CDC headquarters in Atlanta. Reuters
The investigation into who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus in the United States has begun. -Reuters. A seven person team is working with the family of the victim to determine who he may have had contact with between getting sick and being admitted. A "handful" of people are being monitored, including the victims family. The government is downplaying the risk and claims that a major outbreak is unlikely.
My Comment:
The CDC really needs to make sure to dot all their i's and cross all of there t's here. Given that this man was out in the public for four days means he could have had contact with many different people. At the very least his family, the doctors and nurses that treated him the first time (and let him go), the ambulance crew and every single patient that was in the waiting room with him at the hospital should be investigated and isolated if need be. It's also very possible that he went out and did things while he was ill. If he went to a store or a restaurant the CDC needs to know and know now. They need to monitor everyone else who used the same ambulance that the patient used because it wasn't taken out of service right away.
I do disagree with the CDC's stance on not holding the other people on the plane. There is a slight possibility that the patient caught the disease while on the plane. The Ebola incubation period varies between two and twenty-one days. It's possible that someone was sick on the plane with the patient, infected him somehow, and the patient got sick very quickly. If that's true then there may be another person or persons out there with Ebola. This is an extremely unlikely scenario but not outside the realm of possibility. I'm hoping that the CDC is actually lying about this and is interviewing everyone on that plane. It should be easy enough to do, or could be done already because all they would have to do is contact everyone on the flight and see if anyone was sick.
As for the reaction to the disease I'm not liking how the CDC and the media is downplaying the threat. Yes there is a very good chance that they will contain the outbreak. Yes Ebola doesn't spread like the flu. But it is still a very dangerous disease that spreads a lot easier then they are making out. It can, under perfect conditions, spread through the air if an aerosol is formed and it only takes a few viral particles to infect people. It is a disease that spreads through sweat and causes fevers that make people sweat. All it takes to catch the disease is to touch someone with it and having a tiny cut on your hands or touching your mouth or eyes afterwards. I know that they don't want people to panic, but they should be pushing hand-washing and sanitation nation wide.
I know Texas is a long way from the rest of the country, but all it takes is one flight or a trucker hauling a load from there and getting sick in a different state for it to spread across the nation. And of course if this has happened once, it can happen again. Maybe next time we don't catch the disease until it has infected a dozen people. It's easy to track the contacts of one person. Add a digit or two to that number and then you end up with a Liberia style disaster. I'm not saying people should panic. But you need to start thinking about what to do if the situation gets out of control.
No comments:
Post a Comment