If you listen to the “official spokesmen” from the White House, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and even officials in Dallas where the first U.S. Ebola patient is fighting for his life – put them all together – and they end up sounding like FDR: “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”
We’re faced with a transmission mechanism about which we know very little, a situation where people who might be carriers have free entry into our country, a disease with a high fatality rate after terrible suffering, and one for which there is no accepted “treatment,” vaccine or cure.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH said there’s a lot of fear because of the unknown “… and the cataclysmic nature of the disease.”
My dictionary says, a cataclysm is “a violent upheaval that causes great destruction or brings about fundamental change.”
The spread of Ebola in any country does exactly that.
It also says Ebola is an “RNA virus that causes acute and usually fatal hemorrhagic fever.”
It originates in West Africa, and is named for the Ebola River is N.W. Congo, the former Zaire.
We’re dealing with a disease that originates thousands of miles away and has never been found in the West.
We really don’t know how to deal with such contagion. We’re not equipped to handle it, and we have health workers and others who haven’t any idea how to protect themselves.
But, bottom line from Dr. Fauci and the feds is: “Don’t be afraid.”
Well, I don’t care what they say – I am afraid, and the more I learn about what’s been done and, more importantly, what hasn’t been done, my fear is growing.
I’m not as much fearing the disease, but the way we’re handling it and the errors that have been made and what that means for the rest of us.
Primarily, how did this man, from a town in a country where Ebola is rampant, get on planes with several stops and gain entry into this country with no problem.
First, we heard that Thomas Eric Duncan came here to get married; then, that he came here because he had been exposed to Ebola victims and wanted American medical care.
Then we find out he lied on the written form he was asked to complete before boarding the first plane in Liberia.
The president of Liberia is furious and said that what Duncan did was “unpardonable” and the country will have to decide how to deal with him.
If he lives. He first was in critical condition in Dallas, then was upgraded to serious condition; but as I write this, he’s relapsed back to critical.
The Dallas hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian, made serous errors when he first showed up at the emergency room.
He told a nurse that he just arrived from Liberia. We were told the nurse had it in her computer notes but that the doctor’s computer notes were different and he wouldn’t have seen it. But the nurse never told anyone.
The original blame was put on the digital medical records system. After a flap about that, the hospital modified its statement, but it still isn’t clear what happened.
But we do know Duncan went to the emergency room, was given some anti-flu medicine and released.
Two days later, he returned to the hospital, fully engulfed with Ebola.
It’s been determined he had contact with more than 100 people, including children, all of whom now are at risk.
Then there’s the issue of how to handle the contamination of the places he had been.
It took several days for the airlines to say which flights he was on (there were three), and they’re still trying to contact all the passengers.
Remember, last week the CDC told all airlines to keep an eye out for possibly sick travelers and gave guidelines to protect the crew and how to disinfect the planes.
They warned that all bodily fluids should be treated as infectious. That would include all the human waste from the bathrooms as well as anything that touched the mouths of the passengers.
How will they dispose of that? How would it be decontaminated? It shouldn’t be put in the main sewer systems. It’s a problem for the planes but also for the apartment where Duncan stayed.
There were concerns when his vomit was just sprayed into the storm drain. The first loads of debris from the apartment – sheets and mattresses – were refused by a trash disposal company. At this point, there are 30 barrels of the stuff with no place to go.
Consider that the ambulance that took Duncan to the hospital was allowed to remain in general use service for two days before it and the crew were quarantined.
The paramedics weren’t told anything and didn’t know to ask. It appears the powers that be, slipped up.
That’s a dangerous slip.
We have a government refusing to stop travel from and to Ebola countries.
This, even as the CDC tells airlines they can refuse boarding to people who appear sick or remove them from the planes.
The White House assures us that African airports have a “sophisticated multi-layer screening process” – “they look at passengers, have them fill out questionnaires (Duncan lied) and take their temperature.”
Yet with all this so-called sophisticated protection, our Southern border is wide open. The Border Patrol says at least 71 people from Ebola countries crossed our border illegally this year.
More?
Where are they?
Who knows?
But never fear, Obama will hold an Ebola meeting on Oct. 6, and then leave for fundraisers in two states.
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