For some reason it seems the "scary" idea that ebola might be an airborne spreadable disease had somehow made it not spreadable by air. I suspect this to be a political and not a scientific declamation.
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Ebola Comes To USA
- Thread starter skychief
- Start date
I agree with your assessment regarding noncompliance with training and safety standards in individual hospitals across the country. The standards should be mandatory not simply recommendations. Compliance with best practices for handling infectious diseases should be enforced. Nurses and other health practitioners should not be subject to the whims of for profit medical centers, nor should they suffer lack of proper equipment and training due to budget shortfalls. My only concern with the Breitbart article was they gave the impression that Ebola was transmissible by air out in the community. It seemed geared to instilling fear and panic rather than informing.
You made that clear to me the first time you said it. I immediately abandoned the site on your advice. All of the other references I posted were directly from CIDRAP.UMN.
Yep. Best standards in the USA and probably the world.
There are only 4 hospitals with 8 beds (4 of which are now occupied) which are truly ready to treat Ebola ready with CDC spec suits, decontamination equipment, etc.
On a related note, in the clip below, listen to the nurse's association rep point out that US hospitals are really only getting ready to be intake centers. They are not truly ready for the long term day to day treatment. Much like hospitals have specialized units like trauma centers and psychiatric wards.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/38446360...-hospitals-not-ready-for-ebola/#sp=show-clips
I may be a little naive about this but it seems to me that you could pick a room, preferably a ward, throw a chair through a window, install an exhaust fan with a hepa filter and have a negative pressure room. cost $1,000? hood/mask can be done the same way. What am I missing?
I dunno, I'm not a bonafide scientist by any means but if ebola seems to be an airborne spreadable disease indoors then perhaps it could be airborne outdoors as well? I certainly wouldn't want to be sneezed on by someone with it indoors or outdoors.
Right. 99% of US hospitals are weeks, months, and probably years away from having the physical space, equipment, gear, and training. The four US hospitals which actually are able to say they can implement those standards spent years working towards that goal.
At a minimum, every major hospital should have the personnel, equipment and training to receive and treat infectious disease patients in an isolation unit. We used to have many severe, deadly infectious disease outbreaks in the past that required isolation, bacterial meningitis, for example. Spanish flu can cause serious outbreaks, Hanta virus exists in the USA and causes hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola. Hospitals in the past had isolation units and specially trained nurses and doctors to work in them. All major hospitals should have and maintain these units. The four specialized units are not enough for the general population. Their main purpose is to be able to deal with diagnosing and identifying specific strains of infectious diseases and determine how they function, and to test treatment protocols on new strains of viruses, bacteria, and parasitic microorganisms.
My reading of the article was that high concentrations of Ebola (or other infectious organisms) in a health care environment "might" be high enough to become aerosolized in that tightly confined space and that a more rigorous protocol standard and higher level of Personal Protective Gear (PPE) should be used as a precautionary measure. As it stands, asymptomatic individuals (without fever or other severe symptoms) do not have high enough of a viral load in their bodies to be contagious to people around them through casual contact.
Interesting use of words. I suppose it is a huge mystery as to how the nurses became infected.
I don't think it's a mystery, they weren't using acceptable standards of care, on direction from the CDC, and the CDC got it wrong. Hopefully they have learned and it won't happen again.
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Not really sure what you mean by 'taking the bait'.
However if you are possibly anti-union or anti-FoxNews (Sorry, I can only guess), here's the same opinion from another source:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/15/ebola-health-workers-unprepared
October 15, 2014 By Nicole Pasulka
Staff Writer Nicole Pasulka has written for Mother Jones, BuzzFeed, The Believer, and New York Observer.
"Dr. Rick Roth, the senior partner at Savannah Infectious Disease, in Savannah, Ga., told WTOC that Ebola patients should not be treated at area hospitals. Instead, they should be sent to a facility that specializes in treating the disease, such as Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
“Are we capable with hazmat here in Savannah? Yes. Are we uniformed across all employees’ lines? No,” Roth told WTOC. “All it takes is one break in uniformity in how we deal with this pathogen, and someone could die.”
National Nurses United shares this fear, and its leadership has been loudly sounding the unpreparedness alarm since Pham was infected. The organization conducted a survey of its members and found that 80 percent feel they haven’t gotten enough training on how to treat Ebola safely. Supplies are also reportedly lacking—36 percent say they lack adequate face shields and fluid-resistant gowns.
“We are seeing that hospitals are not prepared,” said Bonnie Castillo, director of Registered Nurse Response Network, which is part of National Nurses United, in a statement. “They are not doing active drilling and education they need to be doing.”
It’s important to keep in mind that no secondary infections have occurred at Emory or Nebraska, where the other Americans with Ebola have been treated. However, that could be because these hospitals have been running the drills that Castillo mentions. According to an article in Time, health care workers at these specialized facilities have been going over infectious diseases preparedness protocol regularly for over 10 years and have state-of-the-art sterilization procedures and equipment.
Workers at both Emory and Nebraska wear full-body protection when caring for patients and autoclave their waste, which means they sterilize it in a pressurized chamber."
No, I'm anti-fear-mongering. And I'm not going to waste my time getting sucked into a pointless debate when neither of us know the facts.
It's not an angry attack directed at anyone, so I don't see how that could happen. Anyway, I'm out.
I'm not trying to be argumentative. I am at least attempting to quote and cite my sources.
One could argue that since very few of us are medical professionals, all of this really is pointless debate. But we are all just having a group chat trying to get our heads around this Ebola thing with what facts we actually can get our hands on. I haven't seen any one doing any fear mongering. And although tempers have flared up, calm discourse has smoothed out those edges.
If you feel 'sucked in', I hope it's to join the substantive debate we've had here so far.
There has been 7 Ebola outbreaks over the past few decades. I am not sure if anyone can answer this but where does the Ebola virus hide between outbreaks? Perhaps Hawaii Islander knows the answer. Just curious here.
Speculation has been made that fruit bats are a natural reservoir, that is they are carriers without being affected but, apparently that is not known fact.
Chew on this:
The most common "reservoir" is indeed fruit bats. The virus seems to take the biggest toll on primates. I posted a few links relating to ebola and other mammals a few scrolls up.
