Category Archives: Epidemic

US Ebola epidemic facts and concerns, Second person under observation, CDC Was Wrong About How to Stop Ebola, Family children and travel companions at risk?

“Barack Obama is endangering the children of the US and now our troops. Where is the outrage?”…Citizen Wells

“You can see that these doctors, who are highly trained people, got themselves infected,”
“So sending troops into an area, if they’re dealing one-on-one with a patient, they’re not going to be able to protect themselves very well. It’s not easy to [prevent transmission], because you get tired and you get careless and you make some simple mistakes. All it takes is one virus particle.”…Dr. Lee Hieb, former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

From WFAA October 1, 2014.

“Miles: 5 DISD students possibly exposed to Ebola”

“The sister of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States says her brother told relatives that he had notified officials the first time he went to the hospital that he was visiting from Liberia.

Mai Wureh says her brother, Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a Dallas emergency room on Friday and they sent him home with antibiotics. He told his sister hospital officials asked for his Social Security number and he said that he didn’t have one because he was visiting from Liberia.

In a news conference Wednesday, Dr. Mark Lester confirmed that a nurse asked Duncan on his first visit whether he had been in an area affected by the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa.

“A checklist was in place for Ebola in this hospital for several weeks. That checklist was utilized by the nurse, who did ask [the] question [if the patient had been to Africa,]” Lester said. “[…] Regretfully, that information [was not shared] with the full team.”

As the medical team assessed Duncan on his first visit, they thought it was a low-grade viral disease. Dr. Edward Goodman, a Texas Health Presbyterian infectious disease specialist, said when Duncan went to the emergency room Friday he was not vomiting or having diarrhea, but he did have a fever and some abdominal pain.”

“Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles also revealed that five children from four of the district’s campuses were possibly exposed to the virus.

Miles identified the schools as:

Conrad High School
Tasby Middle School
Hotchkiss Elementary School
Dan D. Rogers Elementary School
Tasby Middle School shares a campus with Jack Lowe Sr. Elementary School, but DISD officials say there are no students at Lowe Elementary who were directly exposed to Duncan.”

Read more:

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2014/10/01/thompson-dallas-county-ebola-patient-cases/16524303/

From The Daily Beast October 1, 2014.

“The CDC Was Wrong About How to Stop Ebola”

“News that a man has been diagnosed with the virus in Dallas days after arriving from Liberia is alarming—and to prevent more U.S. cases, certain rules must never be broken.

The announcement that a case of Ebola virus has been diagnosed in a Dallas hospital sent a chill through the medical, public health, and basic citizen communities. I know my jaw surely dropped as far as it has dropped since 2001, when the word of the first anthrax case in New York appeared in my email. As the details have begun to emerge, many people are wondering the same thing: Will this happen in my city?

The answer is quite clear: Maybe.

The facts are straightforward, at least in the version that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid out: A man of uncertain age flew from Liberia, where the disease remains uncontrolled, to Dallas to visit family. When checked for illness on departure, he had no fever. Upon landing in Texas on September 20, he was fine. Within four days, though, he began to feel ill—sufficiently so that he sought medical attention on September 26. That evaluation apparently failed to provide clues to the diagnosis, but two days later his symptoms had progressed enough that he again sought medical attention and this time was hospitalized, placed immediately into isolation, and diagnosed on September 30.

The timeline as presented raises countless questions. First: Was he contagious when boarding the plane and are his plane-mates therefore at risk? Surely not—the most compelling epidemiological fact in the entire tragic seven month outbreak has been the story of Patrick Sawyer, the Minnesotan who after traveling from Liberia to Nigeria, developed symptoms of overwhelming Ebola and died soon thereafter. Although few details have been revealed, none of those who traveled with Sawyer developed the disease despite the fact that he, unlike the Dallas case, was ill with the infection while traveling. And it is axiomatic (and hopefully true) that a person is contagious only when they are sick, not when they are brewing the infection.

Second: What about others? Surely others in Texas were exposed and are at risk—specifically those the new case spent time with from September 26, when he first felt ill, until September 28, when he was hospitalized and placed promptly into isolation. Here is where the CDC’s calm and forceful “Nothing to See Here” message cracks a bit around the edges.”

Read more:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/01/how-to-keep-ebola-from-spreading-to-other-u-s-cities.html

From Market Watch September 23, 2014.

“Here are the latest figures on the largest Ebola outbreak in modern history.

1.4 million: The estimated number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January if virus continues to spread.

20,000: The number of Ebola cases forecast by early November if outbreak isn’t contained.

2,800: The number of Ebola-related deaths in five West African countries this year.

5,800: The number of people who have been infected with the virus this year.

1: The number of confirmed Ebola cases reported in the U.S.

0: The number of vaccines available to treat Ebola.

2: The number of companies the U.S. Department of Defense has funded to work on drug therapies for Ebola.

3,000: The number of troops the U.S. has committed to send to Africa.

$500 million: The amount the Pentagon is seeking from Congress to fight Ebola on top of the $500,000 already requested.

$809 million: The estimated financial toll on the economies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of next year if the virus keeps spreading, according to the World Bank.

$1 billion: The amount the U.N. is requesting  from the international community to contain the Ebola outbreak.

30: The number of minutes it reportedly takes for a new test to detect the disease.

6: The number of months it’s been since the World Health Organization was first notified about an Ebola outbreak in Guinea.

70%: The fatality rate for the current epidemic.”

Read more:

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/health-exchange/2014/09/23/by-the-numbers-1-4-million-cases-of-ebola-forecast-by-january/