Health officials clam up about effort to contain Ebola in Texas

[mystery-ak]

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/219626-officials-clam-up-about-ebola-response

By Elise Viebeck - 10/02/14 04:33 PM EDT

Health officials are refusing to answer growing questions about their response to the first Ebola case in the United States.

Under intense questioning from reporters, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Texas health department and the City of Dallas repeatedly declined Thursday to provide details about the steps being taken to prevent an outbreak.

Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey, who participated in one press call Thursday, would not identify or describe the four individuals who have been quarantined due to possible exposure to Ebola. They were later referred to as "family members" at a separate press conference.

Officials confirmed that roughly 100 people are being questioned about possible exposure to the virus — up from reports of more than 80 earlier in the day. Only a "handful" likely could have caught the virus, they said, and no one but the patient is showing symptoms.

Lakey would not explain why the quarantine order was necessary, saying only that it brings "confidence" that key medical monitoring will take place. Another official said later that the four individuals sought to leave home, but would not provide more detail.

Lakey also declined to answer questions about the hospital communication error that allowed the Ebola patient, identified by media outlets as Thomas Eric Duncan, to return home Friday after seeking treatment.



"Unfortunately, connections weren't made related to travel history and symptoms," he said. 

"I don't have that final analysis right now. … We're still investigating how the information fell through the cracks."

While health officials have vowed transparency as they deal with the Ebola patient, they are also charged with maintaining calm. Officials stress that they are trying to avoid spreading misinformation.

"We will give you all the valid information we have as soon as we have it," said CDC Director Tom Frieden. 



But limiting disclosure can undermine agencies' credibility when information spills out on its own. 



Neither Texas nor the CDC has confirmed Duncan's identity or his flight path through Brussels and Washington, for example. 

The Liberian government revealed the patient's name on Wednesday, while United Airlines confirmed his presence on one of its flights.

Frieden acknowledged Thursday that Ebola would pose a risk to the United States until the epidemic stops in West Africa.

"The plain truth is that we can't make the risk zero until the outbreak is controlled," he said. 

"What we can do is minimize that risk … by working to ensure that there are no more individuals that will be exposed [here]."



Frieden also said that, in theory, a sneeze or cough could spread the virus from someone experiencing Ebola symptoms. 

Officials had previously downplayed this possibility, focusing on direct contact with bodily fluids. 



"There are certainly theoretical situations where someone sneezes … and you touch your eyes or mouth or nose," and catch the virus from any transmitted particles, he said. 

“[But] realistically you can say what may be theoretically possible as opposed to what actually happens in the real world," he added. 



Texas health officials faced their own barrage of questions at a Thursday afternoon press conference.



Reporters asked: How many of Duncan's younger contacts were in school this week? Why weren't the four individuals quarantined in a medical facility? Why weren't soiled linens that likely carry the virus immediately removed? 



The event became increasingly confrontational.



Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings scolded journalists for being "part of the problem" while calling the response to the case "at best, disorganized."



"It is, at best, disorganized out there and we have some members of the press that are creating a bit more of that," he said. "We need everybody to be professional."



Journalists complained about the lack of information as officials left. 

"Is this transparency?" asked one reporter. "You bring us all here and then only take six or seven questions? … I have a job to do."

The tensions with the press come at a time when Republican lawmakers are beginning to question whether the administration is doing enough to control the virus and prevent more infected people from entering the country.

“It's a big mistake to downplay it and act as if it’s not a big deal,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

[Fishrrman]

Over the past couple of days, I've been reading "The Hot Zone", about the early days of Ebola and about it's earliest contact with American hands (in Maryland).

This story will make you squirm.

In contrast with the assurances of "the authorities" about Ebola's inability to spread "through the air", read this excerpt from the book:
==============
EUGENE JOHNSON SAT at a picnic table at Fort Detrick near a duck pond, leaning forward and gazing at me. It was hot day in the middle of summer.

He was wearing sunglasses. He placed his large elbows on the table, took off his sunglasses, and rubbed his eyes. He was six foot two, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes were brown and set deep in his bearded face, and there were dark circles under the lower lids. He looked tired.

"So Peter Tukei got on the phone to tell me that the boy had visited Kitum Cave," Johnson said. "I still get chills when I think about it. A few weeks later, I flew to Nairobi, and I talked with David Silverstein, the kid's doctor. Peter Tukei was with me. Then we went everyplace in Kenya the kid went, even to his house. His parents had a nice house in Kisumu, near Lake Victoria. It was a stucco house with a wall around it, and there was a cook and groundskeepers and a driver. The house was clean and neat, open and whitewashed. We saw that there was a rock hyrax living on the roof. It was a pet, and it lived in the gutters.

There were a couple of storks, and there were rabbits and goats and all kinds of birds. I didn't see any bats around this house."

He paused, thinking. No one else was around. A few ducks swam in the pond. "I was really nervous about talking with the parents," he said.

"See, I am a field person. My wife and I don't have children. I'm not the kind of a guy who can console a mother, plus I work in the U.S. military. I had no idea how to talk to them. I tried to put myself in their place, and I remembered how I felt when my father died. I let them talk about their son, Peter Cardinal and his sister had been inseparable from the moment he arrived in Kenya. The kids had spent the whole time together, doing
everything together. So what was the difference in behavior? Why did Peter Cardinal get the virus but not his sister? There was one difference in their behavior. The parents told me a story about the rocks in the cave. They told me their kid was an amateur geologist.

There was this issue: did he cut his hand on any crystals in the cave? We went over that possibility with the parents, Peter had said to them that he wanted to collect some of the crystals in Kitum Cave. So he beat on the walls of the cave with a hammer and collected some rocks with crystals in them. The rocks were broken up by the driver and washed by the cook.

We tested their blood, and they were not positive for Marburg."

It seems possible that the point of contact had been the boy's hands, that the virus had entered Cardinal's bloodstream through a tiny cut. Possibly he had pricked his finger on a crystal that had been contaminated with urine from some animal or the remains of a crushed insect. But even if he had pricked his finger on a crystal, that didn't tell where the virus lived in nature; it didn't identify the virus's natural host.

"We went to look at the cave," he said. "We had to protect ourselves when we went inside. We knew that Marburg is transmitted by the aerosol route."

In 1986 - the year before Peter Cardinal died - Gene Johnson had done an experiment that showed that Marburg and Ebola can indeed travel through the air. He infected monkeys with Marburg and Ebola by letting them breathe it into their lungs, and he discovered that a very small dose of airborne Marburg or Ebola could start an explosive infection in a monkey.

Therefore, Johnson wanted the members of expedition to wear breathing apparatus inside the cave.

"I brought with me these military gas masks with filters. We needed some kind of covering to put over our heads, too, or we'd get bat shit in our hair. We bought pillowcases at a local store. They were white, with big flowers. So the first time we went into the cave, it was a bunch of Kenyans and me wearing these military gas masks and these flowered pillowcases on our heads, and the Kenyans are just cracking up."
==============
(emphasis added by me)

Suggestion:
- Open a search engine
- Enter "the hot zone pdf"
- First hit ought to do it
- You'll know what to do next.

Addendum:
"Marburg" above is what Ebola was called early on, before much knowledge about it was gained...

[240B]

Mosquitoes, sanitation workers, common citzens living their life.
 
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1346–53.

 The fourth horseman is mentioned in Revelation 6:8, “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plagues.

[Luis Gonzalez]

This guy walked into a Doctor's office, was processed, given some pills and sent home.

Lately, when I go see my own Doctor, there's more time spent by both him and his staff completing all sorts of forms needed to stay in compliance with the ACA than in actually asking me why I'm there.

Patient zero is a full construct of Obamacare.