This nurse sums up quite well how clumsily and poorly planned the NJ and NY quarantine have been implemented.
I’ve read in other interviews she was thrown into this room without anything to wear except a paper gown. No tv. No magazines. Nothing to entertain herself. Just sit and stare at the walls.
Can’t this be done a bit more intelligently? Perhaps a dorm like setting for quarantine of people returning from work in Africa’s Ebola regions. But are not showing symptoms. Let them interact and be together. Provide tv, dvds, games and magazines. Make it as comfortable as possible. Check temperatures four times a day. Transfer anyone that shows a fever before they become infectious. The CDC keeps insisting people aren’t infectious until after the fever starts. Seems like monitoring for a fever every 6 hours would be enough.
It just seems that America can do better than this ham fisted approach.
Society simply can’t allow potentially sick people with Ebola to wander around a major city using taxis, restaurants, bowling etc. It’s just too dangerous for everyone. If someone has worked directly with Ebola patients they are at risk of developing the disease for a certain amount of time.
But, there’s no reason a quarantine has to be horrific either. Make it like a club. Serve good food. Provide entertainment. Let people quarantined socialize with each other. Make it as pleasant as possible, while still carefully monitoring for a fever every few hours. That way a patient getting sick can be transferred before putting the others at risk.
I wouldn’t want to go home if there was any chance that I might be overcome by Ebola. 1. I don’t want to put my loved ones at risk 2. I don’t want everything I own contaminated. They threw out nearly all those Dallas nurses possessions. The dog even got quarantined.
I much rather be in a nice dorm like place. With a few changes of my own clothes. That way my home won’t get trashed and my loved ones won’t get sick.
I don’t understand why so called medical “professionals” ignore the risk to others.
That nurse from Dallas who flew to Cleveland to try on a bridesmaid dress. The doctor in NY/NJ took public transportation to go bowling, of all things. Fuck them.
Letting people go home and self monitor seems like the worst scenario. It gets boring stuck in a place by yourself for 21 days. People will be tempted to sneak out. Dr Nancy Snyderman got caught. It’s much, much more difficult to clean up an infected house and dispose of all the person’s possessions.
Designating a few quarantine locations around the US just makes sense. But they have to be administered humanly and with compassion. What’s happened to that lady in NJ is just wrong. Locking her in isolation with nothing but a paper gown for 21 days is appalling.
There has to be a reasonable alternative between sending somebody home to self monitor and locking them up in isolation. There’s no need for either extreme.
Personally, if there was a 1% chance I had ebola, I wouldn’t want to be locked up with 99 other people who might have it too. Odds are one of us has it, and soon we all will.
Put me in a room. alone, give me a laptop with wifi, a decent set of headphones, and I’m good.
I agree that there should be some sort of happy medium. I would be comfortable with in-home quarantine, if they would just stay there, instead of, say, flying to Ohio, or getting on a cruise ship. Paper gown in a tent is ridiculous. But if you have been exposed, and medical professionals in West Africa unfortunately fall into that category, it is irresponsible to wander amongst the general population during the incubation period.
It could be done more intelligently by not giving in to ignorance and paranoia and not requiring one in the first place. It’s taking longer than we thought.
Not everyone returning from treating Ebola patients has a degree in medicine. The lady that got sick with Dr Brantley was a missionary that had been volunteering to care for the sick. People like that simply won’t understand the urgency of getting isolated quickly after a fever begins.
The concern is any delay in someone reporting back to the health officials. Somebody that foolishly takes some Tylenol and goes out to dinner. Hoping whatever bug they have will be gone in the morning. They’re already infectious by the time they realize they are really sick. You can’t unring that bell. We are incredibly lucky that doctor in NY wasn’t infectious when he went wandering around the NY area and going bowling.
That’s why I was suggesting a more relaxed form of quarantine. Where temperatures can be closely monitored but the people aren’t completely isolated. If they begin to run a fever than get them isolated within minutes. Long before they are infectious.
Even if you stick with the absolute quarantine, they should still do it the smarter way. Give them a bunch of magazines and a wireless Xbox controller, if nothing else. If that means you need to dispose of $20 in old magazines and $40 of electronics as medical waste, that’s no big loss.
And he was monitoring his own temperature and knew that as long as he didn’t have symptoms he wasn’t contagious and the public was in no danger. When he noticed a fever was the time he was potentially infectious and called an ambulance to transport him to the hospital. I am confident he was knowledgable enough about the disease to asses his condition properly and not put the public at risk.
Also, Governor Cuomo has relaxed the quarantine rules and now says that people under quarantine may stay home.
<shrug> We’re depending on highly trained professionals to self monitor and report if they show a fever.
What about business travelers from the Ebola countries? Or people that went over there on missionary work? People with little or no medical training. Maybe they ate off plates in a restaurant or rode in a cab that had just transported a dying Ebola patient. They don’t realize they’ve even come in contact with it. They fly in and say “No” when asked if they’ve worked with Ebola patients.
Hoping that every single person is diligent in checking their temp and self quarantining themselves is taking a big risk.
Governor Cuomo is a politician. Naturally he knuckled under at the first sign of controversy.
It would seem because they know better what is risk and are not being driven by ignorant fear.
Since at lesat the doctor was not symptomatic, he was not yet sick and could not transmit the disease.
I would say in the American English - fuck ignorance, even more so the aggressive ignorance that refuses correction, and most of all the fearful mindless ignorance.
I know they say 21 days is the longest incubation period. I think the Dallas nurses got sick within a week? The NY doctor did too.
I wonder how much the risk drops after the first 10 days? That might be something to consider. Close monitoring for just 10 days. Then send them home with instructions to check their temps twice a day for the final 11 days.
Just an idea. The CDC would know how much the risk drops after the first 10 days.
Solitary confinement without access to anything to stimulate the mind is cruel. It’s used as punishment. Sitting alone in a room for 21 days in paper clothing with absolutely nothing to do is bullshit.
Right. But until they actually get sick they are no danger to anyone.
So… someone not sick is not putting anyone at risk, but we should lock them up anyway? Shouldn’t we question the necessity of that?
I seriously wonder if it was necessary to throw out all her possessions. What actually was and wasn’t contaminated? It smacks of primitive attempts to banish demons to me.
The only things that are actually contaminated are items that had infected body fluids on them. Bedding she slept in? Yeah, probably needs to go. The clock on the wall? Not so much.
As it is possible for dogs to pick up the virus that actually makes sense. And at least they quarantined the dog instead of summarily executing him like the Spanish did for their sick nurse.
Dogs don’t get sick from the virus, but it can get in them. Someone did a study of the question in Gabon during an outbreak around 2000. The dogs’ immune systems also eliminate the virus in a few weeks. There has never been a known transmission of Ebola from canine to human but a humane quarantine of an animal is a reasonable precaution when its been exposed to an active, symptomatic case.
I agree about the not trashing the home part. I’d also like to point out that the people who were living with Thomas Duncan for several days when he WAS symptomatic and contagious did not get sick. Seriously, why doesn’t this get air time and why aren’t we celebrating?
Assuming no one was exchanging body fluids and people were removed to safe treatment rooms at the first indications of illness no, you would not all have it. This isn’t the common cold. Don’t exchange fluids, wash your hand frequently, and if you get a fever then you go into one of those isolation rooms.
Except that’s not what they did to the nurse in New Jersey. They put her in a room all alone with absolutely nothing to do.
Gah! Unless someone pukes all over it or smears bodily effluent on those things NO, you don’t have to simply trash them! OK, it probably wouldn’t hurt to toss the magazines when they’re done but you don’t have to toss the electronics. Ebola is not some virus from Krypton that’s impervious and immortal, it can only live a short while away from a living host or recently deceased host. Wipe down the exterior parts of the Xbox and put it on a shelf for a couple weeks and the virus will be dead. Voila! Safe to use again.
Sure, $40 worth of electronics is no big deal what I’m objecting to is this notion of super-contagion. It smacks of primitive fear and magical efforts to avoid Teh Evul. It’s a stupid virus, household bleach can kill it dead dead dead.
There’s no need to quarantine anyone away from their home who isn’t showing symptoms. Simply order them to stay in their homes and have health department people monitor their temperatures. This is a woman who sacrificed her time and effort to help a troubled region and, without notice, they throw her in a TENT with no bathroom and tell her she’s gotta stay there for three weeks. It’s bullshit!
The CDC has announced a directive that starting today, all travelers entering the U.S. from Ebola-affected countries, not just health care workers who had direct contact with patients, are to be actively monitored for 21 days. They are supposed to report their temperature and if they have any symptoms once a day to their local or state health departments. Otherwise, they are not being placed in quarantine.
Also, Dr. Spencer’s fiancé has tested negative for the Ebola virus and has been released from the hospital.
I doubt you’re going to pick up Ebola from eating in a restaurant. First, I doubt that anyone who has gastrointestinal symptoms is going to want to eat anything, period. And second, let’s hope that anyone who eats in a restaurant is served on a clean plate.
Is that really the hill you want to die on? Spending $40 to over-engineer your response is nothing when you’re already spending thousands on quarantining someone. If you’re going to have facilities and procedure for full quarantine you might as well do it properly, and not start penny-pinching just because you don’t think this virus won’t bite you in the ass for it.
No, it’s not the “hill I want to die on”, I don’t want to die on any hill, but neither do I wish to tolerate utter gibbering panic.
It is STUPID to throw out something that doesn’t need to be thrown out. Perhaps we should gut the entire room after treating an Ebola patient and build a new one rather than simply disinfecting it? Where do you draw the line? It’s easy to spend someone else’s money, isn’t it?
Even more so for the personal possessions of people in quarantine. There is no need to gut someone’s home of personal possessions because some uninformed people are scared of the Boogie Germs. There is no need to kill someone’s pet dog (as happened in Spain). These things should be done rationally but we’ve seen again and again they aren’t.
Costs add up. I see no reason to add to them needlessly. If you’re going to set up a facility to quarantine the exposed over the foreseeable future maybe you should not treat the furnishings as disposable unless that is truly necessary. Or maybe we should just burn the entire building down every other week after moving everyone to a new facility, because sometimes I think that’s where some people are going with this.
Spend $0.02 on bleach to disinfect something or $40 to replace it - which makes more sense?