Now that a man in the United States has been diagnosed with Ebola, some are asking why we haven’t stopped allowing people traveling from West Africa into our airports. Thomas Eric Duncan, the patient currently being treated in the Dallas area, boarded a flight from Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in Texas on Sept.
The longer the Ebola epidemic continues infecting people unabated the higher the chances it will mutate and become airborne, the UN’s Ebola response chief has warned. Anthony Banbury, the Secretary General’s Special Representative, has said there is a ‘nightmare’ prospect the deadly disease will become airborne if it continues infecting new hosts. His comments come as organisations battling the crisis in West Africa warned that the international community has just four weeks to stop it before it spirals ‘completely out of control’.
Two days after a man in Texas was diagnosed with Ebola, a Missouri doctor Thursday morning showed up at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport dressed in protective gear to protest what he called mismanagement of the crisis by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Gil Mobley checked in and cleared airport security wearing a mask, goggles, gloves, boots and a hooded white jumpsuit emblazoned on the back with the words, “CDC is lying!
The mango season finished early for Mamadou Barry, a fruit vendor in Marche Kermel, an old covered market in the Senegalese capital Dakar. Where stalls once brimmed with tropical produce imported from neighbouring Guinea, the Ebola-related border closure has emptied the tables. Barry, of Guinean origin like many storekeepers in Senegal, has been going back and forth between the two countries for three years.
The Department of Health has confirmed a patient is currently in isolation and undergoing testing in Honolulu. The Hawaii Nurses Association said the person is being treated at The Queen’s Medical Center. Officials told KHON2 Ebola is a possibility, however the patient has yet to be specifically tested for the virus.
About 80 people are now being monitored for symptoms of Ebola in Texas, a Dallas County Health and Human Services spokeswoman said Thursday. The people being monitored are the 12 to 18 people who first came into contact with the infected man — which federal health officials have said include three members of the ambulance crew that took him to the hospital, plus a handful of schoolchildren — as well as others those initial people had contact with, spokeswoman Erikka Neroes said. “The number of people who are now part of the contact investigation has grown to more than 80,” she said.
For the moment, our top public health officials are quite adamant that there absolutely will not be a major Ebola outbreak in the United States. But what if they are wrong? Or what would happen if terrorists released a form of weaponized Ebola or weaponized smallpox in one of our major cities?
Health experts all over the United States are promising us that we do not need to be worried about Ebola whatsoever. Even though one case has already been confirmed in Dallas, Texas and another potential case is being monitored, health authorities assure us that we have the greatest health system in the history of the planet and that we will be able to handle any isolated cases very easily. And all over the mainstream media on Wednesday, there were headlines declaring that the arrival of Ebola in America is a non-event.
Now that Ebola is officially in the US on an uncontrolled basis, the two questions on everyone’s lips are i) who will get sick next and ii) how bad could it get? We don’t know the answer to question #1 just yet, but when it comes to the second one, a press release three weeks ago from Lakeland Industries, a manufacturer and seller of a “comprehensive line of safety garments and accessories for the industrial protective clothing market” may provide some insight into just how bad the US State Department thinks it may get. Because when the US government buys 160,000 hazmat suits specifically designed against Ebola, just ahead of the worst Ebola epidemic in history making US landfall, one wonders:
The day that many of us hoped would never arrive is here. Ebola has come to America. Air travel between the United States and the countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone should have been totally shut down except for absolutely essential personnel but it wasn’t.
The virus that has infected nearly 10,000 people in West Africa and killed over 3,000 so far this year may now be in America. Multiple news sources are reporting that an individual showing symptoms of the Ebola virus has been admitted to a hospital in Dallas, Texas. The patient, whose travel history suggests he or she may have been exposed to the virus, has been isolated and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas says it is following testing and quarantine procedures outlined by the Centers for Disease Control.
Federal health-care officials, hospital administrators and emergency-care doctors are preparing for the first cases of Ebola here in the United States. Experts say it’s not a question of if, but rather when it will happen. The good news is that the public health infrastructure in the United States — from the epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control to the weekend physician at the local doc-in-a-box — has been mobilized for this very eventuality.
The Centers for Disease Control is advising funeral homes in the United States on how to handle the remains of Ebola victims, although officials are keen to stress that the development is not a cause for alarm. A three page list of recommendations instructs funeral workers to wear protective gear while handling Ebola victims, as well as warning them not to carry out autopsies or to embalm corpses. “If the outbreak of the potentially deadly virus is in West Africa, why are funeral homes in America being given guidelines?
Imagine going to a primary care doctor and never being asked “do you have insurance?” Or having your doctor’s cell phone number and never feeling nervous before making an after-hours call during the inevitable crises of parenthood when a child’s fever is spiking or a strange rash appears. And maybe getting a house call.
An excruciating mosquito-borne illness that arrived less than a year ago in the Americas is raging across the region, leaping from the Caribbean to the Central and South American mainland, and infecting more than 1 million people. Some cases already have emerged in the United States. While the disease, called Chikungunya, usually is not fatal, the epidemic has overwhelmed hospitals, cut economic productivity and caused its sufferers days of pain and misery.
A lack of available hospital beds in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three countries at the epicenter of the worst Ebola outbreak in history, is leaving many families with nowhere to take their sick and dying. More than 80 percent of Ebola patients, in fact, are being turned away from hospitals and sent back home, where they continue to spread the disease to family members, friends and others in the community. A major shortage of beds and healthcare workers throughout the region has created an every-man-for-himself situation in which infected folks are having to basically fend for themselves.
The number of confirmed cases of an uncommon respiratory illness has increased to 277 in 40 states and the District of Columbia, affecting mostly children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. First identified 50 years ago, Enterovirus 68 or EV-D68 was rarely tested for and only began getting attention last month as hundreds of cases were linked to the virus. “The severity is what triggered our concern,” said Mark Pallansch, director of the CDC’s Division of Viral Diseases.
There were 107,581,000 people enrolled in government health insurance plans in the United States in 2013, the year before the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) was fully implemented. The Census Bureau published this number last week in its annual report on health insurance. These 107,581,000 pre-Obamacare government-health insurance enrollees equaled 34.
More than half of U.S. states have confirmed cases of a respiratory illness that has sickened children with symptoms ranging from mild colds to more severe breathing difficulties, according to health officials.
Did you know that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone is approximately doubling every 20 days? People are dropping dead in the streets, large numbers of bodies are being dumped into the rivers, and gravediggers can hardly keep up with the the number of corpses that are being delivered to the cemeteries. As you read this, life is pure hell in many areas of West Africa, and now the CDC is warning that things may get far, far worse in the very near future.