a gullible public over disease, crime, illegal aliens, terrorism, and any other subject that will generate revenue for their owners and produce quotable soundbites from feckless politicians. Since this is Saturday night, by Monday morning they’ll have concocted some new crisis to spin 24/7.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle:
How are we to know?
Baud
The big story in this post is how crappy the airlines treat the people who clean the planes. I thought all those guys were unionized.
beth
Haven’t medical volunteers and missionaries/aid workers been coming back from treating Ebola patients in Africs for months without us having a national freakout over it? I just hate how fucking stupid this country has become.
HinTN
I live on Tennessee, Cole. Your WV take on the”liberal” stupid in NY and NJ leaves me barely shaking my head. As a nation, if this continues (hahahaha), we are f*cked. Will I see the death throes of empire in my lifetime? Probably not. It’s that a consolation as I consider my granddaughter’s world? He’ll,f*cking NO! /end rant
debbie
I don’t understand that nurse getting on the plane with a fever. Even if it was less than 101.5 (or whatever the benchmark is), the possibility that it could go higher seems obvious.
esc
I would shun that hospital in Dallas because they appear to be incompetent and/or too cheap to follow appropriate practices.
rikyrah
Read the whole post, Cole.
And I understand where you’re coming from.
srv
The John Cole’s of the Left should support a Cuomo/Christie 2016 ticket.
I can’t get enough of Enhanced Measures. Paging John Yoo, baby.
Redshift
@Corner Stone:
Sadly, I agree. Well before any of that, wingnut media were fearmongering with “Ebola is airborne, and CDC officials are lying to you because they work for Obama,” and wingnut congressmen were repeating it as fact.
One of the worst effects of “he-said-she-said” journalism is that even when it’s really obvious that people are talking out their asses, no one in the media will point it out; they just report what is being said.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
Chris Hayes of all people was “on location” last night covering ebola. It was silly.
HinTN
Mobile can’t effing edit: Not it’s “is”. d’oh
Baud
@Redshift:
The real problem with he-said-she-said journalism is that it simply does not apply to Democrats who talk out of their ass. Democrats who try that would be slaughtered by the media.
Corner Stone
@Baud: MSNBC, between Farrow and Craig Melvin, had a presence in Dallas for most of the last two weeks.
Just a fucking joke.
Corner Stone
@Redshift: As Chuck Todd has told us, reporting the facts is not his job.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
It’s just like being at the shore when the hurricane hits, man.
Corner Stone
@esc:
In most other industries, in a rational world, people would avoid a business that chose these kinds of short term risks over long term business and customer health.
But, IMO, we simply can’t let the health care industry set their own standard as to what investments are worthy/ROI.
We just can’t anymore.
We have to nationalize all healthcare.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
Nah. His job is deciding when Democratic candidates have disqualified themselves.
BR
I haven’t commented in ages, but I worry that we’re ignoring the real issues.
There isn’t a risk of an outbreak now, and the quarantines are mostly about perception, not a real risk.
But there is a real risk that is being ignored — spread of Ebola out of West Africa into poor and densely populated regions of the Middle East, Asia, and beyond. Public health folks in India are terrified of this, and with good reason — they’re not set up to stop its spread if it were to get going. And that’s where the risk to the U.S. comes from — a potential outbreak in India or China or Egypt — and that threat won’t materialize for another 6 months or so (if it happens), when everyone here has moved on from Ebola.
The UN set up a fund to fight Ebola in West Africa and almost nobody is donating to meet it. We need to stop it now in West Africa before it spreads.
JGabriel
CNN:
And much, much, dumber.
voncey
@beth: Yes exactly! This is how stupid this all is.
There are what, 4 or 5 million in Liberia? And while 5000 infections is a lot, it’s less than 1% of the population and that’s in a country will pretty much no public health system.
scav
@skerry: So, have they cleared up those pesky little details of how they’re actually going to quarentine all the medical personnel who have treated an ebola patient. Does it kick in right away so they’re sent home for (at least) 21 days after the first day — presumably that would mean quarentining the whole family, which unless paid leave, would seriously scupper ever so many families that don’t have a month’s resources available. Ok, that would probably just be silly as they would run out of staff after a few days of this and would really baulk at paying all the idled staff, so are they going to quarentine the staff on-site or communally? Big Quarentine Sleepover! Let’s not forget to include the lab techs too and the cleaning staff. Ohhhh, this will be fun to watch. What a stupidpower superpower ‘mercans can break out into.
Haydnseek
………Of course masters of logic like this Muzin creature attempt to make the absurd connection between the ACA and Ebola. The wingnut grapevine must be muttering about an opening at Rupert Murdoch’s chamber of vicious morons, and this dickhole is hoping to be first in line. I do not despair, but the effort it takes to combat this venomous, purposeful evil has exacted a life-changing cost in terms of ex-friends and alienated family members. I know I’m not alone, but it sucks horribly now, and in unforeseen ways that will become manifest in the future.
This post isn’t even about Ebola as such. But I think most juicers know that.
JGabriel
National Review via John Cole @ Top:
I had to do a double-take when I read that because I first scanned it as:
Senior Advisor & Derp Chief @SenTedCruz
skerry
@BR: This is why I am much more concerned about the death of a 2 year old in Mali this week, that country’s first ebola death, than I am about any of the cases in the US.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
As I tried to explain to many here, if she had said anything positive about Obama, Chuckles would have then also said she had disqualified herself in the state of KY.
Valdivia
righteous rant. amen. and thank you.
sharl
In case no one has already mentioned it, the second link in #2 – from which the excerpts on air cabin cleaners at LaGuardia were supposed to have been taken – has a bad URL. You probably wanted this one linking to The Guardian’s Oct.9 post (or a similar article with the same pull quotes).
Morzer
Y’all do realize that we never had Ebola in this country before Ted Cruz immigrated from Canada? I just think we should quarantine Ted Cruz for 21 years as a reasonable precaution. And, of course, anyone he’s come into contact with over the last month or so, including any and all GOP Senators.
Elizabelle
“The Haunting” is on TCM. Decamping for that. Eerie movie.
Paul W.
Hi, I live in NYC and we’re doing just fine. Just because Cuomo is freaking out, but he’s a Blue Dog and that’s what they do so…. WHO GIVES A FUCK. Let’s follow the example of the President and just “keep calm andy carry on” Jesus Christ I don’t know why you feel like other people freaking out is a good reason for you to.
Elizabelle
@Valdivia:
Yoo hoo Valdivia. Hello there.
RaflW
FTFY
shelley
Having bad, bad nostalgia of when AIDS first appeared in the early ’80’s. At least some of people’s fears were excusable since it was still murky on the only ways it was transmittable.
In this instance, the folks whipping up hysteria know exactly what the facts about Ebola are and know exactly what they’re doing in an election year.
When will someone on one of the Sunday blabber–fests flat out state that Ted Cruz is an awful, awful person
Haydnseek
@srv: Ah, yes. It’s not torture, it’s enhanced interrogation, in much the same way that referring to it as “death” is needlessly extreme. It’s nothing more than enhanced sleep. Not original to me, though I wish it was.
tybee
burnin’ the shitters, eh? friend of mine, tasked with that for the first time, swears that no one told him to use diesel fuel instead of gasoline.
after the rain of fecal material ended, he became the base shit burner until he went back into the field.
Corner Stone
@srv:
I, for one, absolutely love it when you use this formulation.
satby
@Haydnseek: agreed. It’s exhausting and depressing, watching this country circle the crapper and attempting to fight back against the cruelty and stupidity. Watching people I used to love like family basically behave like the kid in the Exorcist, heads spinning in rage and spewing invective at their fellow citizens.
Ebola panic is just the latest stage, and many stoking the panic do it as a crass power grab. And our media helps.
Elie
@Corner Stone:
I completely agree with you.. there is no way, as John advocates, to “get in front” of the craziness. How? All you can do is play it as straight as you can with facts and science. That is all.
Cacti
ISIS never beheaded anyone before Rafael Eduardo Cruz became a US Senator.
Coincidence?!
Geoduck
@Mr Stagger Lee:
There won’t be any lynchings because that might involve getting the victim’s blood on you.
srv
@BR:
The thing is, you can stop it once or twice, or maybe three times, but you can’t stop IT. Whether it will be a variant of Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, Ravn… eventually, one of these is going to get out and wreak havoc on the world. It’s nature’s revenge for all the reality we don’t deal with in Africa (deforestation, resource exploitation, civil wars, ethnic wars, lack of medical care coupled with speedier transportation networks to support exploitation, starvation…)
(ed. not that I’m supporting doing nothing, it’s important for the US to lead on this, but we’ve been lucky for decades)
Here’s what Stephen King said about the first chapter of The Hot Zone, now 20 years ago:
Hal
Cuomo’s actions have completely tipped me over to the fuck Cuomo side. I guess I’ll vote for him but I’m not happy about. Pandering bastard.
Then there’s also bill Clinton talking about how he had it worse than Obama and cough cough still got things done. So fuck the Clintons too.
BR
@srv:
Sure I agree there is a certain inevitability to a pandemic happening someday. But this outbreak, right now, could be contained to West Africa with enough effort (i.e. much much more than is being done now by wealthy nations).
RaflW
Probably the most horrifying thing about this is that the GOP will probably win more elections this November because of Ebola. So we’ll have more idiots, more fear-mongers, and more “less gubmit” ideologically insane people in charge come the new year.
Paul’s comment about the 3,000 US personnel is a harbinger of what’s to come. Isolationism in the face of Ebola that will condemn 10s or possibly 100s of thousands of Africans to die.
I feel just sickened by our horrible, horrible political class. From Rand Paul to Mario Cuomo, they’re nearly all just craven f*krs.
Trentrunner
@Baud: That was different. Hayes’ purpose was to demonstrate safety of subways, public places, etc. Same as deBlasio having meatballs last night. The OPPOSITE of fanning the flames.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Small quibble: Andrew Cuomo, not Mario, right?
Baud
@Trentrunner:
Fair enough. The part I saw was him reporting outside the hospital, I think.
PhoenixRising
The US Navy corpsmen and USPHS officers who are building field hospitals and training local people on safe handling of Ebola victims, and the recently stricken who need to be onboarded for treatment at the new field stations, aren’t ‘volunteers’ in any sense that can be affected by public sentiment. They may have been asked to provide certain information about themselves, and issued orders after that…but the officer I know in this class has orders that include a 21 day cool-off.
The operations that may save West Africa’s future, and confine Ebola to the region before it spreads to India, China & SE Asia (direct flights out of Lagos hit Bangkok, Beijing & Mumbai daily), aren’t being carried out by volunteers or ‘healthcare workers’. Except to the extent that you volunteered to burn shitters when you signed on the dotted line.
raven
@PhoenixRising: burn and stir
Elie
@BR:
Yes. And this half assed quarantine will suppress medical volunteers, thereby making it more difficult to stop the disease at its source and greatly increasing the chance that EVEN WITH THIS CRAZY QUARANTINE, we are going to see Ebola again. One of these times it will be under the radar esp if this thing explodes out of Africa.
But shit, those are FACTS and we do not work with FACTS. What an embarrassment.The Governor of New York looked more like a nincompoop than Perry in Texas.
Also, no one has answered as to why people who have treated Africans in Africa, using approved protocols, must be quarantined. We have had several people treated by teams all over the US, and no one is asking THEM to take 21 days leave after treating a patient. Why is that? How does the science differentiate the exposures — especially in light of the fact that we definitely had a breach from the first case and from the sounds of the article John posted about Bellevue, doesn’t sound much like a brave core of professionals doing this important work.
Its extremely embarrassing to see this display. I am embarrassed for this country, for some of its medical professionals and for the real values we are displaying. It is beyond discouraging and its going to take more than a little luck to save our asses.
Ajabu
Just to put all this shit in perspective, as someone recently pointed out:
“More Americans have been married to Kim Kardashian than have contracted Ebola.”
I’ve got to get the fuck back home to the Caribbean! This country is making me lose what’s left of my mind…
Corner Stone
@PhoenixRising:
And, (no matter how poorly), paid for the entire way from start to finish.
Corner Stone
@Ajabu:
Take me with you!
Actually, the murder rate for countries in that area really aren’t great.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Excellent post, John. Thanks.
I’m not as pessimistic as you. If Massachusetts shows that people can keep their heads without a mandatory quarantine, I think it will help calm the situation. I also think things will calm down after Tuesday November 4….
But we’ll have to wait and see.
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
The media could have stopped this shit but chose not to. I want each and every one of them strung up from lamp posts. I hate them. All of them. They are killing this country.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: And there are big bugs. But then you are in the Houston area. so you are probably used to that.
Elie
@RaflW:
I must make your statement more accurate:
You must understand, if that scenario comes to pass, there will be no containment of Ebola in Africa. It will be here in increasing prevalence and virulence. The data on quarantines is pretty clear.. they don’t work and especially in a rapidly amplifying outbreak LIKE THIS ONE. You must know that — please know that.
JPL
@RaflW: Probably the worse is yet to come. Why should American doctors and nurses go overseas only to be treated as criminals when they return?
That is how ebola will be spread. I’m sickened also. I was sickened by John’s comments on the nurse that flew and all of those who criticized her.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I first saw that movie when I was 12, with a cousin and my 9-year-old brother. By the end, all 3 of us were sitting in the same seat.
I still can’t watch that movie without having nightmares.
chopper
from a medical standpoint it’s quite simple: no, not at all. from a social aspect aka dealing with the way people are going to go nuts it’s a lot more complicated, as we’ve seen in NYC.
it’s unfortunate that so much nuttery and anxiety has to be addressed but this is the real world. i’d love it if americans were scientific-minded. i’d also love a pony that shits gold bricks. the chance of either happening is about the same as the chance i’ll contract ebola.
raven
@JPL: I don’t get it. These people are facing this horrible virus and putting themselves at risk by going to these countries. If they are that committed why is the quarantine going to change their minds?
JPL
@raven: They actually understand the how the virus works. It is not contagious unless you have symptoms. I’m sorry it is not up to them to make you (generic) feel better. They should not be jailed. Ebola symptoms normally appear within two weeks.
Elie
@chopper:
Well shit, why trust science at all then. Lets all pick and choose what facts we believe in. That was called the Dark Ages — . We had the renaissance, but plenty of people who discovered things like the earth is a sphere, that the earth revolves around the sun (Copernicus), was persecuted by the Pope at the time. Germ theory wasn’t accepted fully and the people who bravely presented their science and defended it are turning in their graves.
I truly do not understand how a reasonable person can just like that accept that, Oh well, I guess we just can’t support facts so we will just give up and let the witches cast their spells and such.
Or better yet, what science would you uphold, Chopper? Really. What would you defend?
kindness
Just imagine if bush43 was in office now. Do you wonder if his staff wouldn’t be taking orders from the likes of Trump or one of the other Fox loons.
Thank god we’ve got a dull adult as President. Cuomo though? Not so much.
The Dangerman
Did Cuomo also quarantine all the healthcare workers at Bellevue that have come into contact with Dr. Spencer? If not, fuck that two faced fuck.
debbie
@JPL:
But don’t you think she should have known she shouldn’t have been flying or been around people? Is their training that poor?
skerry
@raven: Most of these volunteer medical professionals use their own vacation time to travel to disease-stricken areas to provide aid. Having to add in another 3 weeks of time for quarantine is going to cut down on the number of people able to do this.
Ajabu
@Corner Stone:
Well, I don’t seem to be living in an urban paradise here in ‘Murica either so given the choice I think I’ll opt for going where I know the culture and (if you’re not a drug dealer or into domestic violence) you can go about your business relatively unscathed.
ETA: It does depend on what island and the volume of tourist traffic as well.
(You know how those tourists are…
PhoenixRising
@Elie:
I’m gonna go ahead and tell you the answer. Those who are squeamish, skip on ahead to the cute pictures of puppies that I’m sure will appear.
————————-
In Africa the approved protocols have a significant effect on contagion in the tents where treatment for Ebola is being given. However, the nature of the less-developed neighborhoods in, f’rex, Monrovia, does not lend itself to that exposure being the only exposure for those health workers.
Ebola is highly contagious, and in an area lacking basic public health infrastructure, you’re gonna see piles of feces…pools of blood…puddles of urine…perhaps in the hallways of the hospital or passing areas between tents, perhaps on your way to quarters. It’s hard to imagine, I know, but the stories from Haiti’s recent earthquake involved victim interment tactics that…you wouldn’t expect in your neighborhood.
tl; dr: Because Africa suffers from poverty.
Trentrunner
Ask Cuomo and Christie this one question:
raven
@JPL: And I’m sorry but going to these places does involve risk and sacrifice. I didn’t realize that the quarantine sent them to Rikers Island, my bad.
Mandalay
@JPL:
As criminals? Really?
Elie
@raven:
Just so you know, these people are volunteers who are supported in their work by their employers. Their employers give them time off to do this. In this Ebola outbreak, there have been fewer employers willing to give their people the time — because even before this, they needed more time and of course, were seen at increased risk of bringing back something to the hospitals where they were employed. Hospitals are also not so well stafffed that they can have docs and nurses not giving care but on the payroll for a lengthy time. Ok — now let me state again, before this all happened, there were already fewer volunteers. Now that they will have another 21 days tagged on, it will be even harder to get them.
The other question I have for New York, NJ and IL, is how are these quarantines going to be administered? Where are these docs and nurses going to be housed and who is going to “watch” and take care of them? Who will supervise this — their public health departments? The individual hospitals where they are housed?
Who will communicate their status?
AliceBlue
@Elizabelle:
I’m in the house alone tonight. I love that movie, but there’s no way I’m watching it.
Keith G
@raven: To earn their primary pay check?
skerry
@Trentrunner: The answer in Illinois is clear. Yes, those who treat ebola patients are subject to mandantory quarantine.
So very stupid. Just figuring out how to deal with it logistically is a nightmare.
Seems to me that they didn’t think through the decision. Shocking, I know.
Elie
@Mandalay:
When you are in enforced quarantine, you are jailed in effect.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay:
It’s being suggested they are all guilty with no evidence otherwise. So, worse than criminals who at least get a bond offering.
If you told me I could go perform “X” service but when I came back I could not hold my loved ones or have physical contact for some number of days, why the F would I agree to that? What would “X” have to be to make that deal reasonable to rational people?
Corner Stone
@raven:
Sounds really easy to say, tough guy.
raven
@Elie: So this is just as bad as a travel ban or somewhere in between?
Elie
@PhoenixRising:
Ok. Thanks. Thanks for turning my head towards the FACTS.
I appreciate it.
Elie
@raven:
I dunno. I can’t imagine returning to my country after doing this important work and being treated like the nurse in John’s post above. Could you?
PhoenixRising
@skerry: Not really, because their home facilities aren’t going to schedule them for shifts until a safe time period has passed.
I don’t get why this is so hard to understand: No hospital or clinic in our litigious society would plan for a doctor to go from a tent in Liberia treating dying people to their regular rounds without accounting for the incubation period. Because their lawyers would have kittens if they did.
So it’s part of the calculation: can I take off the service minimum plus 3 weeks home chillin’ on the couch? If not, I can’t afford to serve the world in this way. No one is being surprised or in fact mistreated by the excess of caution applied by NY/NJ here.
raven
@Elie: Well, I asked a question.
Howard Beale IV
@Baud: @JPL:
Pray tell, which government entity arrested the doctor and charged him under which specific USC?
Corner Stone
@PhoenixRising:
In thread after thread you keep mentioning lawyers as if they run hospitals.
Why is that?
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV:
Mandatory quarantine is what to you, exactly? Birthday parties at Chuck E Cheese?
Elie
@debbie:
actually debbie,that is not correct according to the science. I know that CDC got itself tied in knots about this (badly), but the science has demonstrated not one case of Ebola transmitted on a plane. In one case, the person with Ebola died within hours of getting off an international flight. No one got it.
But hey, don’t take my word. Internet is free. Read the peer reviewed literature and policy briefs. I you are interested in facts vs hearsay
Mandalay
@Elie:
Enforced quarantine because you may have ebola is not jailing you, nor is it treating you like a criminal. It is a responsible thing to do.
Those dealing with the quarantined may well need to improve their bedside manners, but what is the alternative to quarantine?
PurpleGirl
On METV at 9 p.m. EST — A great episode of Star Trek: Mudd’s Women.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: Cite a USC or go home.
Elie
@raven:
I guess it depends on how each state implements it.
Elie
@PhoenixRising:
Really?
You don’t think this will have a chilling effect on volunteers? Or is it that you jes don care?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
Self-monitoring while asymptomatic and then quarantine if symptoms appear. Quarantine is supposed to prevent the spread of disease, so there is no real point of doing it when people aren’t contagious.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: That’s kind of a stupid response. If you’re being forced to not leave a domicile you’re under a kind of house arrest.
Arguing that a law wasn’t broken doesn’t change the facts of the situation.
raven
@Elie: I guess that’s true but the only states involved are Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Georgia? So it’s an FAA thing to have these as the only port of entry but then the state where they are located get to say what happens to the people that arrive at their airport?
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Corner Stone:
Service to fellow man?
Tree With Water
Hysterical America, as opposed to the patch of America where I live, resembles a scene in The Russians Are Coming, in which Carl Reiner (the only one in town who knows the score) walks into the town’s saloon where everything is in uproar, and everyone in a panic– and he can’t reason with them because they refuse to listen to him. “You lead us, Kendall, you’ve got the sword”, Kendall in the movie being played the great Paul Ford, aka the Colonel to Phil Silver’s Sgt. Bilko. What a drag it must be to be so simple minded as to be stampeded by the low rent grifters of today’s republican party. I mean, chickens must have bigger brains than those people.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Who except you is suggesting that they are “guilty” of anything?
If a doctor gives you a colonoscopy or a cystoscopy do you think they believe you may be “guilty” of having cancer, or do you think they are trying to help you? And if a doctor thinks you may have ebola do you think they view you as a guilty criminal, or do you think they are trying to help you?
You’ve been watching too much CNN. Stop before you reach the stage that you become incurable.
Corner Stone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Listen. You’re an idiot. But given that, no. Service to fellow man is not the answer here.
These individuals are being marked. Any place they stop, drop, or open up shop are being destroyed by superstitious fools.
Naming them, marking them, quarantining them, it’s damaging to themselves, their friends, families, and businesses.
What rational person would enter an engagement with this outcome scenario?
beth
@AliceBlue: I’m with you. I love that movie but passed on it because I’m home alone. Too creepy.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly correct. Quarantines and travel bans for the asymptomatic (as thus suggested and implemented) are disruptive to the public good.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay: This is a completely stupid fucking response. Cancer vs ebola?
Fuck off, dumass.
They aren’t trying to “help” you by the mandatory Q. They are fearmongering.
In the stupid, nonsensical bullshit cancer fuckoshboard you mentioned, it’s presumed you have a situation that has presented symptoms and there’s a way to help you. A way, which by the way, does not include keeping you locked in a house with no outside contact.
On the other hand, moron, the Gov of NY and NJ are saying that de facto being somewhere at some point in the recent past is good enough to keep you in your place.
I suggest you stop here, because you’re fucking stupid.
The Raven on the Hill
@Mandalay: “Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.”
As criminals. Yup.
The terrorists are winning.
JPL
@Elie: The nurse who returned felt like she was victimized…
link Don’t read the comments because it has to do with Obama and gays causing the problem. I think they should be treated like heroes. Surely they should monitor themselves. Surely they should avoid mass transit, not to cause panic but surely they should be honored for their sacrifice.
Maybe after the election and everyone that Vinson flew with is out of quarantine every one will calm down.
The Raven on the Hill
I have come to the conclusion that if we faced a real epidemic, there would be blood in the streets, and not from the sick people.
JerryN
Just want to point out that the NY Post is a Murdoch owned rag. Until I see confirmation from an independent source that “[a]n extraordinary number of Bellevue Hospital staffers called in sick on Friday rather than treat the city’s first Ebola patient”, I’m gonna take that aspect of the story with a whole cellar full of salt.
eemom
@AliceBlue:
@beth:
We who walk here, walk alone.
Also not watching tonight.
Great post, Cole.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Chicken.
RaflW
@shelley:
Never.
Our days of having someone with the guts of Edward R Murrow are gone, as we swirl in the toilet bowl of declining, decaying empire.
Elie
@raven:
These are the designated entry portals to the US.. Not sure what you are struggling with. People coming in with exposure to Ebola either through direct contact or through care are being put into enforced quarantine.. the scope of which is a bit unclear and still evolving.
PhoenixRising
@efgoldman:
@Corner Stone
Tell you what, guys: Come up with an example of a health care worker whose home facility in the US scheduled him/her for a shift after a return from West Africa, and I will eat the scheduling software that was used to log those shifts. If the doctor was honest about both the conditions abroad and the proximity to patients with Ebola, that didn’t happen.
Because lawyers do in fact run hospitals, at the level of compliance management. This is not ‘what are the chances’ territory; one case of a returned volunteer infecting a patient in La Jolla will be the last mistake that institution ever gets to make.
My BIL can’t go onto the floor at the hospital where he has privileges for the days of incubation for the diseases he studies plus 12 hours, period. (His research focuses on the evolution of viri in the field, which requires him to supervise fecal sample collection in some choice locales around the globe that lack basic public health infrastructure, eg the sewer and the sidewalk and the well are all 1 thing).
@Elie:
I’m in favor of effective action against this public health crisis. While I respect the MSF volunteers providing primary and trauma care around the world in settings that are effectively stateless, I don’t think missionary volunteers are an effective model to contain this epidemic. For one thing, villagers have killed and dumped into latrine pits more Western-educated doctors than have been infected with Ebola. At some point, voluntarism isn’t the right tool.
I don’t think that the West Africans who will die or be orphaned, if the developed world continues to fail at the task, thank us for pissing into the wind with up to several dozen doctors and nurses. They need thousands of local people trained in the appropriate corpse disposal techniques, flanked by US Marines with guns, to enforce the public good against the religious and cultural beliefs fanning the flames of this epidemic, which is horrifyingly real to them, and they need those things last week.
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Eghad I’m old. Yes, Andrew.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: We knew what you meant.
Jay C
@Corner Stone:
You ARE just missing the “snark” tag, right….?
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
You check all Cole’s points. Well done.
Folks here are glibly saying that you can continue to live your life normally until symptoms appear, at which point you turn yourself in, but by then it may be too late; you may have caused others to have become infected. Or your self-diagnosis may be inadequate, or you may choose to overlook some symptoms. Sure they are all low-probability scenarios, but they also present high risk scenarios.
And nobody (except you) is saying that those quarantined are guilty of anything. Sure some folks are possibly overreacting, or reacting inappropriately, or erring on the side of caution, when faced with a serious situation they have never faced before. Big fucking surprise there. But your sanctimonious poutrage, and pretense of medical expertise, are absurd.
There was a thread here on ebola several weeks ago, where posters were guffawing along with the writer of a linked article who ridiculed the idea of ebola presenting any problem in the USA. Folks were not appreciating that while the overall risk of getting ebola in the USA was (and is) very low, the risk of getting ebola from someone who is infected but doesn’t know it is not.
RaflW
@Corner Stone, you ask Phoenix Rising:
My sense is that M.B.A.s run hospitals, and they get plenty of advice from lawyers about how to limit exposure and protect themselves, their shareholders (or, in some areas, their nonprofit boards).
Medicine is big business. Big business is always focused on risk management. Risk management entails a far bit of lawyerly advice, as far as I know. That doesn’t make lawyers bad. But it may mean patient care takes a back seat to risk reduction for the organization.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay C: Actually, the lawyers I know who work for hospitals bitch about the fact they only get consulted after something goes wrong and the place is about to be sued. There is a bit of Rashomon effect going on, I would expect.
schrodinger's cat
Who is this we, you are talking about? Is it the royal, we?
The Raven on the Hill
@Mandalay: “Folks here are glibly saying that you can continue to live your life normally until symptoms appear, at which point you turn yourself in, but by then it may be too late; you may have caused others to have become infected.”
Ebola is not infectious until one has developed symptoms.
Tree With Water
@JerryN: I lived in San Francisco when the AIDS virus first struck. Initially there was similar confusion among a lot of people. Garbage collection ceased along Polk Street for a short while because the scavengers feared contracting the disease. It took a meeting with then mayor Dianne Feinstein and city health officials to disabuse them of their fears.
Elie
@PhoenixRising:
Man, you have my attention.
So while agree that “volunteers” can’t solve this, are we getting the right care givers in place (along with the necessary enforcement that truly does seem to be necessary. Today or yesterday, some people in Liberia are trying to keep their loved ones from being cremated. Totally emotionally understandable but we really can’t fuck around with this). Internationally, I hear that WHO says the world is way behind in pledges of help and committment. I am speechless and don’t know what we can do to change this. People are defying the ruthless reality of nature….if we do not do what needs to be done, we will be facing a really different landscape for Ebola a year from now — grim may not be grim enough. I hope that I am wrong, but the shear mathematics are absolutely mind fucking.
karen
@shelley:
Exactly, I was thinking the same thing. Both diseases originated from Africa and both were used as excuses to disenfranchise people. And both had been decimating a population way before it was even spoken about in the media. Once someone Christian and white and American was affected then it was suddenly a problem. For Obama, once Ebola left Africa it was yet another way used to vilify him.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Forget it, it is Balloon Juice. Where every problem can be blamed either on MBAs or lawyers. Other professions are uniformly angelic.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think that we can blame the Milwaukee Brewers collapse at the end of the season on either profession.
David Fud
Who needs a meteor? Let a mutated airborne Ebola do the job. Would be a lot more entertaining, plus it would cut way down on the cannibalism.
Keith G
@Mandalay:
I am not sure what this means. Are you saying that the risk of getting infected with Ebola from someone who is unaware of their infected status is high? Under what conditions?
According to who? Seriously. Who are the public health officials musing about this scenario?
Elie
@David Fud:
Actually, Ebola is not transmitted in food
Mandalay
@The Raven on the Hill:
Sure. But there could still be a window between the time that you develop symptoms and the time you turn yourself in. Suppose you are monitoring your temperature twice a day, and a reading is significantly higher than the last one, and you elect to turn yourself in. Well you could potentially have been able to infect others for several hours, right?
Elie
@Keith G:
Forget it Keith. No one that has Ebola and is infectious does not know that they are sick. They have fevers and are nauseous, vomiting, bleeding etc.
Mandalay does not seem able to understand the facts of the disease and I suspect that explanations (which have already been tried), may continue to not work.
Elie
@Mandalay:
No or rather the risk is very low because the amount of virus in your system is still pretty low. Once you begin vomiting, diahrrhea, bleeding etc, your infectivity gets increasingly higher.
If you do not have a fever, Mandalay, any Ebola test is going to be negative. There is no way to detect the virus in asymptomatic patients and they can’t transmit the disease. This has been known for 40 years since the virus was first discovered.
Elie
I also want to know why we know that the NY ebola patient is “entering the next stage of illness”, when we had no such detail from the two nurses. They better be fucking careful with these “leaks” given their Neanderthal handling of all this. He better get himself a kick ass lawyer and shut these fuckers right up.
fubs
Phoenix is right: the question of what effect the quarantines will have on volunteers is irrelevant, because the volunteers are, on the largest scale, irrelevant.
The Americans are not saving the world. And, by vilifying the quarantines, no one is so much as riding the cape of the white knights saving Africa.
Because there are no white knights. The volunteers are not white knights and neither are any of you.
Nor, might I add, is anyone in a position to say just exactly when it is that ebola begins to shed–and by ‘anyone’ I mean “anyone on earth”. Etiology is a mushy-soft science. No one can say with anything remotely like certainty that ebola waits for a fever of 101 (scratch that! 100.3 this week!) before it starts to appear in a victim’s sweat.
This lack of knowledge is why, when someone with a good chance of having ebola but with a calm, cool 98.6 shows up in a hospital, the medical staff dress up they’re going to do a moon landing. The staff are afraid that one bad sneeze will give them good odds of being dead in three weeks–dead from bleeding out of their eyes and assholes while shitting and puking themselves to death.
Ebola is not well understood, it is horrifying, and it is a full-blown epidemic in several countries filled with actual, thinking human beings who do not want to die. Liberians are real people. If an epidemic of ebola can happen to them, an epidemic of ebola can happen to us. They are not sub-human. They are not stupid. They are not crazy. It is happening to them, and it could happen to us.
The only difference between us and them is wealth. And the only way that our wealth can save us is by spending a shit ton of it, which is precisely what we are doing, not only in the excesses of hospital waste, but also in the excesses of CDC investigations, and, yes, in the act of quarantining people who may pose little actual risk.
That is what it takes to stop a disease. Massive expenditure of massive public wealth.
In case any of this is unclear: if you think that Americans can save Africa or that an epidemic in Africa cannot happen in the U.S., you’re a fucking racist.
Mandalay
@Elie:
Well that invites the question of why candidates for ebola are asked to monitor their temperature. That would be redundant according to your argument.
There is no authoritative research that I can find that has demonstrated that you cannot possibly be infectious until the moment you know that you are sick, despite the MSM stating that. The notion that you cannot possibly be infectious until the moment you are have vomiting, bleeding, etc. is facile.
Also, if you are fortunate enough to recover from ebola you may still be infected:
ETA: I see that you concede the point, but argue that the risk is much lower. I’ll go along with that.
chopper
@Elie:
In terms of predicting the way societies like ours act, science generally doesn’t do a great job, does it?
It’s unfortunate that human politics and stupid shit like that gets itself involved in stuff like this but it does. And unfortunately you can’t ignore that just because politics and stupid shit doesn’t follow scientific reasoning.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
oh hi! don’t know if you’re still reading this thread still. we still have to do our own balloon juice get together.
Elie
@chopper:
I guess you dodged the question. You made it some lofty, intellectual issue in terms of how societies act about facts and they frequently do “stupid things” gosh darned it!
So where do you land in this? Or rather, the question that I asked you : Or better yet, what science would you uphold, Chopper? Really. What would you defend?
You are pretty slimmy on answering that cause you have been asked several times. I guess your answer is a non answer “yeah shit happens”. Are you in politics?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mandalay: It’s not easy to get infected with Ebola. It really isn’t.
Review the NY Time Ebola Facts page, especially about Duncan. Only two people got the infection from him in the US. Nobody in his family, nobody that walked on his sidewalk where he (reportedly) vomited, nobody in the ambulance crew, none of his neighbors, not his doctors, nobody but those two nurses who were treating him when he was most infectious (and who have since recovered).
Please stop worrying about situations that don’t happen.
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
@Mandalay: At this point, do you really want to keep stirring shit to stir shit, or do you have a vested interest in pushing panic buttons?
1) You monitor temperature because it is one of the earliest symptoms you have something — lots of false positives based solely on temp. The other symptoms are generally reported to hid fast and hard. The viral load is still lowish at this point. Do you just don’t like the available studies because you, like your enemies, know the man simply must be lying to you — do you throw up the same standards of evidence (100% positive odds) for climate change?
2) If you’ve already had the disease, you clearly god-damned visibly have more information about your window of infection afterwards. And behave accordingly. I think that technically might have more to do with isolation than quarantine, which is for the possibly infected.
Debbie
@Elie:
That’s not the point I was trying to make. If a nurse is running a low-grade fever, shouldn’t he or she have enough experience to know that it might rise further — enough that it might actually be Ebola?
chopper
@Elie:
‘What science would you uphold’ is a stupid question. It’s meaningless.
All science is valuable. But sometimes scientific reality gets pushed aside a bit for political and social realities.
Think about climate change. A number of climate scientists would have told you years ago that ‘we need to limit CO2 to 400 ppm’. Even though behind closed doors they’d admit that 400 is still too high and destructive to the environment. So why go public with 400 when the science tells you that’s not good enough? Because they figured 400 was at least within the realm of possibility and possible is better than asking for something that the world won’t ever do.
Does that mean they don’t ‘uphold the science?’ Of course not. They just live in the real world.
karen
@efgoldman:
1. Diane Feinstein knows her job is secure and has no fear of being primaried.
2 and most important: she’s a neocon and that’s where her concern is.
Keith G
Next topic for this thread:
Why vaccines are a government hoax.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen: What her current situation and foreign policy views happen to be, it takes nothing away from the fact that she did the right thing when it was politically risky in that particular situation.
Mandalay
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Huh? You seem to be disproving your own argument, showing that it is frighteningly easy to get infected with Ebola.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: How many people was he in contact with? How many got sick? Good god. Stop being a scared little bunny.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mandalay: You’re just trolling now, aren’t you?
If not, then reread that post again, and look at the NY Times page I recommended. Don’t skip over the parts you elided when you do so, and it might be clearer to you.
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay:
Actual facts tell you and all of us that that is just not true. It’s not true.
You’re just an idiot ass Fox News fearmonger.
Go on. Tell us all how 3 or so out of 315M people getting ebola makes it “frighteningly easy”.
Hey. Let’s use some actual facts here, eh clown?
Tree With Water
@efgoldman: No, she did not. Quite the contrary, I consider it her finest hour. That said, I do wish she’d have retired after leaving the mayor’s office.
karen
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ok, you win that point. But if Ebola was only being spread by Palestinians that return from visiting their relatives in Gaza or Israel, let’s see how much of the right thing she’d do.
I’m not taking away from what she did, or rather, didn’t do. But I’m adding the proviso that her song would be different if it was Palestinians who were affected. If you can tell me she would not be demanding that they be kept separate than everyone else then I’ll apologize.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen
I have no idea what she would do in that hypothetical. I do know what she did in the real world in a real situation when some of her constituents were being treated poorly. I can applaud that while condemning many of her current views. Also, I have no need of an apology.
Mandalay
@scav:
You are drawing a false parallel. There is overwhelming evidence relating to the causes and dangers of climate change. There is no overwhelming evidence that it is impossible to become infected with ebola from someone unless they are displaying symptoms such as vomiting, bleeding, fever and diarrhea. At least there is no evidence I can find in the medical literature (as opposed to the MSM).
Given the low probability/high risk scenario I think it is reasonable and prudent to quarantine candidates for ebola, but YMMV.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
Is your expertise in this greater than that of the CDC or MSF? They don’t find quarantine necessary for asymptomatic people. I’ll go with the experts as opposed to random internet fearmongers.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
But it’s not “3 or so out of 315M” – it’s two out of the handful of medical professionals caring for Duncan who knew that he was infected, despite taking precautions.
And yet you still can’t concede that it is frighteningly easy to get ebola. Keep fucking that chicken.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Debbie:
This has been my question all along.
Here’s the thing no one will (can?) answer for me. How long does it take to go from low-grade fever to gastric distress? If the answer is “a couple of days” then yes, the freakout over the nurse is ridiculous.
Until I have an answer to that, I’ll still criticize the nurse on the plane and the lab supervisor on the cruise ship. Not necessarily because of scary ebola, but because they should have known the hospital was mishandling an infectious patient and his lab samples.
The last time I took a short flight (about two hours actually in the air), it took anywhere from six to eight hours to go through security, sit in the plane on the tarmac, fly, sit in the plane on the tarmac, and finally be allowed out into the airport. Is that enough time to go from low-grade fever to high enough fever to be infectious?
That’s the question at the heart of my concerns about those specific cases. Well, there’s also the basic revulsion at the thought of being vomited on while trapped in an airplane and therefore unable to clean up effectively. The guy on the subway doesn’t concern me because the time stuck in a crowd is usually much shorter.
Elie
@chopper:
YOU are a bullshitter.
I am not paying attention to you anymore on this issue.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@PhoenixRising: Nice post. I thanked possessed raven for it in the thread above. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay:
Hey friend. They recently cleared about 120 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan, et al.
Now tell us all again how “frighteningly” easy it is.
Stop this stupidity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Some people are constitutionally wired to buy into the Cheney 1% doctrine.
Elie
@Mandalay:
It is easy to get Ebola (by order of infectivity potential)
1. Handling dead bodies
2. Handling liquids from infected people such as blood, mucus, vomit, diarrhea , tears, breastmilk, semen
3. being in contact with a person with temp over 101. (extra bonus points for temp with any contact with above.
These “events” or milestones are correlated with a huge amount of virus that results when the virus destroy’s the host’s immune system, preventing it from doing anything to halt its replication. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that people who DIE of Ebola have the highest volume of virus at its most aggressive
Hope that helps since it doesnt seem much helps you in understanding this. If our explanantions are not enought, there are many web sites with facts you can easily access. Try it
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I think the answer is, it varies. I think we do know some things from the experience of Duncan and the nurses though. Duncan first noticed symptoms on September 24. He went to the hospital with a fever of 100.1F (according to Wikipedia) on September 25 but was sent home. He went back to the hospital on the 28th and was diagnosed on the 29th. The nurses weren’t infected until the 28th at the earliest. That’s 3-4 days. Again, nobody was infected by him except the two nurses who had to work with him and his bodily fluids when he was most infectious. The first nurse wasn’t diagnosed until 10-11 days after she was exposed to him at his most infectious.
All the indications are that people simply having a fever aren’t a danger to others in the US. Ebola is spread by bodily fluids, and the people most at risk are health care workers who have to deal with those fluids when they are most infectious….
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elie
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Well,your how long question is beside the point.If you do not have a fever above 101 PLUS erupting fluids as vomit, diarrhea, etc, it is unlikely you can transmit. If you could, all the people who contacted Mr Duncan when he was admitted to the ER but ultimately sent home with a fever of 103 but not vomiting over every body, well, all those people would have contracted Ebola.None did including his fiance and friend who took care of him during his early onset and even when he started to have vomiting and diarrhea. They were smart and used rubber gloves (nothing fancy) and put all the soiled clothes and bedding in plastic bags. Now THAT is using your head!
I don’t know what to tell folks with continual infection anixieties. By infectious disease standards, it is not that bad. Seriously… Malaria falciparum will killl you deader than a doornail much faster. Its not transmitted person to person but seriously,, it will kill you dead pretty damned quick. Cholera- a bacterium, will send you to your maker within a couple of days. Tuberculosis is air borne and becoming more and more resistant. It is lethal but kills you slowly. If you have resistant TB, there isn’t much except the agony of trying to breathe. Dengue fever,Yellow Fever, Lassa fever, Marburg — are aggressive and lethal within days — just not that prevalent. dengue and Yellow Fever are mosquito borne. Marburg is the kissing cousing to Ebola — another filovirus with very similar presentation. It is much more rare but you don’t want to get it.
chopper
@Elie:
because i’m pointing out that science is fucking horrible at getting america to do the smart thing? this isn’t news. just ask a climate scientist.
that fact doesn’t mean we throw science out and live in the dark ages. it means we try to make our policies to be the most science- and evidence-based that we can get away with in the current environment. which in an irrational, anxious, fear-driven country like the US isn’t nearly as much as it should be, but this is the reality in which we have to work.
chopper
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
for some lucky folks it takes a while. OTOH, ebola is known for its rapid onset of symptoms:
‘rapid onset’ doesn’t seem to have a strict definition, but back when H1N1 was going around, ‘rapid onset’ of flu symptoms was as little as 3-6 hours. not necessarily the same with ebola, but certainly it can be very, very swift.
Violet
@Elie:
The article I read said it was “hospital officals” that gave that update. Do you know that the NY patient does not want his health status made public? Perhaps he has given his authorization to give updates on his status.
Omnes Omnibus
@chopper: Sadly, reading the panicked reaction to this disease by some Juicers. I am becoming more sympathetic to the “pander to the idiots” that you and Cole favor. I am not there yet by any means, but some of these people are fucking morons. How can one rationally respond to irrational fear? Who knows anymore… Christ, I hate the level of cowardice that runs through our society and is pushed by the MSM.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: I responded by increasing the amount of my monthly donation to MSF.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Good idea. The irrational panic, as evidenced here by Mandalay, just pisses me off to no end.
Morzer
@Elie:
So, provided Mandalay doesn’t interfere with corpses, eat other people’s vomit or hug naked strangers, he ought to be fine.
Doesn’t seem like a terribly demanding set of requirements. One might even hope that they wouldn’t necessitate any change to his usual patterns of behavior.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer:
One does wonder.
Corner Stone
SON OF A …
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Start self-monitoring. Just in case. Else some people will have you tied to a bed in a “not fun way.”
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
You keep getting Corny all hot and bothered like this and he’ll be quarantined before the sun rises tomorrow.
Corner Stone
@Morzer: Even from half way round the world you still manage to be a douchecanoe?
Noicely dunne, canoe boy.
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
Simmer down, little friend. You don’t want the neighbors to drop a dime on your sweating, red-faced self, do you?
SWMBO
Here I go with the questions again. What happens when it hits China or India? Does the poo flinging howler monkeys go Full Metal Wingnut and tell people that the ONE worker that had it may have sneezed or puked on some craft supplies that might be sold at, oh, say Walmart or maybe Hobby Lobby? Given the media circus hysteria, would people stop shopping there? If It starts affecting the profit margin, would they tell the media to chill the hell out? All it takes is for one 1%er to tell them to sit down and shut up or we lose money. Lots and Lots of Money. This will not go over well.
Fred
Before Republicans threatened to take over the Senate we never had a case of Ebola. The cause and effect relationship is obvious here. And note that it all started in the reddest state, Texas. It is a plot by Rick Perry and the GOP to destroy our Freedumb!
Lavocat
@tybee: THAT is some funny shit right there.
Lavocat
@RaflW: Um, that would be ANDREW Cuomo, NOT Mario. The former is The City With Ebola; the latter is The Shining City On The Hill. HUGE difference.
The Raven on the Hill
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: “How long does it take to go from low-grade fever to gastric distress?”
Ebola doesn’t cause low-grade fever; the rise in body temperature is sharp, and that sharp rise itself is an indicator that the disease is Ebola rather than something else.
chopper
@Omnes Omnibus:
that’s a very good question.
chopper
@SWMBO:
people start cracking open each others’ skulls and feasting on the goo inside.
Lady Bug
@shelley:
ITA. Although, at least no one has burned down an Ebola victim’s house…yet.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Corner Stone:
If I were to volunteer to serve medically in an underserved country, a 21 day quarantine upon return would not deter me.
Of course, I’m a nurse. I’m used to the concept of serving the medically needy, sometimes with little reward.
Perhaps you don’t have a similar perspective.
chopper
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Of course, having a quarantine period in-country and then another back in the states might be a bit too much. Or, being treated like garbage like the nurse in the story linked.
A big part of the problem is there’s no overarching policy here. Places like NY are doing it on their own and when a guy like cuomo is coming up with a medical policy you know it’s going to be assholish and poorly thought out.
Corner Stone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I don’t believe you’re taking into count the larger dynamics of what the outcomes are of the Q policy the NY/NJ Govs and others are suggesting.
Corner Stone
“We have to be guided by science. We have to be guided by the facts. Not by fear.”
– President Obama
SWMBO
@Corner Stone: How the hell did he get reelected with such a sensible and practical attitude?
I’m so glad he did.
chopper
@Corner Stone:
He should read the affordable care act sometime.