Does it give you pause that over 200 doctors and nurses have died treating Ebola patients?

I mean if these folks can't remain safe from it how can regular untrained people ?

The problem is fluids, fluids, fluids. I have a friend over there who says that the problem is two-fold. The first is getting enough of the hazmat suits for all the workers (which are fun to wear in hot/humid/rainy Africa) and then making sure everyone wears them CONSTANTLY. Our government has responded by ordering over 150K suits and other countries are joining in but the logistics of just getting them there is incredibly arduous. Then to convincing workers to be diligent every moment of the day, day after day, is extremely hard to do.

Maintaining sterile treatment and quarantine facilities is much harder than it seems. The problem is that the work is so labor intensive that it takes about three workers for every person who is sick, and so far that ratio is the exact converse. You hurry, you get tired, you are overwhelmed and you make a simple mistake like coming in contact with a contaminated wet sink…. . Training is critical and you are dealing with a population that is not accustomed to high levels of hygienic living in the first place. Simple hand washing can be a nightmare to teach and enforce in a clinic when some workers live in places that don't even have indoor plumbing….

If you do it right, it isn't particularly easy to get ebola if you aren't touching needles, eating tainted meat or in contact with fluids but fluids go, it spreads like wildfire. It's much easier to spread than HIV, for example. If you are sitting next to an infected guy on an airplane, and you never touch each other, no fluid contact (I am now thinking of the SNL TSA Skit lol) and you probably don't have a lot to worry about. It's the caretakers who are in danger.

So far, there has not been a shortage of medical volunteers going in, but the local workers are dying off or fleeing. It's going to take a massive number of people to get this under control and each one of them has to be perfect in prevention behavior. You have 2,000 cases, you really need 6-8K workers.

Great post...thanks.

Found : As many of y'all know I am an RN. I pull a couple shifts a week at various ER thru a temping agency (allowing me to keep my skills sharp) but my main gig is with a well known plastic surgeon in the area.

Most of his work is very private (niche hospitals) and recovery takes place in a non traditional hospital setting etc.

Occasionally though and especially for pro-bono cases we will use area hospitals - Presbyterian is one of those hospitals.

According to the news, life is normal at Presbyterian sans the single isolation patient.

Nothing could be further from the truth. All elective surgeries have ceased - not even routed to different hospitals. If patients did there pre-surgery labs on campus they will now be delayed 21 additional days and have to retest. That's got to tell you something.

I'll post more info as I get it - supposedly legal has sent out a notice barring anyone discussing the matter but I am not their employee.

Found this also: Agency Nurse here, male. Just like the OP, a "temp." OP describes the accurate way that real news and info gets around in hospitals.
I know. I used to be a Hospital Public Affairs Officer. There is only ONE thing that guides all statements and policies - Liability. Most hospital administrations would deny water is wet if they thought for one minute they could be sued over it. They don't give a shit about employee health, or patient health for that matter.
The lawyers, admins, insurance execs, and PR people are calling the shots in Dallas, NOT the Doctors and Nurses.

You can bet they are covering their asses. The man was turned away the first trip and it is aid that he told them he was from Liberia. I just found out today he is not a us citizen, he is a Liberian visiting his family in texas.

I do not think I can fault the hospital because America has never had a case of ebola. I have mixed feelings about it to be honest. Its a hard call.

I do fault our gov for allowing people from this area to enter the US. I sand by that, call me what you will.

If we don't quarantine them over there for 21 days prior to departure, we ought to quarantine them over here.

We used to do it here, y'know. Sabine Island off Pensacola was a quarantine station. We can do it again.

If we're going to allow people from West Africa to travel here, we need to put people in quarantine for the 21 days. While in quarantine, they cannot be exposed to newly arriving travelers from Africa. Keep 'em in isolation.

We cannot screw around with namby-pamby treatment of travelers. It needs to be consistent and strictly enforced... no damn exceptions.

Teo, how about using the smaller GIF?

I made a smaller one and cropped it for The Dude, but he didn't use it.

Let me find it and I will post the link to it here.

Teo use this one.  

Code:

http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/17/60/52/87/croppe11.gif

on the bright side eric, with this type of ebola scare in the USA. People are going to want to go to the doctor and that might make them ok with their high premiums, so ebola could be a boom for obamacare

I am sitting in tastee freeze watching a little blonde 7 year old girl coughing and I just wonder ......

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

I am sitting in tastee freeze watching a little blonde 7 year old girl coughing and I just wonder ......

I wonder too...

MERS, SARS, Bird flu's, swine flu's, regular flu's, chickawhatthehelleveritis, TB, mystery virus aka Ev68, and now ebola. theres more............. I just cant remember them all right now.

Hey Chrissy you need to do the virus rap....it would be a hit...it might go viral...

How long are dogs kept isolated when they come from a foreign country?? They can do the same thing for people...