Now is not the time to panic – Amanda Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*This is Sarah, with a minor addendum that occurred to me while reading the post below: Amanda is substantially right.  All my biologist contacts, including my son, say that not only are the chances of Ebola becoming epidemic here very low but the chances of its mortality being as high here as it is in Africa are small.  This makes sense if you know the conditions in Africa.  Frankly I’m more worried about its becoming epidemic and lethal in the Iberian Peninsula because of the culture and the state of the (socialized for decades) medical field there. And if you’re from Mars and reading this: I’m worried about that because all my blood relations except my sons, are in Portugal. (Not because of all the places in the world I think Iberia is the most unorganized.

I know my biologist friends are right.  But I also know panic is difficult to keep down.  However, I’ve been analyzing it, because thinking about why you feel things is the duty of anyone who would write about characters in perilous situations.

It’s not the virus. My son who volunteers at the hospital says they have at least two “What in heck is that?” viruses which are more virulent than this and most they never discover what they are (we are a military town, which contributes to that.)

No.  What is driving people nuts is this: we don’t trust our official representatives and newspeople at all. At every level, from our elected “representatives” from the President on down, and even including journalists, they have lied to us.  Fast and furious, Summer of Recovery, Benghazi, the IRS, You can keep your doctor.  Everything they say is a lie, including “the” and “and.”

So when we see this dog and pony show with ebola, we who have been in the “get ready to duck and cover, because we can’t trust these b*stards” for so long, feel the need to go all telecommuting, or to hide, or to finally activate all our protective measures.  Because we don’t trust the people who are telling us all is safe.

As I told my son “I thought I was perfectly safe till Obama assured us we were. As far as I can tell every word out of his mouth is a lie.

And even if you know enough about biology to feel safe, looking at this huge production around ebola and how the news — hello, jornolist! — are all on it, and we think of Obama’s charming habit of hiding a scandal with a scandal.  Of course we wonder “What are they hiding with this?  And how dangerous is THAT?  Duck and cover, duck and cover!”  And we think lovingly of canned beans and sheltering in place.

To be fair I don’t think what they’re hiding is entovirus.  That’s just another media circus warming up.  The actual death rate is not that bad.  We’ve had flu in this city that had more people dying very quickly.  And yes, the border-breakers of summer are probably going to bring disease/have brought disease into the country, but it will be diseases we know how to fix, just had forgotten here for a century or so. And I expect the flu epidemic to be hellish because of the mutational petri-dish of the camps.  I’m fairly sure what government and media (but I repeat myself) are hiding under the “disease” newscycle is the shocking state of foreign affairs and that we’ll wake up from the Ebola news cycle when something detonates in one of our cities, or the number of piecemeal beheadings becomes such they have to go beyond “workplace violence” as an explanation.  And then, to be fair, a lot of us are going to feel like vomiting.

I’m not worried about Ebola, but about “When the worst happens.” And the inability to trust anything we see or hear from officialdom when we need absolutely clear instructions/news.

Further this news obsession is damaging us in the eyes of our enemies as the giant that can’t handle a case of illness safely; as the country of hysterics. It makes our getting hit more likely.  And of course, it makes life in Dallas very difficult, as Amanda says below.*

Now is not the time to panic – Amanda Green

Once again, Dallas finds itself in the news. It’s not a place the city particularly relishes. I know, I know. You find that hard to believe. After all, Dallas is home of the Cowboys AKA “America’s Team.” It has had a TV show – twice – named after it. So how can I say the city doesn’t really want to be in the limelight?

It’s simple, really. As someone who has spent the majority of her life in the DFW area, I’ve had to live with the infamy of being from this part of the state. For years – many years, in fact – we had to live with the rest of the country looking down its nose at us because this was where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Camelot came to an end in our city and so we were to blame.

Now, we are back in the news again after becoming the place where the US recorded its first Ebola death and, not unexpectedly, the first case of Ebola contracted on US soil. And boy, are we in the news. For two weeks, local, national and international media has been flooding Dallas in search of information about how Ebola came to our city, how officials responded to it and now what happened to cause the second case.

From the beginning, when we first learned Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in Dallas via Brussels and Washing Dulles, had been placed in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian of Dallas, there have been questions that needed to be answered. These questions ranged for wondering how he had managed to leave Liberia after being exposed to Ebola to how he had been seen in Presbyterian’s Emergency Room and released with only antibiotics two days before he was brought back to the hospital via ambulance. Then there were questions about how the authorities reacted to the news of an Ebola diagnosis and how those who had come into contact with Duncan were treated.

As Jacquielynn Floyd noted in her column for the Dallas Morning News, what is happening now is “the occasion for a critical test of the relationship between citizens — us — and our political and medical authorities. Either we believe in truth and transparency, or we don’t.” I’d add one more thing, it is a critical test to show whether or not our political leaders have any common sense and recognize that their actions have consequences. In at least one situation, the answer is a resounding “NO!”.

On the whole, I have to give it to the Dallas political leaders, both on the city and county level. They reacted quickly and didn’t hesitate to call in help from the state and from the CDC. The leadership was faced with a situation that no other city in the country had been and, while there might have been some fumbling along the way, they have done a pretty darned good job of handling the situation.

The fumbles? The first was in allowing Duncan’s family freedom to leave the apartment after his diagnosis. Because of that, three local schools had students who had been in contact with Duncan attend classes. Fortunately, so far at least, none of those students have shown any symptoms of Ebola. However, that oversight caused concern among parents and cost those schools money – money to make sure any areas where the students might have been were cleaned and money lost when parents chose not to send their children to school out of an over-abundance of caution.

The second was in not moving Duncan’s family sooner. We haven’t been made privy to all that went on in trying to find someplace that was isolated and yet comfortable, so we don’t know why it took so long. However, the appearance made the city look bad, especially when Duncan’s family and friends started talking to the media about how the family was still living with the dirty sheets, etc., Duncan had been on before being transported to Presbyterian via ambulance.

The third, and this is where a government official didn’t think about the consequences of his actions, centers around Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been a big fan of his. But his actions in going in and out of the apartment to meet with Duncan’s family and then in driving them to the home where they were being relocated to without suiting up, wearing mask and gloves, etc., showed a lack of foresight. Not because he might become infected. The chances of that happening are practically nil because none of the family was symptomatic at the time. No, it showed a lack of foresight because he didn’t consider the impact his actions would have on others. His children went to school after their father’s actions. That concerned parents and took away school resources as they had to issue reassurances to those parents and their children. Again, money was lost due to children being held out of school. Beyond that, his actions downplayed the importance of being cautious. It looked like grandstanding, whether it was or not.

But this second case of Ebola raises a number of questions, not only about how Patient One, a nurse who treated Duncan after his admission to Presbyterian, contracted the disease but also about how non-transparent Presby has been with the public. Then there is the question of whether or not hospitals that don’t deal on a daily basis with infectious diseases are capable of treating Ebola or similar diseases.

With regard to the latter, the fact that a breach of protocol of some sort leading to the nurse contracting Ebola has been used by some to point out that most hospitals simply aren’t prepared for situations like the one Dallas now faces. Dr. Richard Besser, medical correspondent for ABC and formerly with the CDC, said in an interview with WFAA yesterday that he thinks any Ebola patient needs to be transferred to one of several hospitals, like Emory, that are specifically equipped to deal with the disease. Part of me agrees with him because these hospitals have staffs that are drilled on a regular basis to handle the suiting up and removal of all protective gear as well as patient treatment. But part of me also recognizes that the logistics of moving patients to these hospitals would be a night, especially if more cases crop up in the States.

What I think we need to be focusing on instead is setting up one or two hospitals per region where suspected cases would be brought. These hospitals would have staffs trained and drilled in the proper procedures. These drills and training exercises would become part of their accreditation process just like having proper ER or medical record protocols. It would take time, but let’s face it. The world is a much smaller place than it used to be and there is no way to keep Ebola or any other disease out.

All that said, Presby has done well in handling things but there have been some major fumbles along the way as well. The administration still has not fully explained why Duncan was allowed to leave the ER when he first presented himself there. There has been a song and dance about problems with the electronic records to Duncan not telling them he’d been in contact with someone who had Ebola to who know what all. The administrators do owe Duncan’s family and Dallas in general an explanation on how the system broke down.

But that isn’t the only thing Presby owes us an explanation on. When the second case was announced yesterday, we suddenly learned that the Presby employees who had been in contact with Duncan had not been included in the number of people being tracked or monitored by the County Health Department. Instead, Presby was monitoring its own people. In the case of Patient One, she had been identified by Presbyterian as low risk.

Low risk. A nurse who, from what we are learning, had extensive contact with Duncan.

Low risk from the hospital’s point of view, presumably, because she had been suited up whenever with him.

Low risk so she was self-monitoring and calling in to Presby twice a day to tell them what her temperature was. Fortunately, she was doing as asked and she caught the spike in her temperature. She did what she’d been told to by Presby. She contacted them and was told to come in. So she climbed into her car and drove in. Which brings up a whole new set of questions about why Presby employees were – apparently – given a different set of protocol to follow than County Health had been regarding the patients they are monitoring. Those patients, if becoming symptomatic, are to be brought to Presby via ambulance. So why the difference for Presby patients?

But here is the question that is bothering many people in the DFW area: why were we not told about the number of Presbyterian employees being monitored? We have been told from the beginning of the 48 or so people County Health is monitoring. Of those, approximately 10 are being closely watched until the 21 day incubation period expires.

But we weren’t told about the approximately 40 Presbyterian employees that are being monitored by the hospital. We didn’t know about them until yesterday morning. We don’t know if they have been allowed to work and, if so, if they have been seeing patients. I know they aren’t contagious if they aren’t symptomatic but this comes down to a breach of trust between the hospital administration and the public-at-large. Our confidence in Presbyterian had already been shaken by the song and dance about Duncan’s ER visit. This has not helped.

But let’s be honest. This situation is not one any hospital could have been fully prepared for. This was not a situation where there was advance warning that an Ebola patient was coming in ala Dr. Kent Brantley. There wasn’t time to get any experimental drugs on hand. There was no advance blood work to study and base treatment plans on. There was no advance notice so additional training could be accomplished. Nor was there time to set up an isolation wing or floor with all the bells and whistles you’ll find at Emory or one of the other hospitals that specialize in infectious diseases.

There’s something else to consider. What if this had happened not in Dallas but in Chinook, Montana? Or any other small town in the country. The response times could have been a lot longer and the results much worse.

Will this be the last time we see Ebola in this country? No. I haven’t checked this morning, but there was a suspected case in the Boston area being reported last night. The answer isn’t to close our borders to all flights coming in from the affected parts of Africa. As the Duncan case proves, not everyone comes directly here from Africa. Even if you stopped every person whose flight originated in Africa, that wouldn’t put a stop to it. Someone who lives in Germany can be exposed under the right conditions without ever being in Africa. That person can get on a plane and come to the US and they won’t be stopped because they aren’t symptomatic and they aren’t coming from an affected area.

All we can do is be vigilant. We establish regional hospitals that are trained and prepared to deal with Ebola and other infectious diseases. We establish protocols that are consistent across the board and across the nation about how to transport patients with suspected infectious diseases as well as how to treat them once at the designated hospital. We identify companies that are qualified to do the decontamination of homes and vehicles and other areas where a patient might have been so they can be brought in immediately to decon an impacted area. There is something else that has to be done and that falls to you and me. We have to demand transparency from our medical administrators and politicians.

Most of all, we all have to exercise common sense. Unfortunately, out of everything, that is the one thing I’m not sure we will see. At least not from the vocal few and the media and they are the ones who fan the fire of panic.

324 thoughts on “Now is not the time to panic – Amanda Green”

  1. Considering the quality of people who run our crowded cities, and remembering the degree of competence shown during Katrina and Sandy, I’m feeling kind of panicky.

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      1. Ebola is a dangerous, scary, disease. There have been some fumbles in dealing with it. I have a legitimate cause for concern. I live close to Dallas. Presbyterian Dallas is imo the best hospital in Dallas. My husband had his severe case pancreatitis treated there. However there is a chance of bad things happening.

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        1. This is a good example of why hospitals need to keep their various departments segregated. Maternity facilities nor cancer treatment wards should have any connection to communicable disease departments. Folks with compromised immune systems don’t need to transit areas where their vulnerabilities make them virological prey.

          Unfortunately, facilities are not so easily restructured; we go to bacteriological war with the hospitals we have.

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      2. The “made for tv” nature of the illness is a part of the problem. Call it the
        “Hous-ification” of our culture: we have expectations of how these things will be dealt with and the realities rarely comport with the dramatizations. It is the epidemiological version of the way CSI has conditioned juries to expect thorough minute examination of crime scenes.

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    2. I agree with Sarah on this. Besides, right now I’m more worried about how te media, especially the national outlets are trying to make this as sensational as they can. They are the ones fanning the flames of panic, or trying to at least. I guess I ought to feel relieved that fewer and fewer people are actually following the MSM. Shrug.

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      1. I was not impressed with the screaming headline on USATooday this AM. “First case of Ebola contracted in the US.” Um, well, we just had the first “case-in-the-wild” as it were, so if anyone gets it from him, yeah, they’re gonna be the first. No need to put it in scare-caps.

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        1. Heh. All we need is “Ebola-infected ISIS Terrorists Hijack a Commercial Airliner” to hit the CNN Trifecta for non-stop interminable coverage.

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          1. You forgot the “Black Hole” and “Tear In The Fabric Of Space-Time” CNN coverage checkboxes.

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                1. Yes, but they are like a far sighted person who lost their glasses getting down on their hands and knees to look for them.

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                2. But then what was it about them drinking tea with their meals, especially breaking each day in the afternoon to have a cup? I mean that must mean something, mustn’t it?

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      2. Far from fomenting panic, the MSM is an integral part of sheltering the public from disturbing information that might lead them to make unapproved decisions. Git along, li’l dogie.

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      1. Do you live in DFW? I live in Plano. It’s only 20 miles from Dallas.

        Are you saying the Duncan case was handled competently? Hey, I’m willing to be corrected so feel free.

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        1. I agree. I think Sarah and Amanda are right in that it shouldn’t be a problem but what has happened to our government and our health care system and this perverse need to put political correctness over right and wrong and public safety, really is starting to scare the crap out of me.

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    4. If you feel sufficiently cynical about the dishonesty of politicians (and remember that some doctors are really politicians now), you should worry about Ebola being used as a pretext for disarming us. It happened with Katrina, it could happen again. It’s one of the CDC’s goals, after all, not to mention that of at least half the politicians out there.

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      1. “If you feel sufficiently cynical about the dishonesty of politicians …”

        That’s a trick question, ain’t it? Like the definition of overkill — theoretically possible but practically unattainable?

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      2. They could attempt to disarm us, but it will not happen. Unlike Australia they are large numbers of Americans who will take any widespread effort to confiscate private arms as the opening volley of the next civil war.

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        1. Opening volley of the next civil war? Son, they’s aplenty o’ folks would see it as ending the truce from the last one.

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    5. I’m also disinclined to panic. It rarely does any good, and not even all the news media is willing to go out on this limb, which should say how flimsy it is.

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    6. It never pays to panic, but this is an incredibly dangerous disease and the authorities have refused to protect us with a quarantine for PC reasons, and are ill equipped to deal with the cases. So they have zero credibility.

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      1. That’s my worry – that the people who should have been on top of it, having had several months to skull out responses – appear to have been putting their hands over their ears and going lalalalalal-I-can’t-hear-you … or telling us that it’s all OK, never happen hear. They’ve shot their credibility in the foot, over and over, and no one believes a thing they have to say.

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    7. I have an old friend from my graduate school days, who I suspect is no friend of the Obama regime, who also thinks panic is inappropriate.

      Which I find highly reassuring, since like you, I would start to doubt my own mother if Obama assured me she loved me.

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      1. Well, crap. It’s back to cut and paste.

        Gary Skankey:
        “With all the news about ebola virus, all the hysteria and a lot of bad information on the internet, I figured I should clarify things for my FB friends and separate fact from fiction.

        First, ebola is actually fairly difficult to spread. Viruses like influenza, or even the common cold, are much more highly contagious than ebola. For ebola to be spread there must be direct contact with infected body fluids (blood, saliva, semen, urine, feces, vomit or sweat). Contact of body fluids with healthy, intact skin is not likely to lead to infection, however, if the skin is disrupted in some way (abrasions or cuts) the virus could find a way into the body. Spray of infected body fluids into unprotected eyes or mouth could also lead to infection. So far, there has never been evidence of a case of ebola caused by air-born spread. In other words, it has never been proven to be spread by a cough or a sneeze. Airborne infection may occur, however, in healthcare workers who, during medical procedures, cause aerosols of infected body fluids, such as during fiberoptic procedures or during surgery. So, sitting across the aisle from an infected person in an airplane, or casually passing by and infected person will not lead to transmission of infection.

        The incubation period of ebola is generally 7 – 10 days. In other words, symptoms do not begin to show until 7 – 10 days after the virus enters their body. There is no evidence that an asymptomatic (has no symptoms of infection), but infected person can transmit the disease to another person. So, there are no carriers. The only people who can spread the disease are sick – and usually very sick! They would be fairly easy for the average person to avoid. People boarding planes in West Africa to fly to other countries are screened. If they have a fever, they don’t fly. This latest person diagnosed in Dallas who came to the US from Liberia was asymptomatic while on the airplane, and didn’t develop symptoms until his third day here in the US. So, the people on the plane are safe.

        The reason why ebola is spreading so rapidly in Subsaharan Africa is manyfold: 1. High prevalence of the virus in animal reservoirs, such as non-human primates and bats. Humans frequently come in contact with those animals in many areas of Africa. Here in the US, the general population rarely if ever has close contact with wild animals. 2. Healthcare resources in Africa are so scanty that simple things we take for granted in this country, like examination gloves that would protect healthcare workers from the getting the disease, are not available. Isolation techniques we employ in this country would be a stone wall to the spread of ebola, but they don’t have those techniques in many areas of Africa. 3. There are many customs among the natives of Subsaharan Africa that encourage spread of the disease, such as touching, kissing and bathing the bodies of deceased family members.

        The media many times whips up hysteria to sell stories. With regard to ebola, this has lead to fears that this horrible outbreak in Africa can easily occur here in the US. The truth is, we might see some small clusters of outbreaks in people who recently travelled from Africa, but they would be rapidly contained. And, unless infected African Fruit Bats are released into the US, or New York City becomes invaded by hoards of infected African Chimpanzees, the bulk of Ebola is going to stay in Africa.”

        Apologies for the length.

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        1. Fair enough. And given that (assuming that) it comes from someone who doesn’t work for the government, I’ll give it some credence.
          However… it would be easier to feel comfortable if the government doctors didn’t change the story twice a day. It would be more comfortable if we weren’t told that medical staff are highly trained and well equipped, only to be told that “there must have been a protocol violation”. It would be more comfortable if that accusation of protocol violation was actually backed up by some evidence, rather than being merely the unsupported claim of a bureaucrat eager to shift blame away from his own overfunded organization.
          Consider also: we’re told that “screening at port of entry” is adequate. I say baloney. But let’s run an experiment. As everyone knows, the way you test emergency preparedness is by running drills. So here is the drill.
          Find a volunteer, a business traveler who’s been on the road for the past week. It doesn’t have to be a foreign visitor; the drill doesn’t require that he originally arrived from out of the country.
          “Ok, Mr. Jones, you have a case of simulated ebola. We want to trace everyone you’ve been in contact with in the past 3 days (from start of contagiousness until the point he was simulatedly sick enough to go to the emergency room).” How do you think that’s going to work? I think it’s hardly necessary to run the drill; just the “thought experiment” produces the answer.
          Here’s another angle: the notion that we “only” have to screen and track those who came in from the source regions.
          “Mr. Jones, have you been in West Africa recently?” “I’ve never been there in my life.” “So how did you get this?” “Hm… oh. I had a meeting… 10 days ago, I think, and one of the participants was Mr. Smith from Liberia.”
          Now what? Ask Mr. Smith to say who he met? Where is Mr. Smith? Quite possibly he died a few days ago.
          Finally, on screening — I assume those would be the same screening rules that were applied to the nurse who was sick, but not quite sick enough to cause the bureaucrats at CDC to worry. “You have a fever? How much? Oh, 99.9? That’ ok, don’t worry about it.”
          So it’s indeed true that the disease doesn’t originate here. But so long as people from the source region come in uncontrolled, with no realistic plan for stopping the infected, nor for knowing how far it spread if one gets in, there’s reason to worry. So long as the government prefers political correctness over proper medical practice, there is reason to worry. So long as the lead agency is an outfit that practices political correctness more than medicine — one that treats gun ownership as a disease, for example — there is good reason to worry.

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    1. “People are smart. They can handle it.”
      “A PERSON is smart. PEOPLE are dumb, panicky and dangerous, and you know it.”
      -Men in Black
      Yup. Our political class has given us every indication that they’ll govern by lies to assure power over the masses and to maintain their position when they can, and govern by the club when they must. And they’ve proven that people are entirely disposable to them.

      I need to take my anti-pessimism pills this morning.

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      1. “The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters.” – Terry Pratchett

        And I don’t read Pratchett, but I remember a quote very similar to that (I think L’amour) and this is what I come up with when I search engine for it.

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      2. Down here, on the county level and with regard to this situation, they have shown through the person of the county judge, they they will govern by appearing to be nice and concerned but without taking into consideration the consequences of their actions. That is what concerns me, or at least one of the things that concern me.

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        1. After the first time he appeared on national TV, I cringed. He’s supposed to be the voice of calm and reason. Nope. The first soundbite I heard was him accusing the hospital of screwing up and a veiled suggestion that if Patient Zero had been white, and so on.

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    2. That’s the real issue, Keith. Fortunately, in this case — at least so far — the media is blowing the so-called panic all out of proportion. But there comes a point when, if they keep talking about it long enough and loudly enough, folks might start thinking there really is panic and they join in the Chicken Little act.

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      1. Like we saw them do after 9-11. Media was screaming about how scared everyone was. I was traveling in the aftermath, and I didn’t see scared… I saw PISSED.

        Repeat the lie long enough…..

        zuk

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          1. Take a look at the election results maps BY COUNTY and you will see a RED NATION with blue cities.

            I don’t have the math to do the analysis, but I suspect we are close to the point where the only votes that will matter are in those 10 blue cities (given the winner take all electoral college system.)

            zuk

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            1. Well then, get involved in your state to push for proportionate allocation of electoral college votes. That’s a purely state issue, and one that should be doable. Not much point here in Utah, but in many places it could make a significant difference.

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          2. A member of the family was an air traffic controller working in the New York area on 9/11. He is probably liberal for New York. When the planes hit the towers he took it very personally and was seething mad – later calming down to simply pissed as all hell. (Anticipating possible questions: No — it was his day off.)

            At first he wanted to see the (expletives deleted) who would promote and back such a thing taken out. After a while the local zeitgeist got to him. The ‘its all our fault for being the great big nasty bullies imposing ourselves on the rest of the world‘ whine surrounded him. He fell for the argument that it was like poking the hornet’s nest. So, he argues, if only the U.S. would step back, stop pushing our ways on others, then there would be no reason for them to be angry or to attack us and consequently we would be left alone. He still doesn’t like the idea of anyone messing with us. He just lives under a very different set of assumptions.

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  3. “… he had been seen in Presbyterian’s Emergency Room and released with only antibiotics…”
    Antibiotics for a suspected virus infection. That doctor should lose his license and the hospital get a big fine.

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    1. This is fairly normal*. Also most reporters don’t know the difference between an antibiotic and an antiviral.

      *This is normal because bacteria often take advantage of systems weakened by viruses, so a preventative antibiotic is given so that the body doesn’t have to deal with that while at the same time fighting the virus.

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      1. yep. And explaining the later to my doctor is a pain. “Look, I know this is a virus. But if you don’t give me an antibiotic, I’m going to end up with a bacterial ear infection, because I ALWAYS DO.” Only after twenty years, he was TRAINED. And now due to the ACA he’s had to join a group practice… and I can’t train everyone there.

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        2. This may sound silly, but have him write you a letter on official stationary explaining your recurring condition. Medical personnel typically ignore much of what a patient says, but will give much more credence to another professional’s statement.
          Went through a period of several years where I got strep on a yearly basis. Went in, did the swab, got the results, took Tetracycline for seven days, all better. After the third time I would go in and say “just give me the drug, please.” Never worked, always had to go through the same song and dance. Of course back in those days it was clinics and you got whoever was on call. Now have a GP who knows my insides better than I do, what’s left of them that is.

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          1. I had bad sore throats every year for several years. NEVER came back as strep. I kind of got pissed about it, really. Why the hell did my throat hurt so bad I could hardly swallow even cold liquids, if it wasn’t that (Note: That was how I thought then, not now. I think it was infections in my tonsils, which were eventually removed.)?

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      2. You touch on an important point: what most reporters don’t know is an expansive and ever-increasing category. They, like politicians, are quite skilled at skimming a Wiki of a topic and filling sixty seconds of air authoritatively, but they can’t ask an intelligent follow-up to save their lives. Sadly, it is unlikely that our crumbling journalistic infrastructure can support the training of journalists for specific areas of expertise, so we are left with them trotting out the usual array of “expert” commentators to react to what the reporter has presented.

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        1. Half the people with journalism degrees do little more than digest press releases for print/broadcast. The other half are writing the press releases.

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      3. Kind of like how reporters think that every ground vehicle with a gun is a “tank”, and every ship with a gun is a “battleship”.

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    2. Sam, by the time this is all said and done, Presby is going to feel like it’s been through a wringer. State and national reviews will be held and there will be law suits. That’s pretty much a given. But, judging from the way the administrators are skirting the issue and changing the explanation for what happened — time and time again — the doctor(s) will probably be protected but the nurses involved will be offered up as sacrificial lambs.

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      1. Personally, I’m concerned about the infected nurse. By implication anyway she’s been accused of being negligent, and that’s why she’s infected.

        The nurses are at the most risk here, and do the dirtiest jobs while the patient is still alive. They’re not paid enough for the job their doing or the risk they’re taking, and some of them are going to be thrown under the bus?

        By the time this is over, both the CDC and the hospital should be found liable, and made to pay.

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  4. “All we can do is be vigilant.”
    Thus is why the panic.
    This admin refuses to be vigilant, and everyone knows that, even its supporters. They really don’t care about much, and that which they do care about they consistently flub.
    Certainly not confidence inspiring, to say the least.

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      1. So far only localized panic in a few places where people feel vulnerable. Hasn’t spread yet. If, as another poster says, the CDC and administration is concealing more cases and that comes out, or if a general panic breaks out south of our border, then it will get very ugly very quickly.

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    2. They are not only refusing to be vigilant but actively closing their eyes to the dangers. Because Racism

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  5. My biggest worry is not disease, either (we have MRSA and drug-resistant TB in this country, both fairly common, and so far my family has managed to avoid both of them). My biggest worry is what the government is going to do to take away more of our freedoms, using Ebola as an excuse.

    However, we do need to keep our eyes wide open on the Ebola thing because I’ve seen information purporting to be from an MD in Dallas which said that he has quit his job (this week, and he was due to retire soon anyway) because there are at least three more active cases in the same hospital (Presbyterian) and as far as he knows at least eight other cases in area hospitals that we aren’t being told about (so as not to panic people, I presume). I think the biggest danger is to first responders and medical personnel — esp. the latter, since they have prolonged contact with patients in their most contagious stages. We haven’t heard a peep from Duncan’s family members so I’m guessing at least some of them are included in the unreported cases. This could be an unfounded rumor, but considering where I got the information, I don’t think that’s likely, and, in fact, I would be surprised if none of the family who had close contact were still asymptomatic.

    It’s still not panic time, but as you can see, the ‘authorities’ are definitely not putting all the information out there so people can make their own, informed, decisions.

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    1. It’s only 3 weeks and one day until an election that by all indications is going to be a disaster for the administration. I share your suspicion of the 0bamanauts, and have a very uneasy feeling they will incite a panic all over the nation as an excuse to call off the elections. Why did they send the infected NBC cameraman to Omaha, instead of Emory?

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      1. Because Omaha’s even further from anything the administration cares about, in case they can’t contain it.

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      2. This is the same sort of crap the Left wingnuts said Bush would do.

        If they even begin to try it, they will get *slaughtered* at the polls.

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        1. They COULD try it because a) they usually accuse you of what they want to do b) they’re crazy and don’t work from the real world.
          However, three weeks is rather close for that and also yeah. It would work about as well as Fast and furious worked for gun control, because see b.

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        2. Not just slaughtered in the polls, the Democrat brand will be tarnished for decades. They would be lucky to win dog catcher.

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          1. Nah, they wouldn’t be down all that long. A few years, sure. But beyond that? No.

            “Oh, it was the old Dems that did that. Not your new, pure and incorruptible (unlike his Republican opponent) Democratic candidate!”

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            1. After the Civil War Democrats were out of the White House for 20 years, and out of political power for a generation. And it’s not like the Democrat Party was directly involved in starting the war.

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              1. Yeah, but I doubt that they had today’s media spin cycle working in their favor like the modern-day Democrats have.

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          2. Sorry, I heard that the Demorate brand will be tarnished for decades when the McGovern campaign crashed and burned. It is not so simple.

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            1. I think that type of decade is counted in inverse dog-years — ten years of atonement being accomplished in one year of actual time. Republican failures are counted in the opposite manner, with ten years of actual time being required to expunge one year of atonement — which is why the GOP still bears the Joe McCarthy onus long after the Dems have shed their Gene McCarthy stench.

              Republican successes take even longer to expunge.

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            2. You have to admit there’s a bit of difference between running an unsuccessful campaign and attacking one of the bedrocks of the Republic.

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              1. Obama ran a successful campaign attacking the bedrocks of The Republic, if not Western Civilization.

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      4. And please remind those in the Right who said, “Let ’em have it; the people will learn their lesson when it gets REALLY bad.” That they uttered that witless assertion. Because it’s REALLY bad, and I’m seeing no evidence of lessons learned from the disastrous mistake of electing Obama President and giving the Democrats a majority in either house of Congress. (And remember, the downhill slide started in ought-seven, when the Democrats took a majority in BOTH houses.)

        M

        Liked by 1 person

    2. I’ve thought long and hard about how to answer this. I guess my first comment is that I wouldn’t take anything as fact or even close to it if you can’t be certain the person speaking is actually who he says he is. I would love to see a cite to the statement you’ve mentioned.

      But there is something else to be considered. If there were other patients suspected or confirmed with Ebola in the area, it would get out. A little bit of digging after I wrote this post — and I should have done it before but I’ve been under the weather — showed rumblings that Presby was monitoring its staff separately from the numbers reported by the County Health officials.

      As for not hearing anything from Duncan’s family, we have. There have been statements and at least one call from the girlfriend to a local media outlet, not to mention interviews with his son and a nephew who is out of state. The family also has a spokesperson in Washington who has been very vocal in alluding to upcoming litigation. There there was the visit by Jesse Jackson who also spoke with the family and then, on multiple occasions, with the press.

      Again, I would like to know where you are getting your information.I’m not saying it’s wrong but I am leery of it. I’ll admit, part of my doubt comes from my own knowledge of the Dallas medical culture and my own contacts in it.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Part of all of this has to do with compentence or suitablibity issues.
    For example. Before Dr. Thomas Frieden was the head of the CDC he was the New York City Health Commissioner who is chiefly noted for his work in banning public smoking, taxing tobacco, banning trans-fats and banning big gulp drinks. He is excellent in his ability to regulate and tax people which makes him ideal for the Obama administration. Controlling disease outbrakes, not so much.

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    1. Part of all of this has to do with compentence or suitablibity issues.
      For example. Before Dr. Thomas Frieden was the head of the CDC he was the New York City Health Commissioner who is chiefly noted for his work in banning public smoking, taxing tobacco, banning trans-fats and banning big gulp drinks. He is excellent in his ability to regulate and tax people which makes him ideal for the Obama administration. Controlling disease outbreaks, not so much.

      I knew there was a reason I was feeling panicky.

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      1. The tendency to hijack institutions for purposes other than their core mission, such as the CDC getting involved in the gun control debate, leeches off the cultural respect required for the institution address of its core duties.

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        1. The tendency to hijack institutions for purposes other than their core mission, such as the CDC getting involved in the gun control debate, leeches off the cultural respect required for the institution address of its core duties.

          Yup. Things that are almost necessary to trust become things of which it is almost necessary to treat with suspicion. This is bad.

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          1. It is as if they are as heedless of inflation devaluing institutions’ moral credit as they are of the devaluation of fiscal credit.

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  7. It isn’t just the list of lies over the last few years that erode trust. It goes back as far as you can research. The further we are from events the more and bigger the lies are that get revealed.
    I just sat and watched a TV series about the Roosevelts with my wife. The tried to be kind and soften it – but they lied over and over to the people. The said one thing and public while working behind the scenes on an entirely different agenda. Teddy LOVED war and gloried in it. If only he’d caught a round going up San Juan hill a lot of young American boys would have lived longer and had families and worked and improved things here instead of dying far away. If the Kaiser took Europe what was that to us? It would have made a world in which Hitler had no leverage to rise.
    The sad truth is the nut jobs rise to the top and we are ruled by sociopaths and narcissists. It doesn’t matter if you call them ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Mr. President’. No decent totally sane person wants the job.
    Take care of yourself, because the only reason the government takes care of you is the same self interest a farmer has in caring for his pigs.

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      1. But Wilson only won because Teddy didn’t like how Taft was running things and so started a third party, splitting the Republican vote.

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    2. That series was a total crock. I loved how they just skated over the big huge FDR conflict with Truman as VP and hence President of the Senate over the various hearings on war supply skulduggery; and FDR’s last act in public life, which was an attempt to blackmail a young Republican for some kind of homosexual affair, just so he could make the guy vote his way since Truman wouldn’t. The Republican shot himself rather than vote wrong, the entire Senate did a bipartisan censure vote against FDR, and the only thing that saved FDR’s reputation was that he died before the news got big outside of DC.

      And yes, this is exactly the story Allan Drury covered as a young reporter, and what he wrote Advise and Consent about (with some mix and match). I’ve probably recommended Drury’s Senate Diary before, but I’ll recommend it again. Your local public library probably has it in storage somewhere.

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      1. Indeed, FDR was a real scumbag among scumbags. T.R. had his character flaws but he had a fair amount of integrity for someone in political life.

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        1. TR had an ego but still there’s this story about him.

          Quote

          William Beebe, the naturalist, used to tell this story about Teddy Roosevelt. At Sagamore Hill, after an evening of talk, the two would go out on the lawn and search the skies for a certain spot of star-like light near the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then Roosevelt would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.”

          Then Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”

          End Quote

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        2. I think FDR was the only president to make racism the official policy of the Federal government. If he wasn’t the only one, he was certainly the most blatant. That and his destruction of the economy (creating the first Depression) certainly justify SPQR’s conclusion.

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          1. Woodrow Wilson was the one who praised Birth of a Nation and segragated Washingon D.C. I don’t know that FDR did anything to advance racism albeit he didn’t do much to fix it either. That required Eisenhower.

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            2. In 1920, FDR was the VP candidate for the Democrats, wherein the Dems ran the most blatantly racist campaign in the last century. Warren Harding thankfully won.

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            3. The pro-Union portions of the NRA were explicitly anti-black. Supporters openly stated in Congress that they were to keep blacks from getting jobs instead of whites. Hence, it’s being called the “Negro Run-Around”, “Negro Removal Act”, and “Negroes Robbed Again.”

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              1. The NRA was developed to aid the blacks in self defense after the Civil War. If you must spew unabashed progressive propaganda at least try to make it something not quite so blatant

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                  1. My apologies then. NRA is more commonly National Rifle association these days, and I have seen progressives spew exactly those things about the National Rifle association

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                2. The National Recovery Administration, not the National Rifle Association, was the FDR organization to which Mary referred.

                  The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was signed by newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 16, 1933. The new law created the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

                  The NRA began to work with businesses to establish the mandated codes for fair competition, which were to be exempt from the antitrust laws. Cooperation to this extent among competing businesses would ordinarily be prohibited. Industrial groups first submitted proposed codes to the president for his approval. The president was to approve the codes only if the submitting organization did not restrict membership and was representative of the industry and if the codes themselves promoted the policy of the act. Codes were to neither foster monopolies nor discriminate against small businesses. Once approved, the codes became legally enforceable standards for that trade or industry. Under section 3(c) of the act, federal district courts had jurisdiction over code violations, and U.S. district attorneys were given authority to seek court orders to compel violators to comply with the codes. Section 3(f) provided that any violation affecting interstate or foreign commerce was to be treated as a misdemeanor for which an offender could be fined not more than $500 for each offense; each day during which a violation occurred was to be regarded as a separate offense.

                  Under Section 7 (a), industry codes were required to include provisions for the protection of labor. Provisions for minimum wages and the right to collective bargaining were to increase workers’ deflated purchasing power, and limits on number of work hours were to increase employment by spreading the available hours of work among more employees. Section 7(a) also provided that an employee must not be required to join a company union or be prevented from joining any other union as a condition of employment.

                  Section 7(a) was to have such far-reaching consequences that some labor historians have called it the Magna Charta of the labor movement. Nationwide, union membership grew dramatically. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers, for example, doubled its membership from 60,000 to 120,000 between early 1933 and mid-1934. The United Mine Workers of America quadrupled its membership, from 100,000 to 400,000, less than a year after passage of NIRA.

                  Under the supervision of the NRA, several hundred industry codes were rapidly enacted, but public support soon diminished. The codes tended to increase efficiency and employment, improve wages and hours, prevent price cutting and unfair competition, and encourage collective bargaining. However, they also tended to raise prices and limit production. Businesses found the codes burdensome. More than 540 codes were promulgated, and it was not unusual for one business to be governed by several, or even several dozen, codes. The codes sometimes conflicted with each other, and businesses occasionally had to pay their workers different rates of pay at different times of the day. Moreover, labor was dissatisfied with the activities of the NRA regarding unions. Although it appears that Congress had intended Section 7(a) of NIRA to assist employees in self-organizing and in discouraging company unions, the NRA interpreted the section in a manner that favored neither labor nor management. Thus, although the NRA sought to ensure that the government protected workers from discrimination resulting from union membership, it did not actively seek to prohibit the creation of company unions, nor did it satisfy many in its efforts to protect the right of individuals not to be coerced into joining a union.
                  http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/eras/u-s-national-recovery-administration/

                  That is a very … generous description of FDR’s efforts at industrial planning. It did not last very long …

                  Three weeks before NIRA’s two-year expiration date, the Supreme Court unanimously declared it unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. 1570. The Court held that the act impermissibly delegated legislative power to the NRA and that the application of the act to commerce within the state of New York exceeded the powers granted to the federal government by the Commerce Clause.
                  op cit

                  … but its Blue Eagle can still be seen in period movies and building cornerstones.

                  See J Goldberg, Liberal Fascism for a fuller discussion.

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                    1. Burton W. Folsom, Jr. of Hillsdale College, also explores the matter in his book New Deal or Raw Deal:
                      In this groundbreaking text, economic historian Burton W. Folsom exposes the truth behind the legend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. With FDR’s questionable moral character and a vendetta against the business elite, his economic programs fostered inconsistent planning, wasteful spending, and opportunity for political gain, at a time when America needed an economic uplift. FDR used federal programs to win elections in swing districts, while manipulating public opinion of his administration. Folsom takes a critical, revisionist look at Roosevelt’s presidency, his economic policies, and his personal life.
                      http://www.burtfolsom.com/?page_id=4

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              2. The pro-Union portions of the NRA were explicitly anti-black.

                American English is a wonderful language that leads to wonderful irony.

                I’d rephrase it as “The pro-union portions of the National Recovery Act were explicitly anti-black”

                The pro-Union portions of the National Rifle Association were of course pro black.

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  8. The thing with restricting travel is not to guarantee we’ll stay disease-free. I agree that won’t happen. However, the fewer vectors we have and the more time we have between new vectors gives us time to prepare, and to blunt the speed of the spread. Sure people can get on different flights, but isn’t that what passports were supposed to handle? Why is it that the massive impediment of government regulations only seems to bother people who aren’t doing anything wrong?

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      1. “Screenings” are a sick joke. Questions — which will be answered with lies — and a temperature check — which even the pollyannas admit won’t mean anything if they’re not showing symptoms. A few days or weeks later, another Ebola patient zero.

        Quarantines work. Let’s start using them again.

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  9. From Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth series: Wizard’s First Rule: People are stupid. They will believe a thing because they want it to be true, or because they’re afraid it might be true.

    I’ve seen both in the Ebola issue. Reality, however, is rarely as good as you wish or as bad as you fear.

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  11. W.W. was President yes. But Roosevelt was one of the principle people who set the stage for war. He built up the navy and argued for war with Spain. His public and private stance was for the US in an Imperial role in the world. He took an actual plan for war to McKinley but was turned down. He mocked W.W. for advocating neutrality. I count him one of the main architects of conflict.

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    1. Having built a capable navy and argued for US intervention in the Great War AFTER it started hardly makes T.R. an “architect” of the conflict. You’d have to look at the Kaiser and various German civil and military bureaucrats, and Serbian assasins, for that.

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      1. While TR “enjoyed” war, it was more of him enjoying being in the Front Lines of war. During his Presidency, he didn’t start any wars.

        WWI was a big mess that was years in the making and it’s hard to say how TR helping in creating the mess.

        Did he want the US involved in WWI? Maybe but IMO German actions had more to do with the US getting involved in it than anything he might have done.

        Oh, anybody know if there’s truth in the story that TR wanted to personally fight in WWI?

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        1. Oh, anybody know if there’s truth in the story that TR wanted to personally fight in WWI?

          Yes he did. He offered to raise a regiment in the old American tradition, just as he did for the Spanish-American War, but the Wilson administration rejected this as the Army wanted to be in complete control of all formations’ training. The Wilson administration also did not want any other politicians involved in the war effort that were outside their control.

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          2. And I respect Theodore for that. Maybe his opinions and policies weren’t always that great (some of them I abhor) but at least he was willing to lead from the front and apply them to himself.

            Can you imagine Obama volunteering to serve on the front lines?

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            1. That willingness to lead from the front is why TR had a lot of respect from Americans, despite his willingness to subvert the constitution.

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        3. It should be recalled that TR brokered an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.

          We will avert our gaze from reports he did this by double-dealing the Tsar and promising Japan control of the Asian-Pacific coast.

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            1. And recall that the Tsar’s entire Baltic Fleet was rusting away on the bottom of Tsushima Strait at the point negotiations on ending the remaining savage trench warfare (yes, foreshadowing happens in real life too) around Mukden were underway. On land, the victorious Japanese had only stopped because they had taken too many casualties and were too exhausted for pursuit, while the Russian armies had ceased to exist, formations mostly shattered, the remaining troops mostly running madly northward as individuals. If the Japanese had been able to advance, the Russians had absolutely nothing available to stop them – Japan could have taken the Pacific coast all the way to the Arctic icecap..

              Tsar Nicholas II didn’t really have a choice.

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              1. I don’t know much about the Russo-Japanese War. But during World War I, which started less than a decade later, only about 1 man in 5 had a rifle on the front lines. And that state of affairs continued to exist through the end of the war. While things might not have been *that* bad during the Russo-Japanese War (there were a lot more men to equip in 1914), I suspect that the Russian army that fought against Japan wasn’t all that well equipped.

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              2. No, he didn’t but a few other times he went after the Turks and discovered a few years early that trenches and machine guns will beat élan and cool uniforms, or got sucked/suckered into the Balkans and almost got singed. He and Cousin Wilhelm both tended to stick hands into holes, but for different reasons. (If someone could have taken their personalities, put them in a blender, and given them back the results, I suspect the first fourteen years of the 20th century might have been less interesting, at least in that corner of the world. Maybe.)

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        4. His eldest son demonstrated the same elan with 1st Infantry in North Africa and with 4th Infantry in Normandy, TR III was the only general to land in the first wave.

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  12. Faced with a deadly virus, the NIH immediately jumps in to handle the vital task of assigning political blame. Because increasing dissension and distrust is step one in infectious disease control. I think they pencilled that one in when I wasn’t looking.

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  13. This has been a topic of discussion over on the Bar for a while now.
    Two things in particular come up.
    First, it’s my opinion that a contributing factor to Mr. Duncan’s death was the delay in getting him admitted and on full life support. And just why was such a mistake made by the hospital ER we must wonder. Anyone familiar with current conditions in the medical field know that hospital ERs, particularly in border states, have become in effect free clinics for the indigent and undocumented. Hospitals are required by law to provide medical treatment irregardless of legal status or ability to pay. They are also businesses that must turn a profit to survive.Thus ER personnel are under great pressure to move the non paying patients through the system as quickly and cheaply as possible. A “flu” patient is seen, given antivirals and antibiotics, and sent home to tough it out. And in the slam of overwork the ER failed to catch the West Africa connection, that at a time when no cases of Ebola had yet presented in the US. Terrible mistake, sure, but not all that surprising given typical ER conditions these days. Won’t say that the delay caused Mr. Duncan’s death, but it certainly didn’t help.
    A second interesting point concerns the issues of Ebola and panic. What happens if and when the disease presents itself in Mexico and Central America? The majority of the people in the region believe in their hearts in the exceptionalism of America, even if our own leaders do not. They know that their best possible course of action if exposed to Ebola would be to somehow get across the border and enter the US medical system. What exactly happens if we suddenly experience a tenfold increase in the flow of undocumented aliens across our ever so porous southern border. Think 50 or 60 thousand children was bad? Try half a million or more all over a couple of weeks.
    Note, this scenario does not require even a single actual case of Ebola, only that a sufficient number of people think they might be as risk and panic.
    And as I remarked over at the Bar, we really are living in interesting times in the traditional Chinese definition of that term.

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    1. Good point. I think it’s a legitimate case to make that Duncan didn’t die from ebola but from ObamaCare.

      Really, a Liberian with a 103 degree fever being sent back to his apartment complex with his relatives?

      Just another reason for feeling panicky.

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    2. Uncle Lar, there were a lot of contributing factors to Duncan’s death, including his not disclosing on his immigration form that he had been in contact with an Ebola patient (and I don’t buy for a moment the comment from the family spokesman that there had been no symptoms of Ebola in the woman before she died. That all her symptoms were attributable to her pregnancy.) He also didn’t make sure the ER staff understood where he had been and what the possibility might be — sorry, but if I’d been around Ebola and I was now not feeling well, I’d yell blood murder if the hospital wanted to just send me home.

      Presby has a lot to answer for, all the way around and with regard to both patients.

      But this is also a situation that was going to happen somewhere in the States at some point. Dallas just has the misfortune of being where it struck. And yes, we are well aware of what the possibilities may be when the disease hits Mexico and Central America. If we haven’t found a way to secure the border by then, we very well may be in a world of hurt.

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        1. Shortly before his death the government had announced that they were going to press charges against Duncan for lying on his re-entry papers.

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            1. The Liberian government had very good reason to wish to prosecute. If they are seen as unable to control it at their end they will likely find their nation put in quarantine. This is something that will make their fight to combat the disease all the harder. They are dependent on outside medical teams being able to come and go.

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      2. “That all her symptoms were attributable to her pregnancy.”

        I just finished reading an interview with an Ebola survivor, who got it from a pregnant woman. The woman arrived 5 months pregnant and BLEEDING FROM HER EYES, but the nurse wasn’t even considering ebola or anything other than pregnancy.

        SO, it is at least possible if extremely unlikely, that he honestly didn’t know. But that would be obviated if the hospital they attempted to take her to was in fact “an ebola treatment center” as has been reported.

        zuk

        (I’m on another browser, so I can’t post the link, but google long term prognosis ebola survivors.)

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        1. My understanding from reading the local papers is that they did take her to an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU), but were turned around because there weren’t any empty beds for patients.

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    4. Admittedly it has been 20+ years since I did any coursework on Accounting for hospitals (non-profit) but at the time such institutions were not allowed to track the costs of unremunerated services through such practical measures as setting up an “allowance for bad debt” account. This makes management of such costs surprisingly difficult.

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      1. Cost management I would agree with, but find it hard to imagine that any hospital does not know exactly where every pill, bandage, tongue depressor, etc. goes.
        Funny yet telling story. About 25-30 years ago we took youngest son to the ER with a puncture wound to his ankle. He slipped out of a hammock chair that he was swinging much too vigorously in and impacted a metal bracket.
        ER did an x-ray, cleaned the wound, made sure it wasn’t from us beating him, and turned him loose. Being a little daredevil, same old same old.
        The funny part was when the insurance company forwarded us the itemized bill. In addition to every service and medication there were two interesting line items. Seems they wanted us to pay for both a Pap smear and a Barium enema. On a 12 year old male child. Called the insurance and tried to get them to challenge the charges, but they chose to eat them instead. The Pap smear obviously was bogus, and had they given Dan the enema everyone in the hospital would have known about it immediately.

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        1. They made us pay for a cat scan on younger son — i.e. refused to remove it, sent it to collection, when we wanted to buy this house we had to pay $1500 for it. He never had it. Now, he should have had (He had hit his head badly) but they had a shooting at the other hospital, so they kept us there six hours, while other people came in, never did the scan and said “well, he’s not throwing up, just take him home.” The grandtotal they did for him was let him sit in an examination room and have a nurse look at his pupils. But they charged us 1500 for the privilege.

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      2. Admittedly it has been 20+ years since I did any coursework on Accounting for hospitals (non-profit) but at the time such institutions were not allowed to track the costs of unremunerated services through such practical measures as setting up an “allowance for bad debt” account. This makes management of such costs surprisingly difficult.

        It was almost like it was premeditated.

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  14. … or the number of piecemeal beheadings becomes such they have to go beyond “workplace violence” as an explanation.

    I am ready to believe that the incidents of beheading are not organized terrorism, but rather the effect of the version of a belief system that the adherents hold to, allowing them to justify their violence to eliminate that with which they disagree.

    For example, when a father beheads a daughter for dating someone he disapproves of, which happened locally, as a society we have to be ready to say, ‘We call that pre-meditated murder in the first degree,’ and not something covered by the First Amendment’s religious liberty clause.

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        1. Maybe I don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you saying that we should let “Honor” killings happen without consequence for the ones doing the killing?

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          1. Charles Napier, assigned to India, on being told of the Indian custom of Suttee (burning the widow on a man’s funeral pyre):

            “We too have a custom. Our custom is to hang people who burn women alive. So let them build their pyre and we’ll build our gallows and let each keep to his customs.” (From memory so a bit paraphrased.)

            My kind of multiculturalism.

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              1. The spirit of Runnymede, of the Interregnum, of The Somme, of the blitz is but a pale shadow in today’s Englishman. It may be dead altogether. This is the greatest son of socialism, it corrodes the soul and poisons the heart.

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                1. Sure, tell them the Moslems are forcing Britain’s daughters into prostitution and there’s no national outcry…

                  What if we told the British that they were French Moslems with designs on running England and taking away Pounds Sterling and replacing it with the Euro? :D

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          2. Napier’s comment goes something like “It’s your custom to burn widows. It’s our custom to hang people who burn widows. You can build the pier to burn widows and we’ll build a gallows to hang the burners. Thus we’ll both follow our customs.”. [Very Big Evil Grin]

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          3. Napier was a British officer know for saying more or less. Fine follow your customs, then we will follow ours and hang you
            A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:

            “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.” [5]

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        2. — ’m a big fan of Napier’s version of “multiculturalism”. (“Let each adhere to his customs.”) —

          That’s probably not best way of phrasing it. Really, he was saying if you keep your custom we are going to kill you.

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          2. Given the custom he was objecting to, I’m fine with that.

            Muslims can keep their bowing to Mecca 5 times a day, fasting during Ramadan, calling God “Allah” and whatever.

            What they cannot keep is the insistence that I either become Muslim or get my head cut off. The Dhimmi tax also has to go, as does that whole clitorectomy thing (and yes, I realize that’s not inherently muslim. Don’t care, stop it.)

            You want to leave some rice and fish in front of a statue of Buddha? Go head, as long as your kids eat first. You want to carry a dirk on a chain around your waist and wear a turbin? Have at it. A kilt and a dirk? Just wear but something between your ass and the chair in public.

            But when you want to force/kill others who won’t fit it? Yeah, Houston, we have a problem.

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            1. What they cannot keep is the insistence that I either become Muslim or get my head cut off. The Dhimmi tax also has to go, as does that whole clitorectomy thing (and yes, I realize that’s not inherently muslim. Don’t care, stop it.)

              Or a girl wearing jogging shorts is a justification for rape. Just about all those on the left conflate fighting over values (a necessity) with fighting over theology (which is against my values to do i.e. I think you are suppose to fight people who want to fight about theology).

              Leftist who aren’t evil are stupid. The two words pretty much cover the entire set of progressivism.

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  15. Definitely not the time to panic. I’m here, in Monrovia, and not panicked. What worries me is the mistrust in the USG. Even if they are 100% right in what they’re saying about Ebola not spreading easily, and that appropriate measures are being taken, the lack of trust is what will get us. It’s similar to the lack of trust Liberians have in their own government, which caused the outbreak to turn into an epidemic. Early on, I was hearing that “Ebola isn’t really in Liberia, it’s just a way for the government to milk the donors for more money.” Had they believed the evidence (hello, dead people), it might not have gotten this bad. Still, there are places in the country that don’t believe there’s actually an Ebola epidemic.

    So no, don’t panic. Question, be skeptical of what officialdom tells you, but if what they say comports with the science, maybe it would be a good idea to listen.

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      1. Remember, though, here it is the opposite of LIberia.

        There, people didn’t believe them when they said there was a problem.

        Here, people are not believing them when they say there is no problem.

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        1. I was thinking something similar. The people who panic will be likely to stay home and only go out to buy groceries.

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          1. I was thinking something similar. The people who panic will be likely to stay home and only go out to buy groceries.

            Or even stay home entirely and use the stuff they’ve had stockpiled since Y2K.

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            1. That might not be so bad. If they’ve had that stuff since Y2K, then it’s probably about time to rotate it out anyway…

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        2. Yes, I get the difference. The point I was trying to make is not to let inherent distrust of authority cloud your ability to see the reality around you. (Dis)trust but verify.

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    3. The mistrust is fed and nurtured for political reasons by both sides – The trufers after 9/11 and the birfers after The Rise Of the O are two examples that were at least tacitly encouraged by one side or the other, but it goes back a lot further. But when part of the normal contention of the political process comes to hinge on unhinged arguments, all that’s left in their wake are a few more bricks in the wall of mistrust building up between the people and the government of, by, and for the people.

      And those bricks are not just imaginary. Dept. of Education SWAT teams, not just as a bureaucratic trophy, but actually deployed for Student Loan investigations; Rural sheriff MRAP and M-16 distributions; Fast and Furious; and all the rest, each adding one more brick.

      All of this moves people to revert back to what they can trust – family, extended family, community, and basically what they can see with their own eyes. And then, when the Trust Society that many including John Ringo have written about is shattered, we really will be no better off than East Fumbuckistan, with family trumping clan and clan trumping neighbor.

      We need some of those in positions of power and influence to make an effort to earn back that trust, to build up the connection between government and people, to tear down my metaphorical wall, Mr. Gorbachev. Or at least to take a brick off now and then.

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      1. You’ve put your finger on one of the things which has most annoyed me about the Progs: their willingness to burn down the house. Time and again, when caught with their fingers in the cookie jar and chocolate chips all over their face they have “defended” themselves by discrediting our (mot their — we know what they would substitute in its place) political system, braying “you’re just as bad” (but notice they never excuse us) and “everybody lies about sex” (everybody lies about how many drinks they’ve had, how fast they were driving and what their income is, but they don’t get DUIs, speeding tickets and tax liens dismissed.)

        Their goal is a) to get away with criminality, venality and banality and b) to strip legitimacy from our system, playing dog in the manger and delegitimizing all politics.

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        1. “(everybody lies about how many drinks they’ve had, how fast they were driving and what their income is, but they don’t get DUIs, speeding tickets and tax liens dismissed.)”

          Unless of course, you are a Democrat politician.

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        2. He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one. — Edmund Burke

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  16. As noted in the essay, this is not West Africa. We don’t defecate in the streets (well, 99.99% of us don’t), we don’t eat fruit bats or monkeys (often).

    To avoid contracting ebola:

    1) Don’t vacation in West Africa.
    2) Wash your hands often.
    3) If you feel unwell, stay home.
    4) Do not eat fruitbats.
    5) Do not fondle the dead.

    This is a first world country with (generally) first world sanitation. If you normally do things like smoke meth or share needles, have unprotected sex with prostitutes etc. you were going to get fuxored anyway. Otherwise staying away from people who do these sorts of things will take you a LONG way towards avoiding Ebola as well.

    That is MUCH more concerning to me (as a father of a young girl) is the Entrovirus D68.

    I suspect that at least part of the reason the media is circus’d up around Ebola is that people are *also* dying from D68, and that someone (son of journolist?) wants cover fire so that people don’t ask *why* there’s such a strong correlation between cities where lots of the child army of the Central Americas were placed, and the D68 outbreaks. And the re-introduction of TB. And the whooping cough, aided and abetted by the anti-science progressives.

    Or maybe my tinfoil hat needs replacement/readjusting.

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    1. The mind-control rays have been turned up lately. You need to add layers, because they’re leaking through. :-)

      I use Copper, myself, because it is more conductive, so it blocks better. Plus, you can hammer it into a neat helmet shape and pretend you’re a Roman soldier or something.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Campaign hats. It’s the shape of the hat, you see, it naturally deflects the rays. On top of which the wide brim keeps the harmful rays of the sun at bay, and it works excellent as a rain hat….

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      4. “You need to add layers, because they’re leaking through.”

        Multiple layers have always been necessary for proper protection.

        At the minimum, you need one layer with the shiny side out, to deflect the mind control rays, and another layer with the shiny side in to block the mind reading rays.

        I know this is true because I read it on the internet.

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        1. I thought the layer with shiny side in was to reflect any stray thoughts you had back in; so you didn’t lose them.

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        1. Same thing I have against people who share needles, engage in indiscriminate sex with *lots* of partners (I’m not talking about a new *friend every 6 months, I’m talking 1 or more partners a day, or sex clubs etc), kitchen workers who don’t wash their hands, and fleas.

          Which is to say “disease vectors”.

          Besides, it’s double plus un-good icky.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. My generation doesn’t cuddle vampires. We kill them.

            The only time they sparkle is when the flamethrower gets used.

            A question came up this weekend, and it’s probably more appropriate on Corriea’s blog, but if you were to make a sabot round for a 12 gauge consisting basically of toothpicks in a soft metal sabot (silver?), would that count as staking a vampire? Just how long does the stake have to be anyway…

            (The IDPA match up in Idaho Springs had a Zombie and Vampire stage. I was happy with my shooting on the first 3 stages–only dropped one point. Fourth stage I lost my f*ing mind…)

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            1. O believe the best authorities indicate the stake must extend through the chest and heart — no rules on whether it is front or back of chest, nor how far through the hear, but opening the heart interior to the body exterior seems to be the standard. I do not believe any authoritative studies have been performed on what minimum diameters are required. Surprisingly little testing on this important topic has been performed, so you might want to start writing those research grant proposals. (If they will spend a half million dollars on why obese girls are less sexually active, why not on staking standards for vampires?)

              My guess would be to that those skewers used for Yakitori (焼き鳥, やきとり, ヤキトリ) would be sufficiently long and pointy for flechette-type rounds, although if you are concerned about cross section you could always use 1/4-inch dowel with either a sharpened end or a mounted point. Environmental conditions being appropriate, perhaps a tip made of frozen holy water would work.

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              1. Considering the cases where Vampires have been “revived” after the stake has been removed from its heart, I believe any wooden round that penetrates the heart but also exits the heart is counter-productive.

                Still, I agree that more research is needed.

                Of course, there’s the problem of keeping the Vampire captive in order that the tests can be run.

                For some unknown reason, Vampires dislike being used as test subjects. [Grin]

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                1. Oh yeah, shooting through the chest is contraindicated. Some form of block on the butt of the piercing shaft is clearly in order, perhaps a conical disk that deploys umbrella-like as it rams the chest.

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                  1. I question whether vampires can have “human” rights; better to avoid offense by terming them “civil” rights.

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                    1. There are Vampires that are a separate species than humans (ie they mate and have children) so “civil” rights would be a better term than “human” rights.

                      On the other hand, there are the “undead” Vampires who are the result of a human being infected by another vampire and became a vampire after their body definitely died.

                      These types often don’t breathe or have heart beats so until we capture them in order to see if they have brain activity, we may considering them legally dead and thus lacking “rights”.

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                    3. Yes and No. The Dead only have the Right to Vote for the “Proper” Party. [Very Very Very Big Grin]

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          3. I suggest you re-read Brave New World, the Leftist Manifesto. He had a different take on things, and on where this is going. Plus that news story about some Marxist campus in the US declaring that men withholding sex from women is a form of sexual violence.

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    3. YOU can follow those 5 rules, but you can’t be sure that anyone else will…. and that is the problem.

      The cashier who coughs in his hand, then gives you back your credit card, the traveler who slid his hand down the handrail just before you, the neighbor who power washes sidewalks at apartment complexes with high immigrant populations, etc can ALL kill you dead. And you will never know that the customer before you popped in to get some tylenol for his headache and fever, the traveler just buried his nephew in Ghana, and the handyman unblocked the toilet of someone who just arrived back from his oil company business trip to Lagos.

      None of those scenarios count on a malicious actor either. CDC tracking and containment count on good faith and honesty with self reporting from the victims. Put a malicious actor or a fearful illegal immigrant, or a wanted criminal in any of those situations, and you could easily have an outbreak one generation removed. One that has patients showing up that “CAN’T” really be presenting with ebola because they haven’t traveled to africa or had contact with anyone (to their knowledge) that was sick.

      And as for the apparent LIE that ebola is hard to catch, well, just ask the trained, gowned, supervised nurse who got it from “a breach in protocol.” We’re talking about accidentally touching your face while removing her protective gear, not guzzling body fluids. Or the hair splitting ‘legalese’ of it not being “airborne” but you can get it from airborne droplets like a cough or sneeze. Every time there is a press conference, they change their tune. They went from “can’t happen here” to “we’ll stop it cold” to “of course we knew there were likely to be additional cases” pretty damn fast. By that rate, they’ll be at “we always considered that we would have to use a fuel air bomb on a major city” in just a couple of more weeks…

      See my comment below for how I’m approaching this. I’m all for “an over-abundance of caution” on this one.

      zuk

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      1. Ebola is hard to catch, as long as you keep someone else’s bodily fluids off of you. Get infected fluids on you and your odds go down quick.

        thinking about it, I’d be willing to bet that the nurse in question wears glasses. Adjusting glasses is right up there with scratching noses as a cause of people mindlessly touching things they shouldn’t.

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        3. Which brings us to another useful set of rules to prevent the spread of Ebola (posted here for anyone who knows low information voters:
          “Clyde, tonight you’re going to meet a lady, so no burping, farting, picking your nose or scratching your a**.”
          -Clint Eastwood, Every Which Way But Loose

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        4. She was doing suctioning of fluids; Toilet Bowl Effect sent the stuff up in the air, kind of like a sneeze, according to… I think it was NPR.

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  17. Amanda | You are probably right about lawsuits.
    A year ago, I had to go to a ER in Dallas, not Presby, and I expected that it would be full of no-pays, so I grabbed a sport coat on the way out the door. Got me in treatment in less than a minute, got to play the game.

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    1. In 2005 I managed to get on an airline after losing my ID in Seattle by pretty much the same tactic. I had a bunch of supporting documents with me that had consistent names on them, which helped.

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  18. What I don’t see people here particularly considering is the effect this is going to have on our hospitals that aren’t set up to deal with patients with Ebola class disease (there’s only 4 of those in the nation, with a grand total of 23 beds). Note how the perhaps future Dallas Ebola Magnet Hospital of Excellence had to close down its ER, not a small thing for a major hospital with nearly a 1,000 beds. And of course so far 1 of the health care workers treating Ebola Tourist #1 has contracted it, but don’t worry, the head of the CDC assures us it was her fault.

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  19. What scares me is the chance that it could get into the illegal population, and then into Mexico– especially right now, with activists giving an extra push that means even the very sick are getting up here, which means that there’s folks who are more vulnerable…..

    If that was going to happen in the Texas case, though, I think we’d have seen some poor SOBs showing up in isolation instead of the nurse.

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    1. Duncan came in legally, albeit he most probably lied on some official paperwork about recent contacts. Thus, his arrival involved a trip lasting about 24 hours. Illegal routes into the US are a bit more convoluted, which does work to our advantage as anyone exposed who takes more that the incubation period to gain entry would most likely die along the way. Once it presents Ebola is a very nasty and harsh disease that quickly incapacitates its victims.
      Personally, I’d like to see anyone coming through customs with a passport stamped by any West African nation placed in quarantine for 21 days. End of that period without developing the disease and you’re free to go. Anyone, and that includes US citizens. Seems a small price to pay to protect the rest of us. And as a taxpayer I’d not mind footing the bill for reasonably comfortable quarantine, say a cruise ship or resort setting, as long as access was tightly controlled. I’d even say provide full communications, phone, internet, etc. and treat the quarantine period as a duty and a service by those forced to enter.
      The illegal issue is troubling, though as I pointed out it tends to deselect based on the nature of Ebola specifically. It’s the other more communicable if less virulent diseases that concern me even more, particularly those apparently introduced by the recent influx of minors, and spread by the decision of our administration to distribute them “fairly” throughout the country.

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      2. Some of the folks who have been caught coming here illegally from infected areas took less than two weeks, let alone three.

        And honestly, folks infecting South America with Ebola and making it a constant source of issues is what worries me. The US can control issues; down there…..

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        1. And honestly, folks infecting South America with Ebola and making it a constant source of issues is what worries me. The US can control issues; down there…..

          Thanks for putting that one in my mind.

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        3. The good news is that the suspected animal reservoir is confined to the Old World. The bad news is that nobody knows if there’s a New World species capable of carrying the virus.

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      4. “And as a taxpayer I’d not mind footing the bill for reasonably comfortable quarantine, say a cruise ship or resort setting, as long as access was tightly controlled. I’d even say provide full communications, phone, internet, etc. and treat the quarantine period as a duty and a service by those forced to enter.”

        You’re the first I’ve seen willing to put up tax dollars to support a quarantine. Thank you. Most who say “quarantine the lot” don’t think through that extra step.

        Can you tell this hits close to home?

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        1. Why should taxpayers subsidize the travel of others? Quarantine is just another cost of travel, like fuel, wages, and depreciation of the vehicle. When quarantine was normal practice, this was clearly understood: you’d be on board ship near your destination port for however many days, on YOUR dime.

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          1. Because it is not just a cost of travel, not yet. Until a quarantine stay becomes routine, something people can prepare for and that is calculated into airline tickets, (visa fees?), and so on, then someone else needs to cover the cost. I’d chip in – take the portion of my income tax that is being sent to HUD and the National Foundation for the Arts and use it to pay for the ships, medical personnel, and so on, please.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Ditto this. If quarantine becomes routine, then yes, you can plan for it. As of right now, if I were to get on a plane (probably Monrovia-Casablanca-Madrid-JFK), where would you quarantine me? On the plane I came in on? Would you build a holding facility using public health funds?

              Seriously, I’m not necessarily opposed to quarantine (if done right), but it’s a more vexed problem than “just put them somewhere.”

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              1. Why I mentioned cruise ships. Several were called into service as temporary housing for Katrina refugees if I recall correctly.
                Someone raised the question in another forum on what it would take to reactivate Ellis Island. Likely more cost effective to start from scratch as that facility has been abandoned in place for many a year now.
                Or, again back to post Katrina, FEMA trailer parks. Basic housing, easy to set up in an isolated area, and best case we’re not talking hundreds of thousands here, but more likely a few hundred to a couple thousand, and that for well under a month at a time.
                As to your first question, the US would quarantine you at our point of entry, the place where US customs welcomes you to the country. Prior to that you’re a passenger in transit subject to airline regulations and international law. Cross through the POE and our rules apply.

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            2. Do you travel without planning for unexpected expenses?
              The fact that you’re willing to foot the bill is a great argument for you starting a Foundation for Aid to Indigent Quarantees. But is it not a justification for you to take the money belonging to others to spend it on that purpose. “Someone else needs to cover the cost” — baloney? On what principle?

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              2. On the principle that this isn’t an inherent cost of travel, like fuel and food, but one imposed by the will of government and enforced by the force of government. We don’t charge prisoners rent on the cells.

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                1. Taxes on the ticket and fuel aren’t inherent either by that definition, but you pay for them nonetheless.
                  And it would make perfect sense to take the cost of incarceration out of the felon’s assets (if any).

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                2. My local court does charge rent on jail cells. Prisoners have the per diem fee added to their fines and court costs. Those who are released do not get off probation until after all fees have been paid. It is a major money maker for the local system. Folks with money pay their fines and don’t have to keep reporting to a probation officer. Folks without money have to keep showing up every month until all the fees have been paid.

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                3. I know Lewis County Washington does (as of seventeen years ago it was fifty dollars a day) in fact charge ‘rent’ on people put in jail. I’m not sure, but I doubt they are the only county in the US that does so.

                  Of course the only ones that are going to bother to pay are those that wish to actually straighten up and be law abiding citizens. The deadbeats and career criminals aren’t paying the fines they already have (often why the deadbeats are in jail in the first place) there is no reason to expect that they will pay any new charges levied against them.

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  20. I’d be happy to make an argument that now is the time to panic depending on the meaning of panic. Certainly a time for redoubled efforts There is after all mid-term election coming up.

    Speaking of the Iberian Peninsula there is a case that Spanish Flu might more properly be called Fort Riley Flu. The Wilson administration had uses for the military and so priorities other than preventing a pandemic. There’s a clue there.

    Like most people I’ve got family members who died of the flu in 1919.

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    1. Weirdly, I don’t. The only person I know caught it was great grandma, while pregnant with grandma (though it’s POSSIBLE her husband died from it, since he died when she was three months gone. They put it down as “consumption” but in those days who the heck knew, and it was apparently sudden.) Both grandma and great grandma survived (natch.)

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      1. Well, and if they got the flu but not the follow-on infection, most people did OK. I don’t have Barry’s _Influenza_ at hand, but IIRC he points out that the secondary infection was what made the 1918 strain so deadly.

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        1. That and it appeared to cause the immune system to attack the body. Which was why there were disproportionate deaths among the young and seemingly healthy. The 1918 flu was odd in many ways.

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          1. I have heard that, but I have also heard that it was probably mutation of a previous influenza that the younger cohort had not been exposed to, and had no resistance

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            1. I saw a documentary on the Spanish Flu some years ago. Among the things it discussed was the belief that the particular influenza flourished in the deep lung, which is why young through middle aged active adults were so hard hit. While I am not sure of the actual likelihood, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

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          2. Young but not too young. Kids often escaped, too. My grandmother was the only ambulatory member of her family because she was the youngest.

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    2. DD Eisenhower was a young Major who defied orders from Washington and implemented procedures at the training camp he commanded near Gettysburg that stopped the flu epidemic there. It was so successful that other camps also defied orders and implemented the same.

      I think more than anything else, this got him on Marshall’s list of effective commanders he used so effectively in WW2

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    3. I’ve read that the reason why it’s called the “Spanish Flu” was because Spain was the only country that didn’t attempt to censor the news regarding it. The other countries that it rampaged through were all fighting World War I at the time, and the censors decided that large numbers of deaths due to disease would be bad for morale. Spain didn’t have to worry about that, so most people first really heard about it in stories about that country.

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    4. I might have, but the only family Spanish flu story I’ve got was the one about my great-grandmother and grandmother. The mother didn’t like letting other people in her kitchen. Even her daughters. As a consequence, her daughter, the youngest, knew how to cook oatmeal (fortunately) but nothing else when the flu struck — and she was the only ambulatory family member.

      They all survived, albeit thoroughly sick of oatmeal.

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  21. When my Daddy and Momma were growing up there were any number of illnesses that resulted in a household where it appeared being put under quarantine.

    Most of us are too young to remember the 1952 outbreak of polio, considered to have been one of the worst this country suffered, which lead to wide spread quarantine in the United States.

    Many of us will not remember the original outbreak of legionnaires disease in 1976 and the panic that ensued until the cause was identified early in the 1977.

    Some are too young to remember the nearly two years between the recognition of an outbreak of symptoms (1981) and the identification of the two viruses that cause AIDS.

    One reason we are likely to see panic with Ebola is that we, as a nation, simply are so spoiled that we no longer are accustomed to the idea of using quarantine, seeing it as a punishment for those who are put under it and not a tool of control the outbreak.

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    1. I was in grade school, but I remember how excited my parents were when my brother and I got our Saulk polio vaccinations. I was not, I hated getting shots. And then a year or so later our entire town lined up at the other local grade school (more centrally located than mine, newer, and bigger) to receive a blue colored sugar cube with the Sabin oral vaccine.
      So I do remember all those events you mention. All with their own version of FUD, but much subdued panic as back then we didn’t have the 24/7 news cycle to spin us up. Mostly it was articles in the newspaper and the six o’clock news, and newscasters actively trying to keep folks calm.

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      1. I grew up in a world of clean water, reliable indoor plumbing, vaccines and antibiotics. Children suffering long term effects or dying from the standard childhood illness was believed a thing of the past. I remember both rounds of polio vaccinations. At the time I really had no understanding of why my parents were so relieved.

        Momma, whose father was a doctor, told the story of the whole family being thrown out of their living space when she contracted polio. That just seemed silly to me as a child. Daddy had everything in his room burned, including his favorite books and toys when he had scarlet fever. As a child I saw that as curious and as a personal tragedy. It was only once I was older that I began to understand the underlying reasons.

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        1. Toward the end of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, the titular character is thrown out after its owner comes down with fever. When I was young, I understood the idea of the toy rabbit somehow becoming contagious, but I always thought throwing it out was a rather extreme reaction to the boy getting sick.

          Nowadays, of course, I have a somewhat better understanding of what the story was referring to.

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  22. I just keep shaking my head and thinking that if you tried to write this as a novel, between the patient slipping into the US, to the problem in the charting software (which happens to come from a company owned by a major political donor to the party in power), to social activists leaping in to push their agenda, to the administration saying over and over “OK, so someone got in. Don’t worry,” to “It’s only transmitted by X so don’t worry” to “OK, so it is transmitted by X and Y but don’t worry,” no editor would touch the thing.

    The rich thing about JJ and company is that they’ve told immigrants from Africa that they are not really African-Americans to they don’t belong in the “movement” (and in one case shouldn’t participate in a medical screening program for a certain type of [IIRC] cancer that is relatively common in males of recent [as in last 400 years] descent).

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    2. So, what you’re saying is that reality is like indie publishing.

      And apropos of nothing in particular I have to say that my two very favorite African Americans are Peter Grant and Charlize Theron.

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  23. In terms of panic, I wanted to post this photo, which I took at my local hospital shortly before my son was born. See, this hospital had a suspected Ebola case, slapped the person into isolation, and reported on it… which meant that the locals panicked a bit and they had to bring in some law enforcement to be in the parking lot to calm the situation. They had this sign up for a day or two, during which I had an appointment… so I had to take a picture for posterity. (You know, “When you were born we had to worry about Ebola, in the snow, uphill both ways.”) Of course, that case came to nothing, but it was treated properly, so of course it wasn’t more than a blip in the news.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Wait, you’re in South Sac? What part, if you don’t mind my asking? I lived several years in the Rosemont area, near Watt and Folsom, and the Oyster Wife is from Antelope. I still have friends and family back there, though we’ve gotten most of them out now.

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  24. How to handle transportation of potential ebola patients . . .

    OK. Friday and lapping into Saturday, I had one of those fun experiences involving ambulances and a whole lot of sit and wait in the ER. Just an ordinary Friday afternoon, and they had to send an ambulance from the third nearest spot, due to a lack of more ambulances.

    (1) You just can’t have every person with a fever getting ambulanced to a hospital. If they can drive, or better yet, someone already exposed to them can drive them, they need to do that. The infrastructure just isn’t there.

    (2) I’m really glad that among all the other stress, I didn’t have to worry that my husband might have just spent several hours in an ambulance (stuck in traffic, not a life threatening injury, so no siren) that was _probably_ properly decontaminated after transporting an ebola patient.

    (3) There are a pot load of people who are not potential ebola cases, who can not _not_ go to an emergency room. I saw a bunch of them Friday night.

    (4) _IF_ ebola gets any momentum, I think the solution may be to first set up and staff a hotline and advertize the hell out of it, so people can call, get instructions, get directions about where to go. I think we need screening clinics, fairly widespread, to hopefully do a better screening job before sending on the higher risk cases to a hospital.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Now is not the time to panic. Does that mean there is a time to panic? Will there be an official announcement? I imagine somebody walking up to a podium, “At this time you should panic, please begin running in circles screaming, and we have a lovely selection of flammable hair gel in the gift shop”.

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  26. Rather than transport Ebola patients to regional treatment centers, I think it would make more sense to set up regional response teams. If a doctor gets a suspected case, they call call in for advice and recommendations. If the case becomes confirmed, the team travels to the hospital with a MASH-style containment unit in a box (maybe get National Guard support for airlift to really out of the way spots) and take over. The team stays in isolation until three weeks after their last patient.

    One thing that can be implemented rather quickly is to borrow a page from the radiological controls world. Whenever someone is in the room with the patient, or in the doffing area, there is someone trained in the protocols, preferably not a doctor or nurse, whose sole job is to monitor the treatment team for protocol violations. This person would have near-absolute authority, if she said you scratched your nose with gloves on you immediately stop what you are doing and get the area decontaminated.

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          1. Oh, he is. He’s laying on a blanket next to me right now, cooing and giggling to himself and grinning like a toothless Cheshire Cat whenever someone looks at him, which is his usual pastime. Happiest baby we’ve had, by far, and the other three were easy themselves. A blessing indeed in trying times.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. Your mention of radiological controls made me think of NBC warfare. We have units both active and guard that specialize in biological warfare defense. It would make an uncanny amount of sense to begin their mobilization.

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      1. *briefly channeling the POTUS* Why? I sent the 82nd Airborn to West Africa already. *quits channeling POTUS, goes to get get stiff drink*

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        1. You cut off too soon! If you’d just channeled POTUS for a couple of minutes longer, you could have caught him shouting, “Fore!”

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        3. So we have found out that POTUS is willing to put troops in harms way, just not to do a job they are particularly trained to do.

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          1. Well, duh. Whenever has the Left been in the least reluctant to deploy troops as long as it can’t help the USA?

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      2. There’s a bit of difference between military response and civilian requirements. The major portion of my job right now is convincing sailors that Radcon in San Diego Bay must be a bit different from Radcon in the middle of the Pacific.

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        1. Of course there’s a difference, and a big one too. My point was mobilization takes time. Starting now would have them already to go if and when we’ll need them. If they’re not needed, it’s good training. Looking into putting the mothballed hospital ships back into commission might not be a bad idea either.

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  27. Now is NOT the time to panic, now it the time to PREPARE.

    Think of this as a hurricane/winter storm/polar vortex. I’m in hurricane country, so that is what I’ll use.

    There is a storm brewing in the atlantic- so you start paying attention to the news. You monitor its size and direction to see if it will affect you, Florida, Cuba, or New York.

    —Done. We’re past this stage.

    As it moves toward you, you look at the storm track and predictions. You don’t know where exactly it is headed. You don’t know what its strength will be, or when exactly it will hit, or if it might die down.

    –Current stage. NOW is the time to get the material to board up your windows. Now is the time to check your water and other stores. Now is the time to fill your gas cans and propane bottles. Test your generator. Change the oil. Keep the cars topped up. Top up your other disaster kit supplies.

    As the predictions increase in accuracy and landfall looks likely, escalate your preparation, or stand down as appropriate.

    —Coming Soon. NOW panic starts in others. Bottled water, bread, canned goods disappear from shelves. (BUT YOU’VE ALREADY GOT YOURS.) Time to put the lawn furniture away. Trim tree branches. Load some supplies into your vehicle in case you need to leave in a hurry. If you have time, stock up on fresh and frozen food- you’ve got a freezer/fridge, geni, and fuel. Closely monitor primary sources. Decide what will trigger your decision to stay or go. EXECUTE IF THE TRIGGER IS MET.

    Landfall is imminent, evacuation orders are given, it’s gonna be a big one, and it WILL hit.

    —Coming soon plus one. Panic in full swing. Fistfights in empty stores and gas lines. Stores closing and rationing. Primary evacuation routes clogged and useless. Civil services already strained or unavailable. You are already gone, based on meeting your predetermined trigger point. You secured your property, and took your loaded vehicle, and left by your planned and tested alternate route. You have a specific destination in mind, and have already made arrangements for your arrival. OR you have decided to ride it out (or had that decision made for you by circumstances). You put up the window covers, get the self defense tools out and handy. Your repair supplies are at hand, as are alternative light, heat, and food prep resources. You have filled additional water storage (bathtubs). You know your neighbors’ plans, who left, who stayed. You continue to monitor primary sources (skywarn, public service radio, etc) and media.

    Storm HITS. You and your family are outside the affected area due to your early and expeditious departure. Whew. Wait and see when you can go back. Face the fact that might be NEVER or a long time. You do have assets available outside the affected area, resources for help, and enough to sustain you and yours in the short term. OR You stayed in your house, secure, quiet, hidden, thru the storm. You emerge to assess the damage and begin repairs. You check with neighbors, and help where you can. Adjust to your new (temporary) life in the disaster area. Live calmly, and safely, off your stored preps. Assess whether you will be able to continue, how long the recovery will take, etc. Act accordingly.

    Others are not so prepared but survived anyway. As they emerge in stunned, subdued, dazed condition, they slowly begin to realize how badly they are F’d. If normal services and relief supplies are not available quickly, they begin to gather in small groups, then larger groups. Criminals and opportunist begin to look around and act out. Groups begin to drift around, at first purposelessly but later with increasing desperation. HOPEFULLY, outsiders and pre-positioned local relief efforts start and defuse the growing discord and violence. If not, you and your like minded neighbors better cowboy up.

    Folks, I have seen this play out in just this way with my own eyes during hurricanes Rita and Ike, as well as the ones that didn’t amount to anything. I am treating ebola in Dallas exactly as I would a hurricane forming in the Gulf. Some of the specific preparations are different (I am not planning to board up the windows, I’d need to see local rioting or be under military quarantine to do that) but it is a storm brewing. If this one peters out before it makes landfall, I’ll breath a sigh of relief and be better prepared for the next one. There will be a next one. If it gets worse, it will get worse RAPIDLY both due to the nature of the disease and HUMAN nature.

    So don’t wait. Take this opportunity to prepare if you haven’t already. Use this time, and DON’T end up like the people I saw, fighting over the last bottled water in the store–while water was still coming freely out of the taps.

    zuk

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  28. Think about what was written up top, which was along the lines of ‘So some people died because of the Entrovirus, we’ve had worse.’
    Think about that line a moment.

    NONE of those people would be dead if the Government hadn’t let the sick people in, in violation of the law. We shouldn’t accept it because we’ve seen worse.

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    1. I’m not sure the entovirus came from abroad. It might be a home evolved version. It’s been here, in a milder form, since the sixties.
      Of course the problem is we don’t KNOW and no one is answering our questions, either.

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  29. If that is minor, maybe I can see why Sarah sometimes has trouble with too many projects.

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  31. We most certainly CAN keep people from the hot zones out of the US, even if they fly to a third country first. Every plane bound for the US has to submit a manifest, including the names and countries of origin of all the passengers, before they take off. The airlines know the country of origin of every passenger; tell the airline we won’t let a plane with a passenger from the hot zone land, and the airlines won’t carry them.

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      1. Wasn’t that nationals? Much more difficult if someone could have swung through the regions from his country of origin to the country where he takes flight.

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  32. Most of the complaints about Presby not being forthright with information can be directly tied to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
    There is a very limited amount of information that Presby can share without violating HIPAA. Anything that could publicly identify a person with a medical condition is illegal. In this case, the information you want would start at a $50,000 fine per count. (And each incident can easily rack up multiple counts.) Up to a maximum of $1,500,000 per incident.

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    1. Which is exactly why the hospital would not give out the patient’s name or even his gender during their early news statements. Only after government entities let the details out did the hospital somewhat relax, but really not all that much.

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    2. You are correct where the patient’s name and personal information is concerned. However, HIPAA doesn’t prevent Presby from detailing how many employees were involved in the treatment of Duncan nor does it prevent them from sharing that information with the County Health Agency or with CDC or even, for that matter, with the public.

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  35. It’s interesting that I posted two similar articles a little over a week ago, when the news first came out about Eric Duncan. I aired the same concerns about whether we could trust our government when it’s shown time and again its incompetence (in one I compared it to John Ringo’s fictional Warrick Administration), and which has systematically lied to us about other important things. And I tried to get across similar ideas about getting prepared but not panicking, putting together the basic supplies you’d need to keep going if things got bad enough to disrupt travel or commercial supply lines along the line of the nationwide quarantine in Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders.

    Yes, I’m worried — but right now my biggest concern is that the current Administration’s policies will actively worsen the situation by creating distrust in the official information sources, to the point people start believing whatever rumors they hear and do things that are actively counterproductive, on top of the Administration’s bungled response.

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  36. Of course it is the appropriate time to panic.

    This will either blow over without mass death in the first world, or the survivors will have a good grasp of symptoms and communicability.

    I’m terrified that this will shrink the market for all my ebola branded, less than fully written thrillers.

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  38. Just finished watching some horrifying video from Vice News. They go into the horrible places and report back. The NBC freelance camera guy had Vice on his resume’ if I remember correctly. I previously watched their series on what life is really like in a world WROL. This series on ebola is horrifying, as is a previous piece (shot in July) about bush meat and the spread of ebola.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI is the full length version, and it is available on their channel page in 3 parts.

    You couldn’t pay me enough to work with these guys.

    Well worth the time it takes to watch.

    zuk

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        1. Did you know that back around 2004 he was a Fannie/Freddie lobbyist, helping forestall an investigation into the sub-prime loans they were accumulating? Ayup, as they say in The Capitol, he’s a man knows how to get things done!

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          2. At least it wasn’t O’Tool.

            (O’Tool’s law states – Murphy was an optimist. Or as I state it, “Somethings already gone wrong we just won’t find out what until it’s to late to fix it.)

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