Fears over a zombie apocalypse have some wondering whether it’s possible for a viral hybrid between rabies and the flu virus to cause the end of the world. After all, the Pentagon has a plan for the zombie apocalypse, and even the state of Kansas is preparing for the walking dead. But could fears over a zombie attack be justified by the ISIS terrorist group?
A new aggressive daytime-biting mosquito capable of transmitting debilitating and possibly deadly viruses has been found in the Los Angeles region, officials announced Wednesday. Known as yellow fever mosquitoes, the insects were found Oct. 7 and 8 in Commerce and Pico Rivera, respectively, according to the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.
A Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and nurses treating him worked without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols, according to a statement released by the nation’s largest nurses’ union. Among those nurses was Nina Pham, 26, who has been hospitalized since Friday after catching Ebola while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the virus in the U.S.
One passenger at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. is apparently not taking any chances.
The CDC has announced that the second healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola — now identified as Amber Joy Vinson of Dallas — traveled by air Oct. 13, the day before she first reported symptoms. The CDC is now reaching out to all passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth.
“The guidelines were constantly changing” and “there were no protocols” at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas as the hospital treated a patient with Ebola, the president of National Nurses United told reporters Tuesday. Protective gear nurses wore at first left their necks exposed, union co-president Deborah Burger said, citing information she said came from nurses at the hospital. Union officials declined to specify how many nurses they had spoken with.
A national nurses union said during a hastily-scheduled press conference Tuesday evening that hospitals are dropping the ball on safety for nurses caring for Ebola patients. RoseAnn DeMoro, director of National Nurses United, which has been critical of hospitals’ response to the Ebola crisis, said safety protocols recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not been followed by the Dallas hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died last week. “Our nurses are not protected, they’re not prepared to handle Ebola or any other pandemics,” DeMoro said.
The Ebola epidemic could get dramatically worse with the rate of infection soaring to 10,000 new cases every week unless drastic measures are not taken within the next two months, the World Health Organization said today. That staggering figure is approximately 10 times higher than the current rate of infection, but WHO Assistant Director General Dr. Bruce Aylward said that it could easily get that dramatic if steps are not taken now.
Two new suspect cases of Marburg have been put in isolation at the national referral hospital Mulago. They did not have any contact with the health worker who died of Marburg on September 28th, which could suggest a 2nd outbreak may be festering. Three other suspected cases are in isolation camps in Ibanda and Entebbe and preliminary tests on them have so far turned out negative.
Fox News, always ahead of the curve on panicking the general public into giving up all their rights, aired programming Monday during which an analyst openly called for quarantine camps to be set up all over the country to house those with Ebola like symptoms. Fox contributor and former actress Stacey Dash called for the federal government to establish emergency centers to hold Americans in isolation, despite the fact that there have only been two confirmed cases of the ebola virus in the US. “I think they should set up special centers for just Ebola in each state,” Dash said.
A three year nurse at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital told a local television station she fears Ebola may be airborne. “We are wondering if it really is contact in airborne or contact in a breach of protocol,” she said. “We really don’t know.
There’s a lot of head scratching going on about what the healthcare worker that contracted Ebola from Patient Zero in Dallas did wrong. Did she take off the protective gear improperly? Did the gear touch something?
This Ebola outbreak is being called the “most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times”, and the U.S. health care system is completely and totally unprepared for it.
The Agenda Project is a progressive non-profit political organization founded in 2010 by author Erica Payne. This ad, featuring clips of Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, and many other Republicans implies that austerity cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health are responsible for the 2014 Ebola outbreak. This ad will run in Kentucky and other states leading up to the election.
Some healthcare experts are bristling at the assertion by a top U.S. health official that a “protocol breach” caused a Dallas nurse to be infected with Ebola while caring for a dying patient, saying the case instead shows how far the nation’s hospitals are from adequately training staff to deal with the deadly virus.
The nurse in Texas seemed to have taken all the precautions needed to protect herself from Ebola. She wore a mask, gown, shield and gloves. Her patient, a man who contracted the virus in Africa, was in isolation at the Dallas hospital where she worked.
How did a health worker in Dallas wearing full protective gear catch Ebola if the virus “does not spread easily”? Just last week, Barack Obama declared to the public that you cannot get Ebola “sitting next to someone on a bus”, and yet a nurse in protective gear that was taking extreme precautions to avoid being exposed to the disease has just caught it. The head of the CDC says that there must have been a “breach in protocol” somewhere, because of course the CDC guidelines regarding the transmission of this virus could never be wrong.
The potential spread of Ebola into Central and Southern America is a real possibility, the commander of U.S. Southern Command told an audience at the National Defense University here yesterday.
Despite claims of containment, Reuters reports seven more people turned themselves in late on Thursday to an Ebola isolation unit in Madrid; but following a visit by PM Rajoy, Spanish citizens can relax as the government is setting up a special Ebola committee. Following yesterday’s scare in Paris, The Independent reports authorities are investigating a ‘probable’ case of a French national who may have contracted the disease in Africa. The World Health organization has warned that East Asia is at risk of becoming a “hot spot” for diseases – but is well prepared after SARS and avian flu but it is the appearance of a confirmed case in Brazil that is most concerning.
A man from Potchefstroom has been isolated after he showed signs of hemorrhagic fever, the North West health department said on Thursday. “The 72-year-old man from one of the farming communities in Potchefstroom came to hospital on 8 October 2014 after hours,” spokesperson Tebogo Lekgethwane said in a statement. “This patient came complaining of fever, weaknesses and a cough.