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.
This interview was done by CNN and the man speaking in it is the President of the Fraternal Order of Law Enforcement for Dallas. He just said the cops were not wearing any kind of protective gear when they entered Duncan’s infected apartment, because they were told it was safe to enter. To make matters worse, he actually received a phone call ten minutes before going on CNN from “2 more” who were exposed and yeah, you guessed it… They are all feeling sick.
A Rockefeller Foundation white paper published in May of 2010 titled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development takes a look at hypothetical future scenarios which may be used to benefit privy globalist corporations, businessmen and organizations at a later time. Shockingly published in the Scenario Narratives section on page 18, titled Lock Step, the Rockefeller Foundation nearly hit the nail on the head with their futuristic and fictitious scenario. I mean what are the chances?
ISLAMIC State members could be planning to infect themselves with Ebola and travelling to the West, waging bio-terror as “suicide bombs”, according to a military expert. Captain Al Shimkus, Ret., a Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, said terrorist groups like IS could easily use human carriers to widely disseminate the deadly virus via the world’s air transportation system.
A Briton with symptoms of Ebola has died in Macedonia, local authorities said. The hotel in Skopje where he was staying has been sealed off, while another Briton and hotel staff are being kept inside to prevent possible spreading of infection. According to Macedonian authorities the man came to Skopje from London on October 2 and was taken to hospital on Thursday where he died several hours later.
After his recent herniated-disk surgery, Peter Drier was ready for the $56,000 hospital charge, the $4,300 anesthesiologist bill, and the $133,000 fee for orthopedist. All were either in-network under his insurance or had been previously negotiated. But as Elisabeth Rosenthal recently explained in her great New York Times piece, he wasn’t quite prepared for a $117,000 bill from an “assistant surgeon”—an out-of-network doctor that the hospital tacked on at the last minute.
The current outbreak (which actually began on or before December, 2013) presents genetic strains of Ebola that have never been seen before. The Guinea variant of Ebola was itself novel enough to form its own clade. Now, via Recombinomics and with respect to Sierra Leone, we have:
In a remarkable video shot by a passenger aboard a US Airways flight from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic, an American man was interrogated and escorted from the plane by hazmat-suited medics after joking that he had the ebola virus. The 54-year-old American, as yet unidentified reportedly yelled, “I have ebola, you are all screwed.” He was also thought to have shouted “I’ve been to Africa!
An outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue fever in China has killed six people and infected more than 27,200, a Chinese health authority spokeswoman said on Thursday. Song Shuli, spokeswoman of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that this year witnessed an apparent increase of dengue cases with most of them found in China’s southern regions, including Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan and Guangxi. Unusually high temperatures and humid weather have contributed to a mosquito population in South China five times as high as normal, fuelling the outbreak, health officials said.
When the experts describe the Ebola disaster, they do so with numbers. The statistics include not just the obvious ones, such as caseloads, deaths and the rate of infection, but also the ones that describe the speed of the global response. Right now, the math still favors the virus.
Caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Dallas Ebola patient, may cost as much as $500,000, a bill that his hospital is unlikely to ever collect. Duncan is in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he has been isolated since Sept. 28.