That Dallas ebola patient just took a turn for the worse. . .
 

http://news.yahoo.com/dallas-hospita...182714039.html

His status has been changed now from serious to critical condition.

In further related news.....

"On Saturday, CDC officials dressed in biohazard suits escorted two passengers
off a United Airlines jet that landed at Newark Liberty International Airport in
New Jersey because they were believed to be from Liberia and exhibiting signs
of illness during the flight, WABC-TV and the Record newspaper reported.
An airport official was quoted by the newspaper as saying CDC officials
did not believe the pair, a man and his daughter, were sick with Ebola.
The official added that all other passengers on the flight from Brussels
were cleared to leave the plane."

http://news.yahoo.com/two-passengers...182449988.html

"The sick passenger and his daughter were believed to be from Liberia, WABC-TV reported.
It said they had transferred to the U.S.-bound flight in Brussels, a major hub for flights
from western and central African countries. The passenger, who was vomiting during
the flight from Brussels to Newark Liberty International Airport, was escorted off the
plane by officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and taken to
University Hospital in Newark, accompanied by his daughter. The plane's 251 other
passengers and 14 crew members were held in temporary quarantine while health officials
evaluated the situation, Erica Dumas, the Port Authority spokeswoman, said.
She added that all were ultimately cleared and permitted to leave the plane."


One ponders why the necessity for the biohazard suits, if CDC officials
didn't believe the two passengers were possible ebola carriers?
Were tests run immediately and if so, why isn't this mentioned
in the article and given as the reason for allowing the other passengers on
the plane to leave without restraint?:facepalm: Too many unanswered questions.

Apparently it only took 90 minutes to determine that this man didn't have ebola,
whereas with Duncan, it took 2 full days to make the diagnosis that he has it.

I guess that's 'progress'.....

The guy in Dallas was sent home with medication the first time he went to the hospital. I think it was 2 days later that he returned sicker than before and they admitted him. Huge mistake on the hospital's part and they are blaming it on a software glitch. Those 2 days of going untreated in the hospital may cost the guy his life and exposed who knows how many unnecessarily to Ebola.

I pray he survives. The hospital missed it with his diagnosis. So sad.

The biohazard suits were worn on entering the plane because they didn't know if the threat was legitimate. It would have been a bit more foolish to enter the plane unprotected only to find the people were infected. Sort of like putting on your safety glasses after the metal shard has flown into your eye. What this really highlights is the difficulty of stopping the spread of a disease that has up to a 21 day incubation period in a time when one can fly halfway around the globe in less than a day.

I'm sad for Mr. Duncan, but I'm angry at the hospital turning him away. Had he received treatment immediately, he would have had a much better chance for survival.

You ignored the problem. How is it they observed a guy from Liberia vomiting and ill for a little over an hour and determined he didn't have Ebola when the tests to confirm Ebola take at least 2 days? Apparently vomiting is a symptom since the guy in Texas was vomiting too.

Didn't ignore the problem. Can you show me where you found the information that the tests take two days? I found a news link to the ambulance driver and EMTs in Dallas having been tested Tuesday night and released after testing negative. The story was dated Oct. 1. This would indicate to me there are quicker tests than you presume.

Can anyone explain why banning people from entering the US who have recently been in any of the 3 African countries where ebola is most active is a bad thing to do?

I assume the US could set up exceptions on a case by case basis with proper testing for aid workers, etc.

Don't have to ban them from entering the country, just have to quarantine them for three weeks before turning them loose.

In view of the threat of ebola, that seems prudent to me.

In reviewing the information presented, it would seem that the
 

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"facts" are somewhat lacking in the original story as to how long it takes
to verify whether someone has ebola or not. Call it poor journalistic skills....or better yet, poor response at the intake hospital, who DIDN'T
do any testing UNTIL Duncan showed back up 2 days later and much worse off!!! It shouldn't take more than a simple blood draw and a high-powered
microscope to say yea or nay. If that takes longer than 60-90 minutes,
it's because they're being paid by the hour; not the job. And time is of the
essence in battling ANY pandemic based disease. That and shutting down ALL ingress and egress carriers and/or potential carriers.....something that
our gooberment has been loathe in doing. The question that needs to be asked of them, then, is "why is that?" Because all it may take, is another
Duncan to come into this country (or even a dozen of them) and it will be
a nightmare. Those in the health care field and the CDC may continue to try and soothe the nerves of the sheeple by claiming that there is little cause for concern; than we have the finest medical response teams/doctors/hospitals, etc. I find it paradoxical that Obama has banned flights to Israel for political reasons and yet has no qualms about continuing to allow West African flights to come and go into the U.S. daily...... perhaps he didn't want the jews to come down with ebola? Yeah....that's it! What else could it be? If some of you still are under the jaded belief that he loves America and all that it has stood for, you're still sadly mistaken. :yuck:

This is only good if they are quarantined BEFORE getting on a flight to come here-or anywhere.

Then why did the CDC say they wouldn't have the test results back on the one patient for 2 days? The news was following it and the next day said they would have the test results back sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Poppy Newark Liberty Airport has a CDC Quarantine station located in it. The station is there to detect and test pathogens at all of the NYC area ports of entry. You think they might have the necessary testing equipment to detect illness immediately?

Which costs least: Quarantining them for 3 weeks in US or not letting them in?
Which has fewer risks of ebola getting into US: Quarantining them for 3 weeks in US or not letting them in?

http://www.newsweek.com/how-hospitals-test-ebola-274898 This article says the testing can be done in three to four hours. I've seen other reports of under two hours for testing. The facility at the airport was set up for scenarios like this and can seemingly do the tests quickly on site. Something that was likely not able to be done in Houston where secure transport was likely needed to get the sample to an appropriate lab. Now maybe you can answer my question with facts about where you got the information that testing takes two days rather than making assumptions as to why it might.

What you're essentially asking for is closing the US to all international travelers. The flight in question originated in Brussels. There's a lot more direct travel between Europe and Western Africa than there are directs flights to the US. Even if we shut down all direct flights to the US from Africa the chance still exists that travelers coming from Europe will come in contact with someone and transport the virus here again. Politics aside, travel bans might make you feel better but will have little practical effectiveness.

You'd have to quarantine every international traveler to eliminate the risk. The cost would seem prohibitive let alone what it would do to the economy.

Check their visa. If it's stamped with a country on the exclude list, they don't get on the plane.

You can't eliminate the risk. That is a given.

What I am talking about is what is the least expensive and safest way to prevent the ebola virus from entering the US.

What cost to the economy? The millions that have already been spent in Dallas? The cost of quarantining and monitoring potential ebola carriers after they have gotten into the US? The cost of an actual outbreak of ebola in the US?

I heard a good question on Hannity the other day. Would you want your son or daughter to be a flight attendant on a plane flying in/out of 1 of the 3 African countries with Ebola (changed slightly from original)?

I don't understand why we don't just check visas and stop anyone with a stamp from 1 of the 3 countries from boarding a plane to US.

Any arriving flight that's been outside of the US in the past week needs to be parked and all passengers and flight crews put into quarantine for a month or 28 days, whichever comes first. The federal government needs to give responsibility for this emergency response to the CDC. They're the so-called experts that insisted their lawyers' emergency plan for responding to the anthrax attacks years ago be adopted by each state and put into each state legislation covering response to public health safety. I have no respect for CDC and their WHO masters.

What you're talking about is an essentially unfeasable and unworkable idea with little real benefit that makes you feel good about something having been done. This outbreak has been going on for a while. People have been traveling in and out of the three countries to Europe and the US that entire time. Liberia and the other countries have been screening passengers for signs of disease and questioning them. Those countries have the most interest in stopping the spread and keeping their countries open. In all that time we've had one case of Ebola reaching our shores outside of emergency evacuations. The risk seems a little low to be disrupting all international travel. The hospital in this case failed in its duties. A better and more workable idea is to make sure that kind of failure doesn't happen again. We've had Marburg and other hemorrhagic viruses reach our country in the past. We dealt with them and we'll deal with the next case of Ebola that reaches us, as it inevitably will.

The risk of Ebola reaching Western countries increases dramatically every month because of air traffic.

http://news.yahoo.com/high-risk-ebol...113015476.html

I like a visual so here's a current view of the Global Alert Map. Pay attention to all the red flags in the US. Click and read the summary or description for each marker:
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

I assume you read the entire article including the part about Nigeria, right next to the outbreak, containing its own cases and likely to be declared ebola free shortly. Or the part about the confidence in health systems in the developed world to handle the problem. An isolated case here and there ,which is what the risk is, can be readily contained without shutting down international travel.

Don't know if you've heard of this amazing thing or not....
 

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but there's this little booklet called a "passport/visa", which each
& every traveler MUST have when going abroad. Amazingly, someone
has figured out that those visiting others countries, will have such facts
stamped into their booklet and then others can check and see where
they've been. All it would take (or so it seems), would be for someone
at the various points of exit/entry, to check out these booklets and
determine where the traveler(s) have been in the last month or so.
But then, that would make TOO MUCH SENSE in a 'regressive' world, now wouldn't? :facepalm:

It could be very easily done if every country bought into it. But as long as one flight leaves Monrovia and is allowed to land elsewhere the problem persists. It's fairly easy for any country to deny entry of a plane or even an individual from that plane. It's more difficult to prevent that passenger from boarding or preventing that plane taking off abroad. The real question is why the panic over what is, in reality, a very small risk? I don't hear a broad outcry for closing all schools and daycares because of the enterovirus outbreak in this country. One child had already died and thousands more have become ill. Surely drastic measures should be taken, right?

Possibly.

And yet, I've seen no outcry from you or others. Why?

Here's a fairly recent story about last year's flu epidemic. 36,000 deaths. Any travel bans proposed?http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/201...-the-u-s-.html

Because we need more information on the paralysis it seems to be causing. Children die from lung related diseases all the time, so having 1 child die is statistically insignificant. Having a cluster of children suffering paralysis is a different story. The press and government seem awful quiet about it.

I still think it is suspect this happened shortly after the illegal alien children were spread around the US. Correlation doesn't necessarily indicate cause, but it is worthy of analysis.

How about Avian flu?

This is the ONLY link that hasn't been scrubbed, that states that Duncan finally died.

http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.co...-first-us.html

None of that has anything to do with why you're not advocating for closing schools to stop the spread. The same theory holds, any child or adult who came in contact with one of these sick kids or was even the school they went to should be quarantined, right. It's all about stopping the potential spread in the easiest and cheapest way according to you.

I don't recall all flights from Southeast Asia having been cancelled in the past or thousands of passengers quarantined. Refresh my memory.

I didn't advocate closing schools. I replied possibly to your setup post.

If I had a child in a school in which 10 or more children came down with the virus, I would keep my child out of school. This appears to be a polio like virus and until they understand it better, know how to treat it, and know the effects of the disease, why take chances? Why is the virus so widespread and have more serious effects than in the past?

Under those circumstances, I think a school should seriously consider closing.

But you keep giving reasons for closing schools. You're "why take chances" logic is the exact same logic you use to advocate for quarantining all travelers from the affected ebola countries. Why the panic over something that, as of yet, hasn't infected one person in this country and none over something that has infected thousands and killed one?

You seem determined to put words in my mouth.

The current policy is based on political correctness, not sound public health practices.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/obamas-pr...ing-americans/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...-Warning-Signs

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-1...e-illness.html

So I certainly don't think that keeping people possibly infected with the Ebola virus out of the country and possibly closing schools if the Entrovirus D68 becomes a threat is an overreaction, but good public health policy as has been practiced in this country for at least the last 100 years.

Every public health expert I've heard or read has spoken out against travel bans and quarantines as being counterproductive to stopping this outbreak. They all speak of better public health practices in West Africa and battling the epidemic there as the best course. They talk about the low danger of the epidemic spreading to western countries. The only people I have heard advocating for travel bans and quarantines and drumming up fear are politicians and talking heads and those who listen to them. I don't believe I have put words in your mouth. I have asked why your response is different in the case of an actual public health problem in this country as opposed to the ebola outbreak in Africa.

From what I've read - The problem isn't letting "them in" it's letting anyone in.

That is everyone who flies from out of the country could have come in contact with or come from a country with infection.

So, do we, USA, insist that everyone who is flying into this country wait 21 days to fly?
Do we confine all individuals who land in this country to isolate in confinement zones for 21 days?
What about people who have been on Cruise Ships? Container vessels? Military Personel?

So, I think it's impossible to travel ban or stop air traffic. Unless we want to quarantine all of the above to.

So how many cases of Enterovirus and how many deaths before you consider it a threat?