Friday Reads
Posted: October 17, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Amber Vinson, Angela Merkel, austerity, Belize, Bill Clinton, Carnival Cruise Lines, ebola, Ebola hearing, El Nino, Euopean Union, Federal Reserve, Hillary Clinton, Janet Yellen, Martha Coakley, Mary Landrieu, NOAA, Polar Vortex, Rand Paul, U.S. House of Representatives, winter weather 24 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m going to begin with some good news today.
It looks like the coming winter will be on the mild side. From Discovery News: Winter Forecast for US Nothing to Shiver About.
Don’t expect the polar vortex to pummel the eastern United States this winter, government scientists said today (Oct. 16).
Overall, forecasters expect mild winter conditions across much of the United States, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said as they issued their annual winter weather outlook.
While there’s always a chance that the polar jet stream will again funnel frigid Arctic air south toward the United States, nothing in the new forecast indicates a rerun of the persistent patterns responsible for the “polar vortex.” “We do not expect to see a repeat of last winter,” said Mike Halpert, acting director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
Developing El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean will influence this year’s winter weather, with wet conditions forecast from Southern California to South Carolina, and dry conditions expected across the North. Temperatures will be warmer than average in the West and in New England, but colder in the South from Texas east to Florida, according to the forecast.
I hope they’re right!
Now for the latest Ebola news . . .
Why can’t Dallas hospital workers just stay home until they’re cleared? From The Washington Post: Texas hospital worker quarantined on cruise ship in Caribbean.
A Texas health-care worker who “may have” handled lab specimens from Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan has been isolated on board a Carnival cruise ship in the Caribbean. The worker has shown no symptoms of the disease, according to Carnival, which said it is in close contact with the Centers for Disease Control. A Carnival spokeswoman said the guest, who was not named, will remain on board in voluntary isolation until the ship returns to its home port of Galveston on Sunday.
The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital employee and a partner boarded the ship Oct. 12 in Galveston, Tex., before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the requirement for active monitoring, the State Department said in a statement. Although the worker is healthy, the U.S. government is working with the cruise line to get the ship back to America “out of an abundance of caution.”
The employee, who has not been named, did not come into direct contact with Duncan, the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. However, he or she may have been exposed to his clinical specimens, the State Department said.
“It has been 19 days since the passenger may have processed” Duncan’s fluid samples, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement early Friday morning. “The cruise line has actively supported CDC’s efforts to speak with the individual, whom the cruise ship’s medical doctor has monitored and confirmed was in good health. Following this examination, the hospital employee and traveling partner have voluntarily remained isolated in a cabin.”
Belize refused to allow the woman (gender identified by news release) to be leave the ship so she could be evacuated by the U.S.
In its own statement Thursday, the the Belize government said it “was contacted today by officers of the U.S. Government and made aware of a cruise ship passenger considered of very low risk for Ebola….Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, the Government of Belize decided not to facilitate a U.S. request for assistance in evacuating the passenger through the Phillip Goldson International Airport.”
Now that the horses are out of the barn, so to speak, officials in Texas have decided to close the barn doors. From USA Today: Travel Ban for Texas health care workers in Ebola case.
Texas health officials have ordered any person who entered the room of the first Ebola patient at a Dallas hospital not to travel by public transport, including planes ship, buses or trains, or visit groceries, restaurants or theaters for 21 days, until the danger of developing Ebola has passed.
The instructions, issued by the Texas Department of State Health Service late Thursday, cover more than 70 health workers involved in providing care for Thomas Duncan, the Liberian national who became the first patient to test positive for Ebola in the United States.
Duncan died Oct. 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
The hospital workers were ordered to undergo monitoring twice a day, including one face-to-face encounter.
The health department said anyone failing to adhere to the rules “may be subject to a communicable disease control order.” The health workers were asked to sign a written acknowledgement of the directions when they appear for monitoring.
Amber Vinson
According to The Hill, the CDC has now decided it needs to talk to passengers who were on Amber Vinson’s flight from Dallas to Cleveland. Vinson is the second nurse to come down with Ebola after caring for Thomas Duncan, who died of the disease last week.
After reports that she may have shown symptoms on her flight back to Dallas, the CDC asked those passengers to contact the agency. But in a release Thursday night, the CDC expanded that notification to include passengers on Vinson’s flight to Cleveland. The agency said that it wants to interview passengers and that “individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored.”
Ebola is contagious once an infected person starts exhibiting symptoms, so the CDC wants to keep tabs on anyone that could have come into contact with Vinson when those symptoms began. She traveled to Cleveland on Oct. 10 and returned on Oct. 13, the day before she reported her symptoms to the CDC.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives decided to get involved in the Ebola crisis, and it wasn’t pretty. BloombergPolitics compiled The Five Worst Questions from the House Ebola Hearing. According to the article, Democrats are wrong to claim that lack of funding made the situation worse. Republicans obsessed over banning travel into the U.S. and “securing the borders.” But the most ludicrous question came from Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA).
Representative Morgan Griffith wanted to know if humans can catch Ebola from dogs, and Frieden said there were no known incidents. But still, the Virginia Republican wanted to know if we could stem the flow of West African dogs traveling into America.
“Don’t you think we ought to at least restrict travel of dogs?” he asked.
“Um,” Frieden replied. “We’ll follow up in terms of what’s possible.”
In addition, President Obama held an “emergency meeting” at the White House yesterday.
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama said he was considering appointing an Ebola “czar” to coordinate the fight against the virus in the United States, but he remained opposed to a ban on travel from West Africa.
Obama’s administration is facing sharp criticism from lawmakers over its efforts to contain the disease at home. Obama authorized calling up military reservists for the U.S. fight against Ebola in West Africa on Thursday….
“It may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person” to oversee efforts to contain Ebola, Obama told reporters, adding that experts have told him “a flat-out travel ban is not the way to go” because current screening measures at airports are working.
He said he had no philosophical objection to a travel ban but that some travelers might attempt to enter the United States by avoiding screening measures, which could lead to more Ebola cases, not fewer.
A final dose of stupid came from Sen. Rand Paul, who told an audience of college students that you could catch Ebola by standing three feet from someone who is infected.
His comments directly conflict with statements from world health authorities who have dealt with Ebola outbreaks since 1976.
Paul…made his comments during a stop at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire Wednesday. In his remarks, he called Ebola “incredibly contagious” and suggested it could spread at a cocktail party attended by someone who is symptomatic, according to CNN video footage….
“You’re not going to get AIDS at a cocktail party. No one’s going to cough on you and you’re going to get AIDS. Everybody knows that. That’s what they make it sound exactly like,” Paul, a doctor and potential presidential contender, said Thursday at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. “But then you listen to them closely, they say you have to have direct contact. But you know how they define direct contact? Being within three feet of someone.”
World health authorities have been clear that Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids, and that blood, vomit and feces carry the most virus. Health workers are at particular risk because in the course of caring for patients, they draw blood and clean up diarrhea when the patients are most infectious. Likewise in the epidemic zone in West Africa, people involved with burials of highly infectious bodies are at high risk.
In other news . . .
Bill Clinton is heading down to Louisiana on Monday to stump for Mary Landrieu, according to Politico.
Former President Bill Clinton will campaign in Louisiana Monday with Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, joining the endangered incumbent in the state capital of Baton Rouge.
Clinton, unlike President Barack Obama, can be an effective surrogate in the red Southern states where the Democratic majority hangs in the balance.
The visit, Clinton’s second for Landrieu this election cycle, comes a day before the start of early voting, which runs from October 21-28.
I’ve been hoping Bill would find time to come to Massachusetts to campaign for Martha Coakley for Governor, and what do you know? He blew through here yesterday! He spoke at Clark University in Worcester.
WORCESTER — Former President Bill Clinton told a capacity crowd at Clark University today that elections are just one big job interview.
Speaking in Worcester in support of Martha Coakley’s run for governor, Mr. Clinton said Ms. Coakley’s actions and advocacy as attorney general indicate how well she will perform once she completes that job interview.
“All you’ve got to do,” he told more than 800 people who waited in a line the length of the Main South campus in monsoon-like conditions to get into Atwood Hall, “is increase the number of employers who make the hiring decision.”
Ms. Coakley, a Democrat, and her running mate, Steve Kerrigan of Lancaster, are in a tight race with Republican Charlie Baker and his running mate, Karyn Polito of Shrewsbury. Mr. Clinton tried to convince the crowd they had the potential to make it a landslide.
“I don’t care what the polls say, she can win this race handily if you want it bad enough,” Mr. Clinton said.
Now we just need Hillary to show up.
How about a little economics news? It seems people in Europe are getting fed up with Angela Merkel’s austerity obsession, according to the NYT. I can’t excerpt from the piece, but here’s a report from The Local in Italy:
Italy and France on Thursday reacted to turmoil in global stock markets by stepping up their calls for the European Union to switch course to focus on growth, not on balancing budgets.
But their calls were once again batted away by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who insisted the way out of the crisis was for all eurozone states to stick to agreed rules on the size of their deficits.
In the latest salvos in a simmering row that is set to come to head at a summit of EU leaders next week, Rome and Paris went on the offensive on the sidelines of the ASEM meeting in Milan.
“We in a very delicate moment in terms of the international economic and financial situation,” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said.
“Which is all the more reason for Europe to show itself capable of producing an economic response based on investment in growth and not only on rigour and austerity,” Renzi said.
He also said a “focus on growth” was recommended by the IMF – “and they don’t seem to be dangerous communists to me”.
According to UK Reuters, the U.S. has warned Europe about the possibility of deflation.
The United States on Wednesday renewed a warning that Europe risks falling into a downward spiral of falling wages and prices, saying recent actions by the European Central Bank may not be enough to ward off deflation.
In a semiannual report to Congress, the U.S. Treasury Department also said Berlin could do more to help Europe, namely by boosting demand in the German economy, Europe’s largest.
“Europe faces the risk of a prolonged period of substantially below-target inflation or outright deflation,” the Treasury said.
The Guardian today published a summary of Europe’s “five years of economic crisis.”
Finally, Janet Yellen has expressed concern over growing economic inequality in the U.S. Reuters reports:
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Friday the growth of economic inequality in the United States “greatly” concerned her, and suggested in a detailed speech on the politically charged issue that Americans should ask whether it was compatible with their values.
With global financial markets rebounding from days of frenzied selling, Yellen did not comment on the volatility or on monetary policy. Instead she focused on the gulf between rich and poor that has only grown wider over the last several decades and, she said, through the U.S. economic recovery.
“The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me,” Yellen told a conference on inequality at the Boston branch of the central bank.
“It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority,” she told economists, professors and community workers.
“I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity.”
Good for Yellen. Now let’s see some action beyond the words.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a fabulous Friday!!
Wednesday Open Thread
Posted: October 15, 2014 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Amber Vinson, chemical weapons, Dallas, ebola, Iraq War, National Nurses United, Nina Pham, Pentagon, RoseAnn DeMoro, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Thomas Duncan 47 Comments
Hello, Sky Dancers!
This will be a quick post. All three of us bloggers are under the weather. JJ has bronchitis, I was up all night with a stomach virus, and Dakinikat is understandably overwhelmed with family issues.
So here we go . . . .
The sh** has really hit the fan down in Dallas. Last night, a group named National Nurses United held a press call in which they revealed that, for the nurses who cared for Ebola patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, “there were no protocols” for dealing with the highly infectious disease. From CNN:
“The protocols that should have been in place in Dallas were not in place, and that those protocols are not in place anywhere in the United States as far as we can tell,” National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro said. “We’re deeply alarmed.”
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said the claims, if true, are “startling.” Some of them, he said, could be “important when it comes to possible other infections.”
Some of the complaints made by anonymous nurses to National Nurses United:
On the day that Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to the hospital with possible Ebola symptoms, he was “left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present,” union co-president Deborah Burger said.
Up to seven other patients were present in that area, the nurses said, according to the union.
A nursing supervisor faced resistance from hospital authorities when the supervisor demanded that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit, the nurses said, according to the union.
Nurses were given protective gear that didn’t cover their necks, and when they complained they were told to wrap medical tape around their necks.
“There was no one to pick up hazardous waste as it piled to the ceiling,” Burger said. “They did not have access to proper supplies.”
“There was no mandate for nurses to attend training,” Burger said, though they did receive an e-mail about a hospital seminar on Ebola…
According to DeMoro, the nurses were upset after authorities appeared to blame nurse Nina Pham, who has contracted Ebola, for not following protocols.
“This nurse was being blamed for not following protocols that did not exist. … The nurses in that hospital were very angry, and they decided to contact us,” DeMoro said.
And they’re worried conditions at the hospital “may lead to infection of other nurses and patients,” Burger said.
And today this headline tops the news: Second Health Care Worker Tests Positive for Ebola. CNN reports:
A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan has tested positive for Ebola, health officials said Wednesday – casting further doubt on the hospital’s ability to handle Ebola and protect employees.
The worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated, health department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said.
The preliminary Ebola test was done late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and the results came back around midnight. A second test will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
It gets worse. CNN again: 2nd U.S. health worker with Ebola flew the day before symptoms.
The second Dallas health care worker with Ebola was on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday — the day before she reported symptoms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. Because of the proximity in time between the Monday evening flight and the first report of her illness, the CDC wants to interview all 132 passengers on her flight — Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth, which landed at 8:16 p.m. CT Monday, the CDC said.
The worker, a woman who lives alone, was quickly moved into isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, authorities said Wednesday.
The news cast further doubt on the hospital’s ability to handle Ebola and protect employees. It’s the same hospital that initially sent Thomas Eric Duncan home, even though he had a fever and had traveled from West Africa. By the time he returned to the hospital, his symptoms had worsened. He died while being treated by medical staff, including the two women who have now contracted the disease.
Get this: hospital administrators are still claiming they have everything under control.
“I don’t think we have a systematic institutional problem,” Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer of Texas Health Resources, told reporters Wednesday, facing questions about the hospital’s actions.
Medical staff “may have done some things differently with the benefit of what we know today,” he said, adding, “no one wants to get this right more than our hospital.”
Is that so? Well, you know the old saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” According to Vargas, 75 health care workers are still being monitored for symptoms.
The most recent Ebola case has just now been identified as 26-year-old Amber Vinson, according to USA Today.
Vinson, who was described as living alone without pets in a Dallas apartment, was identified by Martha Schuler, the mother of Vinson’s former stepfather, WFAA-TV reports.
Vinson was among the workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who helped care for Ebola patient Thomas Duncan, who died of the virus in October.
At an early morning news conference, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he could not rule out more cases among 75 other hospital staffers who cared for Duncan and were being monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We are preparing contingencies for more and that is a real possibility,” Jenkins said.
In other news,
It seems there were some weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all, and the Pentagon covered it up. The New York Times broke the story last night: The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons.
The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.
It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells.
Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before.
He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling.
The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. It turned red — indicating sulfur mustard, the chemical warfare agent designed to burn a victim’s airway, skin and eyes.
All three men recall an awkward pause. Then Sergeant Duling gave an order: “Get the hell out.” ….
From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.
In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Read the whole depressing thing at the link.
Here’s the Washington Post’s take on the Times’ story: Pentagon ‘suppressed’ finds of chemical weapons in Iraq and related U.S. casualties.
These were not the “weapons of mass destruction” the George W. Bush administration used to justify invading Iraq in 2003. Rather, the Times said, the troops were injured when they stumbled across old, often corroded shells and warheads procured for use in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
The weapons were not the military threat to the United States described by the Bush administration. But the deadly sarin and mustard gas agents troops found were potent enough to cause injury, the paper reported. Unaware of the munitions’ content — which sometimes spilled on to their clothes and skin — as many as 17 soldiers were exposed, and some received haphazard, inadequate medical care.
The Times story suggests the Pentagon suppressed information about the chemical weapons because of the injuries, because it would have highlighted the massive intelligence failure surrounding the war and because the weapons were “built in close collaboration with the West.”
“The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors,” wrote C.J. Chivers. “The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.”
A few more stories that might be of interest, links only:
Christian Science Monitor, Michelle Obama viral turnip video: Will it sell healthy food?
New York Daily News, Anita Sarkeesian cancels Utah State lecture amid threats of ‘Montreal Massacre-’styled attacks.
Deadspin, The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate.
MSNBC, Supreme Court saves Texas abortion access, for now.
Nate Silver, The Polls Might Be Skewed Against Democrats — Or Republicans.
11Alive.com, Exclusive Poll: Nunn leads Senate race by 3%.
Capital OTC, Remains of Iron Age chariot discovered by Leicester students.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and enjoy your Wednesday.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: October 14, 2014 Filed under: Hillary Clinton, medicine, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Republican politics, social media, U.S. Politics | Tags: Ann Romney, Arlington MA, Brianna Wu, CDC, Darren Wilson, ebola, Ferguson MO protests, Kent Brantly, Michael Brown shooting, Nina Pham, sex trafficking, Stephen Brill, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Texas tort laws, Thomas Duncan, Tom Frieden, upskirting, women and video games 64 Comments
Good Morning!!
The photo at the top of the page was taken on Mystic Street approaching Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington Center, Arlington, Massachusetts. I’ve lived in this town since the 1970s. The population in 2014 is less than 43,000. The Center has some stores, but it’s not really a shopping district. There’s a Starbucks, the public library, the main Post Office, a number of restaurants, that sort of thing. We don’t have a mayor. There is a town manager and a town meeting with elected members. Basically, Arlington is a small town, but it’s also part of Greater Boston. It’s a close suburb to Boston, situated between Cambridge and Lexington.
Arlington has always been a safe place to live, and I still feel that way about my neighborhood. But recently, big city crime has arrived here, and I’m kind of shocked. In September, the Arlington Police Department was involved in a sex trafficking case involving men from Rhode Island and Massachusetts who exploited a teenage girl and forced her into prostitution. Also in September, a man who worked for Arlington’s Department of Public Works was charged with “upskirting” in a local restaurant bathroom. That’s a crime I hadn’t even heard of before. It when someone uses a camera to look up women’s skirts. Ugh, how creepy. And this morning I woke up to this from The Boston Globe:
Video Game Developer: Twitter Rape, Death Threats Forced Me From Home.
An Arlington-based video game developer said she and her husband had to temporarily leave their home after they received graphic threats of sexual assault and death on Twitter—a response, she believes, to her online activism on behalf of women in the tech industry
Brianna Wu, head of development for the indie video game publisher Giant Spacekat, contacted Arlington police Friday evening after a Twitter account named “Death to Brianna”—whose profile description read, “I’m going to kill Brianna Wu and her husband Frank”—posted a number of graphic death threats.
Read some of the tweets at the link.
Arlington Police confirmed that the department is investigating the origin of the message. Twitter has since suspended the account.
Wu said she is “harassed on a daily basis,” often receiving rape threats and unwanted pornographic images, but that Friday night’s messages “crossed a line to the point [she] felt scared.”
“I left the house because I felt unsafe,” Wu wrote in a Facebook message to Boston.com. “I told the officer, and he felt that was reasonable.”
There’s no truly safe place left in America these days, I guess. Maybe it was always like that, and I just didn’t know it. At least we don’t have any Ebola cases yet.
Nina Pham, nurse with Ebola (her identity was revealed by her family)
Here’s the latest from Dallas.
AP, via the Seattle Times, About 70 hospital staffers cared for Ebola patient.
About 70 staff members at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital were involved in the care of Thomas Eric Duncan after he was hospitalized, including a nurse now being treated for the same Ebola virus that killed the Liberian man who was visiting Dallas, according to medical records his family provided to The Associated Press.
The size of the medical team reflects the hospital’s intense effort to save Duncan’s life, but it also suggests that many other people could have been exposed to the virus during Duncan’s time in an isolation unit.
On Monday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the infection of the nurse means the agency must broaden the pool of people getting close monitoring. Authorities have said they do not know how the nurse was infected, but they suspect some kind of breach in the hospital’s protocol.
According to the AP, the hospital shared medical records with the news agency, but “the CDC does not have them.” WTF?! Why?
The CDC has not yet established a firm number of health care workers who had contact with Duncan.
“If this one individual was infected — and we don’t know how — within the isolation unit, then it is possible that other individuals could have been infected as well,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. “We do not today have a number of such exposed people or potentially exposed health care workers. It’s a relatively large number, we think in the end.”
Caregivers who began treating Duncan after he tested positive for Ebola were following a “self-monitoring regimen” in which they were instructed to take their temperatures regularly and report any symptoms. But they were not considered at high risk.
Typically, the nurses, doctors and technicians caring for a contagious patient in isolation would be treating other people as well, and going home to their families after decontaminating themselves. The hospital has refused to answer questions about their specific duties.
Jesus. It sounds like the hospital is still trying to protect itself rather than doing everything possible to keep this disease from spreading.
This story from Reuters is a must read, Following the mistakes in the Texas Ebola story. As we all know now, Thomas Duncan, the Ebola patient who died at the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital initially went to the emergency room with a fever of 103, and he openly told heath care workers he had recently arrived in Dallas from Liberia. But they sent him home anyway. You’d think his family would be able to sue the hospital for millions, but they probably can’t.
As this Reuters report notes:
Texas tort-reform measures have made it one of the hardest places in the United States to sue over medical errors, especially those that occurred in the emergency room …. To bring a civil claim in Texas over an emergency-room error, including malpractice, plaintiffs have to show staff acted in a way that was “willfully and wantonly negligent,” meaning that the staff had to have consciously put Duncan or others at extreme risk by releasing him, rather just having made a mistake.
In other words, tort reform in Texas means you can’t sue a doctor or nurse for making a mistake, even a stupid, fatal one. Or even one that might end up causing multiple fatalities if Duncan gave the virus to others after he was allowed to leave the emergency room.
The author of the article, Stephen Brill is currently “researching a coming book on the economics and politics of U.S. healthcare,” and he has some interesting questions based on the Ebola case. He has found that in the U.S. expensive tests are frequently used–supposedly to protect against malpractice suits. Questions:
Have hospitals tightened their own quality-control and disciplinary processes because they know that doctors don’t have to worry about lawsuits and, therefore, want to add accountability measures of their own to deal with staff mistakes?
Or have they loosened discipline because they don’t have to worry about being sued for their staffs’ mistakes?
Brill also wonders why the hospital hasn’t named the nurse or doctor responsible for sending Duncan home after his initial visit to the hospital.
Yes, I would like to read a story about the person who made the mistake. What is his or her record? Was the emergency room busy when Duncan showed up? Or was the staff sitting around with little to do, yet still failed to react carefully enough? And were policies, explicit or implicit, in place encouraging them not to admit uninsured patients whose bills are likely to go unpaid?
What disciplinary action did, or will, the hospital take? What usually happens in a situation like this at that hospital and at hospitals generally?
But more than that, I would like to see a story exploring the issue of personal responsibility and public accountability when private people make mistakes that have huge public ramifications.
I’d like to read a story like that too.
In more positive news, a man who survived Ebola has donated blood plasma to the Dallas nurse who is sick.
The Rev. Jim Khoi, pastor of the Fort Worth church attended by Nina Pham’s family, said she received a transfusion of plasma containing Ebola-fighting antibodies Monday afternoon.
Samaritan’s Purse confirmed the plasma came from Dr. Kent Brantly, the Texas doctor who survived Ebola. Brantly contracted Ebola while working with the nonprofit medical mission group in Liberia.
Samaritan’s Purse spokesman Jeremy Blume says Brantly traveled to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas Sunday to donate the plasma.
Brantly said in a recent speech that he also offered his blood to Thomas Eric Duncan, but that their blood types didn’t match. Duncan died of Ebola on Wednesday.
In politics news, it looks like we won’t see a third Romney presidential run, because Ann Romney has laid down the law.
From the New York Daily News, Ann Romney quashes rumors of Mitt 2016: ‘Mitt and I are done’.
“Mitt and I are done. Completely,” the wife of the two-time Republican presidential candidate has said to quash rumors that another campaign is in the works.
“Not only Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done. Done. Done. Done,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Mitt Romney, 67, has said repeatedly he wasn’t interested in running again, but in recent weeks he’s been seen as flirting with the prospect.
With no clear Republican frontrunner for 2016, he has taken to the campaign trail to support Senate hopefuls, including Joni Ernst in Iowa on Monday, and has also kept up relationships with key GOP donors.
But his wife, Ann, seems to think a third time is not the charm.
I hope she really means it!
Another potential 2016 candidate, Hillary Clinton spoke about a number of current issues yesterday in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Las Vegas crowd Monday night that more needs to be done to ensure young people can achieve their dreams and free students from onerous college debt “that can feel like an anchor tied to their feet dragging them down.”
“I think our young people deserve a fair shot,” she told about 900 people gathered in a Bellagio resort ballroom for the annual UNLV Foundation dinner benefiting the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Later, talking about the American public’s possible reluctance to get involved in conflicts around the world, Clinton referred to the threats posed by the Ebola virus and the Islamic State militant group.
“They want to bring the fight to Europe and the fight to the United States,” she said of the terrorist group.
And Ebola is not going to stay confined, the former first lady said.
Read more about her remarks at the link.
The New York Times has an article about the latest protests in Ferguson, Missouri. I can’t excerpt any of the text, because the Times has found a way to prevent it on some stories; it’s a good article and worth reading at the link. Here’s another report from the AP via ABC News: More Than 50 Arrested in Ferguson Protests.
Pounding rain and tornado watches didn’t deter hundreds of protesters Monday outside Ferguson police headquarters, where they stayed for almost four hours to mark how long 18-year-old Michael Brown’s body was left in a street after he was fatally shot by police.
Organizers of the four-day Ferguson October protests dubbed the day “Moral Monday” and committed acts of civil disobedience across the St. Louis region. In addition to the initial march on Ferguson police headquarters, protesters blocked the entrance to a major employer, held a loud rally inside St. Louis City Hall, disrupted business at a Ferguson shopping center and three Wal-Mart stores and tried to crash a private fundraiser for a St. Louis County executive candidate where U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill was scheduled to appear.
At the Edward Jones Dome Monday night, protesters briefly draped a banner over a Jumbotron video board that read “Rams fans know on and off the field black lives matter.”
More than 50 people were arrested, including scholar and civil rights activist Cornel West.
West was among 42 arrested for peace disturbance at the Ferguson police station. Some protesters used a bullhorn to read the names of people killed by police nationwide. Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy members — some of whom were among the first arrested — led a prayer service before marching to the station two blocks away.
I’m very glad that the protests are continuing. I’m afraid Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson is going to get away with killing Michael Brown, so I think it’s important to keep the story in the nation’s consciousness.
So . . . what stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and enjoy your Tuesday!
Friday Reads: Zombie Memes
Posted: October 10, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, medicine, morning reads, Republican politics, science, Surreality, U.S. Politics | Tags: airport screening, Anthony Kennedy, Eagle Forum, ebola, Idaho, ISIL, Nevada, Phyllis Schlafly, same-sex marriage, SCOTUS, Tom Frieden, West Africa, zombies 11 Comments
Good Morning!
The Ebola Virus and the epidemic in Africa is real. The right wing hysteria about the virus is rivaling the bad plots of the Zombie movies I’m watching during SyFy’s Countdown to Halloween. I thought I’d spend some time separating the facts from the conspiracy theories today. So let me start with one of the most outrageous Zombie Memes from one of the most vile women on the planet. Dementia or further evidence of the advanced stages of evil? It’s your choice.
In an interview with WorldNetDaily published today, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly weighed in on the unfounded theory gaining traction in the right-wing media that Central American young people are to blame for an outbreak of a childhood respiratory illness in the U.S.
“There are all kinds of diseases in the rest of the world, and we don’t want them in this country,” Schlafly told WND, adding that “of all the things [Obama has] done, I think this thing of letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people is just the most outrageous of all.”
She went on to imply that President Obama is intentionally allowing people infected with Ebola into the United States because he wants America to be “just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too. That’s his attitude.”
Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly – author of “Who Killed the American Family?” – said she agrees Obama is responsible for allowing diseases to enter the country.
“There are all kinds of diseases in the rest of the world, and we don’t want them in this country,” Schlafly said. “And it’s Obama’s job to keep them out.
“Out of all the things he’s done, I think this thing of letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people is just the most outrageous of all.”
Schlafly said the government should screen immigrants for disease before they enter the country, as was done at Ellis Island a hundred years ago.
“That was the purpose of Ellis Island – to have a waiting place where it was decided whether people were healthy enough or responsible enough to come into our country,” she said. “The idea that anybody can just walk in and carry this disease with them is just an outrage, and it is Obama’s fault because he’s responsible for doing it.”
…
When asked why the current administration hasn’t done more to prevent diseased illegal aliens or Ebola carriers from Africa from entering the country, Schlafly said Obama wants to make the U.S. more like the rest of the world.
“Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional,” Schlafly said. “He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too. That’s his attitude.”
Yup, it’s despicable She. Still foaming at the mouth after all these years too.
Okay, so as not to overwhelm you with teh crazy all at once. Let’s go to some science and medicine.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a top-level forum in Washington, D.C., that the Ebola outbreak is unlike anything he’s seen since the AIDS epidemic.
“I would say that in the 30 years I’ve been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,” Frieden said before the heads of the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, according to AFP.
Frieden added: “We have to work now so that it is not the world’s next AIDS.”
Frieden’s comments come as the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. died Wednesday despite intense but delayed treatment. The U.S. government also announced it was expanding airport examinations to guard against the spread of the deadly disease.
The checks will include taking the temperatures of hundreds of travelers arriving from West Africa at five major American airports.
The new screenings will begin Saturday at New York’s JFK International Airport and then expand to Washington Dulles and the international airports in Atlanta, Chicago and Newark. An estimated 150 people per day will be checked, using high-tech thermometers that don’t touch the skin.
The White House said the fever checks would reach more than 9 of 10 travelers to the U.S. from the three heaviest-hit countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
President Barack Obama called the measures “really just belt and suspenders” to support protections already in place. Border Patrol agents now look for people who are obviously ill, as do flight crews, and in those cases the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is notified.
It’s unlikely a fever check would have spotted Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola in a Dallas hospital Wednesday morning. Duncan wasn’t yet showing symptoms when he arrived in the U.S.
So the disease is ravaging West Africa. That’s where the problem is and needs to be solved.
There are the facts about the state of the Ebola crisis. In West Africa, more than 8,000 people have contracted the disease and nearly half have died. In the U.S., there’s just one confirmed case—that of Thomas Duncan, the Liberian man who passed away in Dallas on Wednesday. Experts say that the caseload in West Africa is likely to get much, much bigger. As many as 1.4 million people could get the disease, with a large fraction of them dying from it. The same experts expect no similar outbreak here, even if a few more cases appear, because we have the personnel and the resources to limit exposure.
But all of the news on Wednesday was about developments here in the U.S.—in particular, new screening efforts at five major U.S. airports, Duncan’s death, and reports of possible new cases in the U.S., including one in Dallas. You could tell by the questions that Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, fielded during a late afternoon press conference. He got more than a dozen of them. Only two were about the situation abroad. (And one of them, it so happens, came from me.)
The preoccupation with what’s happening here, as opposed to what’s happening over there, is perfectly understandable. On Tuesday, a Gallup poll revealed that Americans today are as worried about contracting Ebola as they were about contracting H1N1, the swine flu, during that outbreak two years ago. By that time, millions of people had gotten H1N1 and thousands had already died. But people die from flu all the time, usually because they are very young or very old or already otherwise infirmed. It’s a threat that people have factored into their daily lives, if at all. Ebola is quite literally a foreign menace, one to which almost nobody gave much thought until a few weeks ago. The virus kills about half the people who get it, with little regard for age or health status of the person infected.
That fear goes a long way to explaining why the U.S. is implementing the new screening process at the airports. Customs and Border Patrol agents were already on the lookout for people with visible signs of the disease. Now they will add another layer of scrutiny. They will use questionnaires to screen for people who have been in affected countries—and, then, subject these people to temperature tests and more questioning. People who have fever or show other Ebola symptoms will be evaluated by quarantine officers from the CDC, then referred to local health authorities who will decide how to handle the cases. The primary goal is to identify any passengers infected with Ebola before they leave the airport.
But yes, the right wing is hysterical and afraid and lying as the right wing is prone to do.
Of all the issues that you would think would be non-partisan, Ebola should be at the top of the list. The disease is just a mindless germ that doesn’t check your race, gender, social class, sexual orientation or party identification before it strikes, suggesting both liberals and conservatives
have a stake in treating people exposed to the disease with compassion and care. And yet, to flip on Fox News or turn on any conservative media at all, you’d think that ebola was some kind of plague designed by the Democratic party in order to wipe out Republicans.
Blowing the threat of ebola out of proportion and trying to link it to Obama has been a constant theme on the right in recent days. Elisabeth Hasselbeck of Fox News literally demanded that we put the country on lockdown, banning all travel in and out. In a bit of race-baiting, Andrea Tantaros of Fox suggested that people who travel to the country and show symptoms of ebola will “seek treatment from a witch doctor” instead of go to the hospital. Fox host Steve Doocy suggested the CDC is lying about ebola because they’re “part of the administration”. Fox also promoted a conspiracy theorist who is trying to claim the CDC is lying when they caution people not to panic.
Other right wing media joined in. Tammy Bruce blamed ebola on the “Obama legacy”. Laura Ingraham said Obama was prevented from doing more to stop the disease because of his “core ties to the African continent”. Rush Limbaugh even went as far as to accuse Obama of letting the disease spread because he supposes liberals believe “we kind of deserve a little bit of this”.
Okay, so here’s a zombie mistake and a big one. Justice Kennedy’s Typo Accidentally Stops Same-Sex Marriage in Nevada.
Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stunned America when he ordered a halt on Nevada’s same-sex marriages, less than a day after the Court voted to overturn a ban on gay marriages in that state. Turns out that it was a total accident. Yes, a big ol’ “oops, my bad” incident.
According to SCOTUSBlog, what happened was the following: The Ninth Circuit recently heard challenges to same-sex marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada, who, for the purposes of convenience, had combined both of their challenges into a single case. In two different rulings, the federal appellate court struck down both of these states’ bans, allowing same-sex marriage in Idaho and Nevada, and issued a mandate on the ruling to immediately enforce the new law. In other words, the moment that the Ninth Circuit struck down the ban, gay and lesbian couples could get married immediately.
This did not make Idaho happy, so they filed a request to Justice Kennedy asking him to put a stop on same-sex marriage in Idaho, so that state officials could review their case before the Ninth Circuit. Kennedy allowed it, but in a total brain fart moment, issued an order that put a stop on weddings in both Idaho and Nevada, even though nobody in Nevada had asked for a review, either.
Thankfully, same-sex marriages can still occur in Las Vegas for the time being, but unfortunately, nobody knows what the eff is happening anymore. As a result, the Ninth Circuit has recalled its order implementing same-sex marriage in Idaho and are asking for briefs as to whether they need to do the same in Nevada.
Good job, Kennedy. Look how much confusion your typo has caused.
Oh, another Zombie Meme replacing Benghazi these days. It’s not only Ebola that’s Obama’s fault but also ISIL. It’s all about killing white people!!! Here’s some great links and proof from Politicus.
We have shown that for the GOP, the threat of Ebola exists only as an excuse to attack President Obama, that it’s all Obama’s fault (of course) and that, Oh my God! Oh my God! It’s going to kill us all! Cue to Rand Paul diving under his bed.
We have also been closely following the rise of ISIL in Syria and Iraq, and have tried to show you the contrast between the Republican and the Democratic reactions.
We have shown that for the GOP, the threat of ISIL exists only as an excuse to attack President Obama, that it’s all Obama’s fault (of course) and that Oh my God! Oh my God! They’re going to kill us all! Cue to Lindsey Graham diving under his bed.
It is surely significant that yesterday Time Magazine should profile the Republican response to the ISIL “scandal”: GOP Ad Claims ISIS Plot to Attack U.S. Via ‘Arizona’s Backyard.’
As Time’s Zeke Miller and Alex Rogers describe the ad, which was posted to YouTube yesterday,
The National Republican Congressional Committee ad opens with grainy footage of black flags and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) holding rifles on military vehicles. “Evil forces around the world want to harm Americans every day,” an ominous voiceover states. “Their entry into our country? Through Arizona’s backyard.” The spot goes on to recount how Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), locked in a close re-election fight with Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, has voted against border security legislation, suggesting that she “leaves Arizona vulnerable.”
Chris Wallace of Fox News has already planted the suggestion in viewers’ facile minds that Ebola could come across our Southern Border and that it could be used as a weapon. It doesn’t matter after those words are spoken than an expert debunks them. The damage has been done.
The brain damage was done to any one that actually believes these things years ago.
So what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Is this the Zombie Apocalypse?
Posted: October 3, 2014 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Centers for Disease Control, Dallas TX, ebola, zombie apocalypse 40 Comments
Good Morning!!
In March, the Wall Street Journal published this map of the U.S. showing which states are best prepared to deal with zombie hoards on the march.
Real estate brokerage Estately Inc. published an analysis this week ranking each state by its vulnerability in the event of an undead epidemic. The company looked at four criteria, according to spokesman Reid Wegley:
– Is the state’s population knowledgeable about zombies?
– Are they physically capable of evading them?
– Have they been trained to fight them? and
– Do they have guns and shooting skills?
….
Mr. Wegley said each state was ranked 1-50 based on data from several sources: U.S. Census figures on military personnel and veterans; Facebook Inc. searches of interest in martial arts, survival skills, zombies, laser tag, paintball and Ironman triathlons; gun ownership and physical health and obesity rates by state. The ranks were then totaled for each state—the lower the figure, the better-prepared the state.
Okay, so zombies aren’t real. But Ebola has arrived in Texas, and already there have been screw-ups. We have to rely on the CDC to protect the country–the same CDC that just recently was involved in three serious security lapses involving bird flu, smallpox, and anthrax. And did you know that last year a biolab in Texas *lost* a deadly virus from Venezuela? I didn’t. From ABC News, March 25, 2013:
The Galveston National Laboratory lost one of five vials containing a deadly Venezuelan virus, according to the University of Texas Medical Branch, which owns the $174 million facility designed with the strictest security measures to hold the deadliest viruses in the country.
Like Ebola, the missing Guanarito virus causes hemorrhagic fever, an illness named for “bleeding under the skin, in internal organs or from body orifices like the mouth, eyes, or ears,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is clearly an incident that is very discomforting and embarrassing to the University of Texas Medical Center and their national biosecurity lab that they have there,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. “You can be sure there are a lot of sweating people down the chain at that institution.”
These are the folks we are dependent on to protect the country from a major disease epidemic. I’m not ready to panic yet, but I’m sure going to be paying attention from now on.
Governor Goodhair says everything is under control. Now why doesn’t that calm my fears? From the Dallas News: Rick Perry, health officials offer reassurances on Dallas Ebola case.
State and local health officials sought to quiet fears in Dallas after disclosing Wednesday that they are monitoring more than a dozen people, including five schoolchildren, who had close contact with the nation’s first Ebola-stricken victim.
The patient, identified in media reports as Thomas Eric Duncan, a 42-year-old resident of Monrovia, Liberia, remained in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital as authorities tried to patch together his activities after he became ill here while visiting family members.
Among other key developments in a fast-moving day: Hospital officials said they erred in sending Duncan home when he first sought treatment a week ago; paramedics who later transported him to the hospital tested negative for the virus; and Dallas plans to begin an extensive cleaning of the schools the students attended.
None of those who came into contact with Duncan when he was experiencing active symptoms — meaning the disease was contagious — have shown signs of being infected.
“We’re confident that it’s isolated and it’s being contained, but everyone is working tirelessly to double- and triple- and quadruple-check their work, to make sure that we’ve done an absolutely thorough job of identifying anyone who might be at any risk,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said.
Rick Perry chimed in:
Gov. Rick Perry said the patient was receiving “the very best care” there. Duncan, who is in isolation, was said to be in serious but stable condition. A day earlier, he was described as critically ill. Health officials have declined to disclose his name, citing privacy laws.
Perry praised the hospital and health workers.
“This case is serious, but rest assured that our system is working as it should,” he said. “There are few places in the world better-equipped to meet the challenge this patient poses. The public should have every confidence.”
Yeah, right. That’s why the hospital sent Duncan home with antibiotics–for a virus(!)–so that he could expose up to 100 other people to Ebola. Then on the way back to the hospital, the violently ill man vomited outside.
DALLAS – Two days after he was sent home from a Dallas hospital, the man who is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States was seen vomiting on the ground outside an apartment complex as he was bundled into an ambulance.
“His whole family was screaming. He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place,” resident Mesud Osmanovic, 21, said on Wednesday, describing the chaotic scene before the man was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday where he is in serious condition.
Officials ordered everyone who had been in the apartment with Duncan to stay there for 21 days in quarantine. Which was fine, but no one removed the sheets the man had slept on or made provisions for the people inside to have food and other supplies. From CNN: Frustrated woman quarantined with sheets, towels soiled by Ebola patient.
The sweat-stained sheets of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, still on her bed, a woman quarantined in a Dallas apartment said Thursday that she desperately wants her family’s nightmare to end.
“We can’t wait to be over with everything,” the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Louise, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “We can’t wait.”
While Duncan is in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, his partner and three others have been stuck in a Dallas apartment since his diagnosis this week. Louise told CNN that authorities had her sign paperwork stating “if we step outside, they are going to take us … to court (because) we’ll have committed a crime.”
So there she has stayed, along with her 13-year-old son and two nephews in their 20s. But it hasn’t been easy.
She said no one brought food Thursday to four people who can’t leave to get it themselves, at least until later in the day. There was also the matter of their power going out, which was likely related to strong storms that rolled through the area. Then, of course, there’s the idea of living in a place that — just a few days ago — was home to an Ebola sufferer.
Her 35-year-old daughter brought over Clorox to help clean the house, and she sealed up Duncan’s dirty clothes and towels in a bag.
“But (authorities) said we shouldn’t throw anything away until they can get back with me,” Louise said.
That hadn’t happened as of Thursday evening. Men in trucks from Cleaning Guys, a company that specializes in hazmat and biohazard cleaning services, was turned away for lack of the necessary permit to transport hazardous waste on Texas highways, it said.
According to the article, after CNN reported the horrible conditions in the apartment, some local officials are discussing relocating the family to someplace less contaminated.
Here’s the latest on the Ebola story as of this morning.
Associated Press, 8:15AM: Family that hosted Ebola patient confined to home.
DALLAS (AP) — A woman who has been confined to her Dallas apartment under armed guard after a man infected with Ebola stayed at her home, said she never imagined this could happen to her so far from disease-ravaged West Africa.
Louise Troh said Thursday that she is tired of being locked up and wants health authorities to decontaminate her home.
Authorities say the circle of people in the U.S. possibly exposed to Ebola widened after the man, who arrived from Liberia last month, was discharged from a hospital without being tested for the deadly virus.
The confinement order, which also bans visitors, was imposed after the family failed to comply with a request to stay home, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said the order would ensure Troh, her 13-year-old son and two nephews can be closely monitored for signs of the disease.
An NBC News cameraman has been diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia, 8:30AM: NBC says cameraman tested positive for Ebola. Entire crew to be flown home.
The network reported the freelancer, identified as Ashoka Mukpo, was just hired Tuesday to be a second cameraman for its medical editor, Nancy Snyderman, a physician. It said the freelancer, who has been working in Liberia for some time, showed symptoms Wednesday, and was feeling “tired and achy” before being tested.
The network said the 33-year old cameraman, who is also a writer, was taken to a Doctors Without Borders treatment center and that the positive result came back 12 hours later.
“Obviously he is scared and worried,” Mukpo’s father Dr. Mitchell Levytold the Today show on Friday. Mukpo’s time in Liberia meant that he was “seeing the death and tragedy and now it’s really hit home for him.” he added, “But his spirits are better today.”
Mukpo’s mother Diane Mukpo said that her son will leave Sunday for the US. “I believe they’re doing things as quickly as they can but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we know he’s going to be in Liberia until Sunday, and I really can only hope and pray that his symptoms don’t worsen too quickly,” she said.
He is the fourth American known to have contracted Ebola in Liberia, according to NBC. Another physician, reportedly American and working for the World Health Organization, was flown back to the United States after testing positive in Sierra Leone.
Now that the horses are out of the barn, so to speak, hospitals will review their procedures for dealing with contagious diseases–in Boston at least. From The Boston Globe, After Ebola error, hospitals review procedures.
The emergence this week of the first Ebola case in the United States — and the mistakes made by a Texas hospital that led to a delayed diagnosis — prompted Boston hospitals and primary care practices to review their emergency plans over the past two days and strengthen weak spots.
“The news in Texas didn’t change our planning, but it got our staff’s attention,” said Dr. Paul Biddinger, vice chairman and medical director for preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The reassessment of emergency measures comes even as disease trackers emphasize that the likelihood of Ebola striking Boston remains low.
Still, nurses, doctors, and physician’s assistants in Mass. General’s emergency department and clinics have been asking for information about symptoms and for a list of western Africa countries that have experienced more than 7,100 Ebola cases and 3,300 deaths since the outbreak was first reported in March. Some health workers at the hospital have practiced putting protective gear on and off.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital
Presumably hospitals around the country will take similar precautions. However, at the Texas hospital responsible for the “error,” excuse-making is still the order of the day. CBS News: Hospital blames tech glitch for Ebola patient error.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital officials said a flaw in the way the electronic records interacted between the nurse who questioned Thomas Eric Duncan and the doctor who treated him led to the mis-communication that enabled Duncan to go home after his first visit to the emergency room last week.
They said that flaw has now been fixed.
But the fallout from that mistake is far from over.
CBS reports that the apartment has now been “decontaminated by hazmat crews,” and food and other supplies have been provided for the people trapped inside the apartment. But so far, other residents of the apartment complex have not been screened for Ebola infection.
Early this morning, Tom Frieden, the CDC chief, told MSNBC that the only way to stop an Ebola epidemic is to deal with it in West Africa. Politico reports:
CDC Director Tom Frieden on Friday said restricting travel between the U.S. and West Africa would likely “backfire” and put Americans more at risk of contracting Ebola.
Appearing on MSNBC, Frieden was asked about potentially prohibiting air travel between the U.S. and West Africa, where the Ebola outbreak is most widespread. He said that such a restriction would likely be ineffective and would make it harder for health officials to root out the virus.
“The only way we’re going to get to zero risk is by stopping the outbreak at the source” in West Africa, Frieden said.
“Even if we tried to close the border, it wouldn’t work,” the top health official added. “People have a right to return. People transiting through could come in. And it would backfire, because by isolating these countries, it’ll make it harder to help them, it will spread more there and we’d be more likely to be exposed here.”
Finally, for Chris Cillizza of The Fix, even the potential for a deadly epidemic is all about politics: How the Ebola case gives Rick Perry a second chance to make a first impression.
At a press conference Wednesday announcing the details of the case, Perry was front and center — playing the dual role of information provider and, maybe more importantly, calmer of nerves. “This case is serious,” Perry said. “Rest assured, our system is working as it should.”
For Perry, it’s a return to the national spotlight that he left with a whimper in January 2012 when he ended a disastrously bad presidential bid. That candidacy, which began in August 2011 to much fanfare, collapsed, largely, because of Perry’s inadequacies as a candidate. While his “oops” moment during a presidential debate came to epitomize his flailing bid, there were any number of other off — or downright odd — moments during his five months as a candidate.
Perry has spent virtually every minute since he dropped out of the race working to rehab his image. He got glasses. He started traveling to early caucus and primary states (again). He floated the possibility that he would run for president (again). All of it was met, generally, with a collective eye roll by the professional political class who viewed him as yesterday’s news. Donors, activists and the media tend to want new blood in presidential races, not folks who are viewed as having had their chance and blown it. Perry was forever battling the “oh yeah, you’re the guy who forgot the third federal agency you wanted to get rid of” narrative. And it was a fight he wasn’t going to win.
Until, maybe, now. Being at the forefront of the fight against Ebola — the first-ever case in the United States — affords Perry an opportunity to bend the story about him heading into the 2016 presidential election. Rather than Perry as fumbling dunderhead, there is now a chance for a Perry as competent chief executive narrative to emerge. (Before I go any further, let me note: Perry’s high profile on Ebola is not because of 2016 calculations. But, it absolutely impacts how he is perceived — whether he intends it to or not.) There are very few moments that can draw the attention of the entire country anymore — outside of the SuperBowl is there any regularly scheduled event that can? — but this Ebola story can. Fear is a powerful driver.
Bla bla bla . . . F$$k you, Cillizza.
Now, what else is going on in the world? Please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread.
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