And don’t tell me that we should just stop all flights from Africa to the US. That would make things worse (as pointed out by Jon Stewart and others). Besides, it wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to fly to the US, because they could just fly somewhere else, then fly to the US.
The truth is that we should have helped Africa prevent this outbreak in the first place. In fact, one of the few things that Dubya did that I applaud wholeheartedly was his work helping Africa.
2 Comments
I am with the POTUS on this one. While I’m not opposed to a travel ban, it is not logically the best way to prevent it coming here.
The problem we have is the disease coming here and we got surprised. I don’t think it would have made any difference which hospital the 1st patient showed up for treatment, the preliminary contact would have exposed numerous people. We would never have set up a screening table outside the ER or office and questioned everyone walking in on their travel and contact history. Secondly, except for those 4 places already designated as able to receive Ebola patients I’d venture to guess not many others are totally prepared for the actual isolation process necessary to prevent spreading the disease.
The previous cases were all diagnosed before the patient arrived and all systems were set up and personnel prepared. This is not the case with a walk-in patient.
There is always mass confusion at the onset of an emergency, unless you’ve spent a lot of time and money rehearsing regularly prior to that. In the military on one of my tours in Iraq, we staffed a treatment facility and practiced mass casualty drills very month that involved different scenarios. The first couple of iterations did not go well, but by the 3rd go round we had a good system and all the parts were working.
Our HC system will rapidly develop the necessary measures to be successful and we will win this fight. I’d even venture to say that 95% of the hospitals in the country are glad they were not the first and are now learning rapidly from the mistakes made at the US Ebola ground zero. Probably the worst part about our country is our fluidity of movement and while its great for our people it makes a nightmare for containment. We will however overcome, adapt and prevail.
Heavy sigh, my wife is a nurse at the VA hospital. They are getting Hazmat suits.
This is insane.