Certain medical centers have rooms where the air supplies are isolated and protected to prevent airborne spread. It’s not that much different from the sort of set up used in biohazard 4 labs.
And yet the doctors who went there as experts to deal with it are infected with it (unlike those who treated AIDS patients).
It makes no sense to bring the disease to this continent given what occurred with the AIDS virus which has already killed 30 million people. Ebola can move through animal migration and there’s nothing stopping it from mutating into an even deadlier version.
Instead of bringing the doctors to the medicine it would make more sense to send the medicine to the doctors.
did you read the thread?
Yes, did you?
I am frankly more concerned about the pneumonic plague cases cropping up in Colorado.
I completely understand why the CDC/Emory might want those patients. The chance to try new strategies on a quick basis and gain knowledge about the disease is of benefit to both the patient and the organization.
However, it also makes me wonder what it might portend for those African Countries. Moving patients is stressful for them, and usually to be avoided if possible. Could it be that the WHO is considering closing the borders of those countries, and we wanted to get our people back before that happened? What will happen to the influx of much-needed equipment and expertise in those countries if the West feels it has been protected from the illness by border closures? Will support dry up?
I voted against. Research, support, and treat on the ground where it happened, and don’t put the patients through the additional stress.
I’d also like to hear more about how they intend to treat the aircraft once it hits the ground.
NBC news reported the same plane is flying back to Africa for the other patient. I guess that isolation tent in the plane keeps it from getting contaminated?
Pneumonic plague is concerning, but we’ve known and studied Y. pestis for decades and there are treatment protocols in place. Assuming you go to a doctor promptly you’ve got a decent chance of surviving the plague these days, certainly better than the odds of surviving ebola. Use of antibiotics in people exposed to pneumonic plague is protective. No one has any idea if antibiotics will protect people exposed to ebola.
Also of potential benefit to future victims of the disease. If this opportunity results in a straight-forward protocol for treatment that could have enormous impact in the future.
I don’t think it’s as sinister as all that. First, they went to some effort to make sure these two patients were stable enough to transport, and the first one to arrive was able to walk into the hospital under his own power so he’s sick and infectious but not actively dying at the moment. Second, these are the only two being removed, other westerners have fallen ill and died from ebola in this outbreak.
There is no way on earth to transport the facilities and research capabilities present in Atlanta to Sierra Leone or other current outbreak location in time to do a goddamned thing for this outbreak. This really is a case where you have to bring the patient to the laboratory. That sort of situation is why the “isolation pods” and other accountrements being used were developed.
First of all, there are multiple layers of protection between the aircraft structure and the infectious patient. After all that is cleared out they just have to sanitize the aircraft. This is not a commercial plane full of seat cushions and fabrics. If needed, they can strip it to the bare bulkheads and sterilize it.
That’s simply not a true statement. Any facility that exists in a building can be transported minus the brick and mortar. There are certainly mobile isolation pods in existence for such an event.
The most you could say is that it’s more convenient (IE: “cheaper”) to fly 2 people to a center then it is to transport the equipment. It’s then a function of risk assessment.
Here is a case where it’s suppose to be difficult to transmit the disease yet 2 people from the medical profession have contracted it.
The “mobile isolation pods” are intended for transport, not long term treatment. Nor can the research and analysis facilities of a major metropolitan medical center in a first world country (much less the CDC) be transported to a remote African location which may or may not have such amenities as reliable power or reliable potable water.
The notion that you can duplicate a major modern hospital is ludicrous. Even the US military, which has “portable hospitals”, uses them for limited time and purpose, basically to get people stable enough to transport to permanent “brick and mortar” facility.
Right, two people who have been working in third-world conditions in circumstances with inadequate medical supplies and jury-rigged infection control for weeks, if not months. You seriously can’t see the difference between “remote village location” and “medical center connected to the CDC”?
Wouldn’t these health care workers/ doctors known of how it is spread yet they still caught it?
Gitmo for sick people isn’t going to happen. Beyond being medically unnecessary and serving no purpose, exactly which country do you expect to host it?
Providing healthcare in poorly equipped facilities under difficult working conditions is definitely a high-risk behavior. I am sure the doctors are aware of this fact.
A few posts mention 2 health care workers infected.
<nitpick>
It’s making such new now because two American health workers have become infected. The truth is more than 100 health workers have become infected fighting this Ebola outbreak.
Medical workers have been infected in rural villages. They have been infected in modern cities.
</nitpick>
Health workers may become exposed when a patient presents for treatment at a clinic or hospital outside of the presumed hot zone. Incubation times can be as long as 21 days, so a patient may travel far from the outbreak area before falling ill. The early symptoms of Ebola are very similar to other diseases common in the region.
But it seems health workers are still being exposed in the outbreak areas despite protective measures that have been taken. Frankly, the protective suits in use in this outbreak that I’ve seen images of seem wholly inadequate.
The hospitals in these countries are among the very weakest in all of occidental africa. It is very nice to know something in theory but if it is not possible to access the clean water and the clean hospital uniforms because of the lack of washing and water, it does not do any good.
Many commentators here have no idea how difficult it is to maintain the proper conditions lacking the right infrastructure and have unrealistic ideas of the treatment quality in these three countries, which are the weakest. The neighbors, like the Cote d’Ivoire and the Senegal, they are not excellent but are much better.
It would probaby be the case he wants the frightening foreign things to stay far away…
Yes and they are vrave to keep working even when there is not enough of the cleaning liquids, even the clean water to keep what is the ideal or even the basic sanitation for such an outbreak.
You are speaking of the Sierre Leone, of the Guinea Conakry and the Liberia, all of which even in the capitol cities have very bad state facilities and not even very good private ones. It is not even not heard of to have reused needles in some state clinics.
Pour rien dire.
They are wholly inadequate. The entire medical system under the most ordinary times in these three countries is wholly inadequate.
Instead of panic in the west about a risk that is not even real, it is better to send supports to the hospitals in these effected countries as they were already the worst before this in terms of resources and capacities. The needs are not very complicated, they are simple like support for fuel for the generators which are needed to run all things -the pumps to the refrigerators etc - during the frequent cuts of the electricity, or the dressings for patients, to simple budgets for cleaning materials. It is this simple, to reduce the death toll.
This is why it is so fatal, when similar viruses in the West are deadly but not this deadly.
The question is why did 2 medical people from the US get it when it’s only transferred through the exchange of body fluids. If the people trained to deal with this get the virus then it’s just a numbers game before it happens again.
I’m not seeing how a hospital isolation system is as effective as 4000 miles of ocean. The news said they were taking an experimental drug and it’s having a positive effect. Great. It could have been administered at the source location.
I voted yes, I am less concerned with flying 2 patients home (taking all precautions) than I am people who may well catch it and come back without the symptoms showing yet.
It is not a hard question. Being Americans or white people does not give them magically more resources when they are working the*** same conditions*** as the local doctors, without enough access to the basic resources like enough clean water, enough fuel for the generators during the outtages of power, enough clean materials, etc…
It is a question that has no basic sense to it. But I am glad to see that your mastery of thinking is the same with the things you wrote about the libyien affaires and it was not limited to that.
It should read, 'if the people trained to deal with this and who then must work long hours without the electricity to pump clean water, without the clean medical clothes, without the basic hygenic facilities and without all the things that even the worst hospital and the worst clinic in the developed countries can provide without much thinking…
It is very warming you would leave even two americans of your own country to be deprived of care and to die, over fear with no good foundations. at least you are egalitarian in your fearful thinking.
no, you aren’t seeing it
because of the conditions they were working in, which people have tried to explain to you
They did receive the experimental drug in Liberia. It was shipped from the US and administered before they were flown to Atlanta. But recovery is far more than just administering a drug. With a disease this severe, the best supportive care is vital. That kind of care is most effective in modern hospitals with, among other things, clean water, air conditioning, and a constant power supply.
Again.
The spread of Ebola is easy to prevent in modern healthcare facilities. It is not 100% preventable. Healthcare workers and researchers will always be taking a small personal risk with this-- just like they do for HIV and Hepatitis and a million other transmittable diseases that affect healthcare workers on occassion. But the risk of a generalized outbreak, which I assume is what we are scared of, is basically nil. Healthcare workers working with these diseases are tracked and monitored (and want to be first in line should they need treatment.)
The spread of Ebola is NOT easy to prevent in rudimentary health facilities. These hospitals lack adequate sterilization equiptment, space to isolate patients, training capacity, and other necessary things for preventing fluid-spread diseases. In addition, the current crisis has been understaffed, requiring doctors to work long shifts that erode vigilance and leads to simple errors. I am sure you have seen the photos. Their protective equiptment is essentially kitchen gloves, googles, and galoshes, which are hosed off and dried in the sun. It’s not safe, but the alternative is that everyone dies alone and in pain.
A modern healthcare facility is actually much safer for everyone. In the US, we are able to track exactly who has been in contact with the patient. 4,000 miles away, we have no way to track potentially infected people and encourage them to seek follow up if they become symptomatic.