Wanted: People with brains to fight Ebola in the USA

The US government´s shameful and shambolic performance continues. A second Dallas nurse has Ebola and to make matters even worse she flew with 134 other passengers while running a fever.

(Reuters) - A second Texas nurse who contracted Ebola flew on a commercial flight from Ohio to Texas with a slight temperature the day before she was diagnosed, health officials said on Wednesday, raising new concerns about U.S. efforts to control the disease.

Chances that other passengers on the plane were infected were very low, but the nurse should not have been traveling on the flight, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.

The woman, Amber Vinson, 29, was isolated immediately after reporting a fever on Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services officials said. She had treated Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola on Oct. 8 and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.

Vinson, a worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, officials said.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said the likelihood of a widespread Ebola outbreak was "very, very low." But he pledged a more aggressive response to U.S. Ebola cases from federal officials and would do everything possible to ensure no more healthcare workers are infected.

Obama met with Cabinet officials to discuss the government's response to the Ebola situation after canceling a planned political trip to New Jersey and Connecticut.

The CDC said earlier that it was asking all of the more than 130 passengers who were also on the Frontier flight to call a CDC hotline.

Government officials said Vinson was being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has successfully treated two people who contracted the disease in West Africa and were flown back to the United States.

More at 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-health-ebola-usa-idUSKCN0I40UE20141015

Yahoo news has details Reuters doesn´t include: 

""CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said during a national news conference on Wednesday that Dallas nurse Amber Joy Vinson “was in a group of individuals known to have exposure to Ebola, she should not have traveled on a commercial airline.”

But according to multiple news reports, Vinson phoned the CDC before leaving Ohio to report she had an elevated fever of 99.5 degrees and would be flying back to Dallas. Vinson wasn't “told she couldn't fly,”  an unidentified CDC source told ABC News.

“Somebody dropped the ball,” CBS News quoted one health official as saying."""

Amber Vinson on her way to Atlanta´s Emory Hospital 

So they are going to set up a CDC hotline for the 130 passengers on that flight...That´s it? May Jesus, Mohammed and Moses have mercy on Obama, the stooges who are suposedly in charge of controlling the epidemic, and anybody who can actually get on TV and curse them for their incompetence and does nothing about it. 

Maybe we need to mail them one million  "Twelve Monkeys" DVD´s so they get the idea? 

Trend leads to over half a million deaths in 90 weeks

I took the current statistics and fed them into Excel, did a trendline and this is what I got:

Ebola cases projected 90 weeks from now

I plan to take the actuals and plot them against this simple trendline to see if there´s a change due to real government action. 

C.D.C. Reviewing Procedures After New Case of Ebola in Dallas

The NY Times has a good article discussing mistakes made in Dallas:

DALLAS — The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the agency was rethinking how health officials perform infection control at hospitals as they monitored an expanded group of at least 50 hospital workers who may have had contact with a Liberian man who died last week of Ebola.

“It does change substantially how we approach it,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said. “We have to rethink the way we address Ebola infection control. Even a single infection is unacceptable.”

There could be additional cases, particularly among the health care workers who provided care,” for Mr. Duncan, 42, who arrived in America last month, Dr. Frieden said.

On Monday, public health officials briefed President Obama on the latest in the Ebola situation, aides said. Mr. Obama met with Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of health and human services; Susan Rice, his national security adviser; Lisa Monaco, a top White House security adviser; and Dr. Frieden.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/dallas-nurse-ebola-patient.html?_r=0

Read this and go ballistic

"While I agree that we have the knowledge, experience, and resources to be able to control Ebola, most of the experts are academicians or practice in relatively well-heeled ivory towers. I have practiced Infectious Diseases and Infection Control for 30+ years, primarily in a number of community hospitals, and offer a different perspective here, based on these experiences."

This is from the Scientific American blogs  post by Judy Stone, MD. is called:

Ebola in the U.S.—Politics and Public Health Don’t Mix

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/2014/10/06/ebola-in-the-u-s-politics-and-public-health-dont-mix/

Who is failing to defend the USA?

Summary:  Response to the Ebola epidemic has been woefully weak. This is a new type of menace which the government, in spite of all the supposed emphasis on Homeland Defense and Health Care, hasn´t prepared for properly. The lack of preparation is shown by the scrambling we see to fix gaps identified by the Dallas Ebola case (which has already led to a second infection in Dallas).  The weak Government preparation and response was caused by the  “nobody is in charge” and “rookies control the top post” syndromes. 

Neither Homeland Security, nor Health and Human Services seem to be fully in charge, and their heads are new on the job. Homeland Defense´s Jeh Johnson, a lawyer,took over the job in December 2013.  Health and Human Services´ Sylvia Burwell, a management type took over the job in June 2014.  They weren´t chosen because they were top notch at stopping an epidemic.  

The inadequate responses to the Ebola threat by both Federal, State, and local authorities in the USA are evident. The fact that a man landed in the USA after being in contact with an Ebola patient who died a few hours later, got sick with fever, went to a hospital in Dallas, was sent home with an aspirin…

If the reader isn´t aware of the lousy response, the mistakes piled on mistakes and the casual attitude taken by Dallas authorities, or the panic which ensued when the Frisco policeman was thought to have Ebola, the information  is detailed in preceding blog posts.

Brazil Ebola case: FALSE ALARM, traveler from Guinea OK

Update: This is now considered a false alarm.

Brazil is treating its first suspected case of the Ebola virus, the country’s Health Ministry announced Thursday night.

A 47-year-old man arrived in Brazil on Sept. 19 from Guinea and reported he had a fever on Oct. 8, within the 21-day Ebola incubation limit. He has no other symptoms, like bleeding or vomiting, but has been put in isolation and flown to the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rio de Janeiro per the country’s security protocol.

Meanwhile Argentina has declared an epidemic alert because the traveler may have been in Argentina. Now, after the fact, they decided to strengthen their border checkpoints.

Madrid Ebola status report

The following are the latest news from Madrid:1.  the Ebola patient had a serious crisis but is improving, remains in serious condition; 2. Four floors at the Carlos III hospital have been evacuated and are being prepared to handle Ebola internees (people who came in contact with the sick woman are being rounded up). 3. Excalibur, her dog, was executed, this led to protests by animal rights lovers which left a few wounded.  4. All health care workers who treat Ebola patients will be considered to be at risk and kept under close watch. 5. Additional measures are being taken to remedy what turned out to be a very lax and inadequate protocol (I get the impression the one in Dallas Texas was also lousy as was the border security which allows a visitor from Liberia to drop in and later walk around when he was contagious with Ebola).