Ebola: Dallas Judge Mocks The Virus As America Gets Paranoid
n this photo taken on Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, Ebola patients lie outside Port Loko District Hospital in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. Port Loko is one of three districts recently quarantined by the government (AP Photo/Tanya Bindra)
EBOLA has arrived in the US. How are they handling things?
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins drove a family exposed to ebola to their new home. He never did get changed:
“On Friday, while hazmat experts were working inside the apartment wearing Tyvek bio-hazard suits, Jenkins again was seen going in and out of the apartment while not even wearing a mask or gloves.”
Did you meet with the infected, America’s first Ebola patient, who has been identified as Thomas Eric Duncan?
“We are working from a list of about 100 potential or possible contacts and will soon have an official contact tracing number that will be lower,” Texas Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Carrie Williams said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we’re starting with this very wide net, including people who have had even brief encounters with the patient or the patient’s home. The number will drop as we focus in on those whose contact may represent a potential risk of infection.”
A young man prepares to leave an apartment in Dallas, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas stayed last week. The family living there has been confined under armed guard while being monitored by health officials. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Ebola is not spread by water or directly by food, nor is it transmitted by air like respiratory illnesses such as measles and chickenpox. Coughing and sneezing aren’t common symptoms of Ebola, but if a symptomatic patient coughs or sneezes, and the saliva or mucous comes in contact with another person’s eyes, nose or mouth, these fluids may transmit the disease.
Medical workers pictured in hoods and respirators are wearing those items for precautionary purposes and not out of necessity, Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, chief of communicable disease epidemiology & immunization of public health in Seattle and King County, Wash., told FoxNews.com. Face masks are part of infectious disease control protocols, to avoid splashes and droplets, but masks that filter air are necessary for airborne illnesses, which Ebola is not.
When someone recovers from Ebola, they can no longer spread that specific species of the virus, according to the CDC. People who recover from Ebola develop antibodies that last for at least 10 years, research shows.
Nonetheless, Ebola has been found in semen for up to three months after the person recovers. The CDC advises that those who become infected abstain from sex or use condoms for three months after they recover.
Ebola can live outside of the body — on surfaces like countertops or doorknobs, for example — for several hours. In bodily fluids like blood, on the other hand, the virus can survive outside of the body for several days at room temperature.
John Schiff, owner of the Reuseum surplus store in Boise, Idaho, poses for a photo with a computer showing his company’s “Obtanium” eBay store, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. Schiff says he has had a spike in sales of surgical masks on his site, which he attributes to public concern over the Ebola disease. (AP Photo/Lisa Baumann)
A Dallas apartment where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States had stayed is finally getting a thorough cleaning, days after the diagnosis left four people quarantined there with soiled towels and sweat-stained sheets from the Ebola patient.
After some delays, the first of three phases in cleaning the apartment began Friday afternoon. By around 5:45 p.m. (6:45 p.m. ET), the effort was continuing but at least the sheets and towels had been moved out. Crews also worked to remove three mattresses, each of which the Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan slept on, city of Dallas spokeswoman Sana Syed said.
And so, too, had the four people — the partner of the Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, her 13-year-old son and her two 20-something nephews.
They had been ordered to stay inside the apartment until October 19. By that point, enough time should have passed to determine if any of them contracted Ebola or if they’re in the clear.
Judge Clay Jenkins, director of the county’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said Friday that Duncan’s partner slept last night on a couch pillow on the living room floor. But now she and the others have a new place to call home in the meantime: a private 4-bedroom residence in Dallas, which was arranged with the help of someone in the local faith-based community.
In this Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014 file photo, Nowa Paye, 9, is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of Ebola infection in the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia
“People who contract Ebola in West Africa can get through airport screenings and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen, according to healthcare experts who believe more must be done to identify infected travelers.”
In this file photo from Oct. 28, 2006, a mock patient is cared for during a drill at the Nebraska biocontainment unit in the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. A missionary, Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, who was infected with Ebola while serving in Liberia is being flown to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha where he is expected to arrive Friday morning. Sacra will begin treatment in the hospital’s special isolation unit, believed to be the largest in the U.S. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Is paranoia taking hold?
Matthew Continetti thinks:
I … believe it is entirely rational to fear the possibility of a major Ebola outbreak, of a threat to the president and his family, of jihadists crossing the border, of a large-scale European or Asian war, of nuclear proliferation, of terrorists detonating a weapon of mass destruction. These dangers are real, and pressing, and though the probability of their occurrence is not high, it is amplified by the staggering incompetence and failure and misplaced priorities of the U.S. government. It is not Ebola I am afraid of. It is our government’s ability to deal with Ebola.
Government veterinarians line up dead monkeys after administering lethal injections Thursday, Jan. 30, 1997 at Ferlite Farms in Calamba, Laguna province south of Manila. More than 600 monkeys in the farm were ordered killed following the discovery of an Ebola virus strain from two of them which were shipped to the US for scientific research. (AP Photo/Mark Penaranda)
Meanwhile… in Africa it get worse:
The report released Tuesday is a tool the agency has developed to help with efforts to slow transmission of the epidemic and estimate the potential number of future cases. Researchers say the total number of cases is vastly underreported by a factor of 2.5 in Sierra Leone and Liberia, two of the three hardest-hit countries. Using this correction factor, researchers estimate that approximately 21,000 total cases will have occurred in Liberia and Sierra Leone by Sept. 30. Reported cases in those two countries are doubling approximately every 20 days, researchers said. “Extrapolating trends to January 20, 2015, without additional interventions or changes in community behavior,” such as much-improved safe burial practices, the researchers estimate that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could be between approximately 550,000 to 1.4 million.
What to do?
Posted: 6th, October 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
