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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- | ||
| Dallas Ebola Show Good Plans Can Fail | ||
| 2014-10-05 | ||
| Long, tragic experience in West Africa helped experts write plans to protect Americans should the Ebola virus arrive on U.S. soil. Screening questions and procedures were crafted to succeed if everyone followed them. Good plans do not expect perfection, and plan accordingly. But the careful planning broke down during a single late-night shift in a Dallas emergency room. Human and institutional missteps turned Thomas Eric Duncan’s low-grade fever and stomach pain into a public-health crisis and subjected a prestigious hospital to global criticism. Day 1 for Duncan was apparently Sept. 15, according to The New York Times and The Associated Press. That was when he helped carry a pregnant, desperately ill woman into a hospital in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, then took her back home because the hospital had no room. The woman died from Ebola that day. Her brother died the next day. Gee, I wonder if they were contagious? On Sept. 19, Day 4 after exposure, Duncan went to Roberts International Airport in Monrovia for a United Airlines flight to Brussels and on to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. His temperature, like that of other departing passengers, was taken repeatedly -- a precaution against the spread of Ebola, which often shows up first through a fever.
This week, news reports added a critical detail: At the Monrovia airport, Duncan replied "no" on a form that asked if he had been in contact with an Ebola patient. Really good plans do not fall apart because of human prevarication. He was perhaps concerned he might not be allowed to leave had he been truthful? That apparent deception meant CDC screening guidelines for U.S. hospitals were about to face their biggest test. Which they failed. You knew that. Presbyterian's failure to follow the guidelines may illustrate one reason emergency planning is often futile. People tend to regard adherence to the procedures as a mundane chore, rather than "something urgent and imminent," he said. "Psychologically, most of us feel that it can't happen to us, or it won't happen here," he said. "Africa is far away, and Ebola seems like an abstraction. So when the symptoms show up, at some level we don't actually believe it." Sort of like the southern border issue. Presbyterian's emergency room staff may have viewed Duncan as a routine patient with a minor bug because that's what they expected. By contrast, hospitals that follow the guidelines aggressively say they work. Dallas' biggest hospital, Parkland Memorial, knows precisely how many of the 30,000 patients it screened between Aug. 6 and Sept. 30 had been to an Ebola-affected country: 16. None needed further evaluation or isolation, a spokeswoman said last week. Now if that turns out to be in error, then you should worry.
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| Posted by:Bobby |
| #22 Can't desk check and rubber stamp Pandemic plans. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2014-10-05 23:36 |
| #21 yes, one or two every month until this subsides there. make sure you have food and water for 21 days, on the off chance it happens in your town. |
| Posted by: rammer 2014-10-05 23:29 |
| #20 Until the next importation, that is. Maybe one every few weeks - more? less? - for as long as the outbreak in Africa continues. |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2014-10-05 22:47 |
| #19 You know he spent the first few days here banging his fiancee. At this point he is dead, and she is fucked. Other than her, everyone else he exposed is going to turn up with symptoms in the next week. Based on what happened in Nigeria, probably at least two or three. The public health people need to swoop those people up and get them into isolation. Then they will infect no one and this event will end. |
| Posted by: rammer 2014-10-05 21:22 |
| #18 The death report is single source, so accord it skeptiicism until confirmed with at least one other credible source. And I don't mean anything from Alex Jones and the infowars retards. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-10-05 21:10 |
| #17 That judge is a well known idiot - he's the one that volunteered Dallas to take all those illegal alien "children". FYI, Duncan is dead. Ebola works quickly. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-10-05 21:05 |
| #16 Yep, that too. My original idea was that they are unconsciously thinking that something that deadly could only be passed on by having sex with the person. Duncan probably thought he was safe. |
| Posted by: gorb 2014-10-05 20:51 |
| #15 Maybe they think this is like AIDS. Posted by: gorb 2014-10-05 16:03 Gorb, Good point - remember how the media kept insisting that eventually AIDS would 'break out'? Didn't happen. I'd bet that a LOT of people are thinking the same thing here. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2014-10-05 17:35 |
| #14 Maybe they think this is like AIDS. |
| Posted by: gorb 2014-10-05 16:03 |
| #13 And then there's top men in positions of authority recklessly playing with fire: "Liberal Judge Drives Ebola Exposed Family, Attends Presser Wearing Same Shirt" With Ebola there are many unknowns. As far as the dynamics of a big, multi-regional Ebola outbreak are concerned virtually everything is unknown because it has never happened before. The good news is that these are known unknowns. The bad news is that gormless idiots like this judge are turning these known unknowns into unknown unknowns in their precious little minds in order to justify treating this threat like any given demented 'internet challenge.' Sometimes good plans fail, sometimes they're sabotaged be reckless and irresponsible poseurs. |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2014-10-05 15:33 |
| #12 The problem is there was no real plan. Duncan showed up, exposed people and died while our bureaucratic wheels barely moved. More infected are coming and it seems we still have no plan except blame someone else. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2014-10-05 15:10 |
| #11 I expected Andromida Strain. What I got was Airplane! Snark aside, when the prez is going about saying come to America and I will give you citizenship (and all its wellfare) and health care, everyone listens; not just the latino vote bloc. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-10-05 13:59 |
| #10 Actually, it's pretty simple. Any crisis that chews up the media cycle and camouflages his ineptness and misdeeds is good for the Champ. Border closures for any reason is a non- sequitur for the Champ. He doesn't recognize international borders anyway, particularly our own. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-10-05 13:25 |
| #9 What this shows is, there are plans , and then there's reality. We don't really know what President Passive Aggressive's plans were or are though. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-10-05 13:16 |
| #8 and Dr. Steve - he had a visa, not a US passport. We have no reason to issue Visas to these countries right now |
| Posted by: Frank G 2014-10-05 12:48 |
| #7 In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2014-10-05 12:29 |
| #6 What this shows is, there are plans , and then there's reality. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-10-05 12:21 |
| #5 The people that should be 'prosecuted' sit in Washington D.C. This poor bastid's a deader. Some possible Obama logic: Of course it wouldn't be fair if the only people to suffer from Ebola were folks on the continent of Africa. Real solutions will come only when Americans become infected and share in the burden and costs. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-10-05 12:01 |
| #4 A plan is just a list of things that can go wrong. |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2014-10-05 11:56 |
| #3 Bobby - he could only be prosecuted if he lives long enough and unfortunately, that doesn't help anyone he may have infected. |
| Posted by: warthogswife 2014-10-05 11:53 |
| #2 There was talk a few days ago (in Dallas) about prosecuting him for reckless endangerment, or something like that. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2014-10-05 11:05 |
| #1 Duncan needs to go to jail for a long time. Sounds like criminal recklessness or something like that. |
| Posted by: gorb 2014-10-05 11:03 |