So the message here is screw these American doctors, let em die in Africa because they went to save lives? Makes me wanna sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Murica!!
usc there are new treatments in the test stage as well as vaccines. There is a wealth of potential to find a cure & vaccine. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping it will stay in the jungle is a fools errand. If we do that it WILL come to America and we will be less able to deal with it.
It isn't even that high. We don't really know what the risk is because it's never gotten to urban areas or the Western Hemisphere. But the doctor contracted the disease from another health care worker and they were ALL following contamination protocol. If it's no big deal, then why have so many infectious patients been able to avoid quarantine? There are family members in Africa who directly violated contained areas to forcibly remove their infected and highly contagious family members. Newsflash....the US has third-world people living here. America isn't a sealed environment....check out the border to the South....feelin me? Do I care? Yes. In fact I found it every encouraging that the doctor was listed in grave condition just a few days ago but was able to walk into Emory with minimal help. Perhaps he will be part of the 40% survival rate. I hope so.
Well, no. It's one doctor and one care worker who have contracted the disease despite being intelligent, well-informed people who presumably followed all protocols with absolute certainty. Informed risk. These folks, while admirable, did in fact, take a huge risk by going to a foreign country that has absolutely dismal medical care to help care for uninformed or mistrusting patients who carry a deadly disease. They went to Africa knowing that death was a risk. Tell me why, exactly, should America shoulder the potential risk to the population because they made dangerous choices. Are these folks any more American than others who are unable to come home? How about those being held in North Korea who did nothing wrong?
Of course it won't stay there. And yes it will eventually end up in Europe, Asia, and the West, including America. That doesn't mean I am willing to purposely import it at this point. The CDC doesn't need the patients here to learn what they need to learn or become more prepared. For them, and Emory, this is a test-run to see if they can be successful. What if they aren't? Gupta has it right, unfortunately for the world. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn...-ebola-around-the-world/?sr=sharebar_facebook
We put people in the fucking moon in the 60's. I'm sure we can get a few americans in some sort of quarantined flight back here safely and treat them with no issues.
I'm not talking about how bad the disease is, we all know it. I'm saying that high-containment medical facilities exist and any risk to the population is not going to come from there. It's going to fly in from some traveler who doesn't know that he's sick yet and probably already has. Notions about denying this doctor the best possible care based on fear of infection are not justifiable. Africa doesn't have anything close to the facilities we have here. You know this to be true.
Again an argument for bringing these two to a facility where there is a depth and breadth of knowledge to learn more about the disease and how to fight & treat it. Like the plague, syphilis, flu, HIV and other scourges the disease is usually too hot to really spread. By that I mean it kills its victim before it can spread. As it mutates to a form that allows spread while still being very deadly it enters its most dangerous phase. Before with the diseases noted earlier millions were killed before the disease mutated to a slower/milder form over many, many years. Today modern science has the opportunity to prevent the pandemics of earlier years. Look at HIV, even without a vaccine it has been changed from a death sentence to a condition to live with. With Ebola we only need to help the body hang on till natural systems kill the virus in the body. It is in places like Emory that this can be done NOT in central Africa. We reduce risk doing this and could greatly increase risk by not doing so.
Sure we can. I would also have imagined that a highly trained doctor with lots of Ebola transmission experience and who followed strict quarantine protocols would not have become infected but....
