Let's review how Ebola got into the US.
Back on Sept 16, just 2 weeks ago, Obama lauded the protocols and treatments in place to handle Ebola, which "is very difficult to get and it's a rare chance that it will come"-read here.
Mr. Duncan, who lived in Liberia, helped carry his landlord's dying daughter out of the home and into a car to get her to hospital. The woman was deathly sick, and her brother, who helped also, has since died. Amid this harrowing scenario, Mr. Dunca, who holds a US visa, obviously contacted his family in Dallas and was no doubt supported in his egress from Liberia. He knew he was at risk; he quit his job with Fedex, unknown if he only purchased one-way tickets.
He flew to Brussels, waited for 7 hours to get onto a United Air flight to Washington-Dulles, waited another 3 hours to board a flight to Dallas. 4 days later he was in the emergency room of a Dallas hospital with flu-like symptoms, sent home with antibiotics. Apparently he did tell "someone" he was from Liberia because he didn't have a social security number and showed his passport as I.D. Unclear that he communicated this directly to the "health care worker" that he had come into contact with a woman who died from Ebola. I guarantee you he was seen as a black uninsured man, was turfed to a RNP or PA who may not even know where Liberia is. "Uh, a suburb out to the west of us?"
I can't wait to see the fallout from that alone.
Does any American working a front desk at any urgent care center or ER in the US know what/where or why Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia is important? Do they know what's involved here? I'm sure not.
But the most disturbing part of all of this is the non-response and robotic, uninvolved commentary provided by Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the CDC. Clearly, he's avoiding giving out too much info which may implicate the HIPAA laws. He won't address the fall out about the countless numbers of people who have come into contact with the infected Mr. Duncan. He won't address the apartment complex he was in, nor how the water nor treatment of sewage from that complex has been decontaminated. But aside from this, a deadly virus has gotten into the community because of the incompetence and slapdash, inept rule of law and guidelines from the top. We are told all up and down that we have fantastic protocols and contingencies in place. Bull**it. There is nothing.
I have been in practice for 14 years. I used to receive daily emails from the Health Dept. about SARS, anthrax, etc about 12 years ago. Now there is silence. There is no planning. There is no info, because they don't know what to say.
I walked into the Urgent Care next to my building yesterday to take a look around. There was s sign prominently posted that firearms were forbidden on the property. There was no info on what to do or say if you had been traveling out of west Africa and felt sick. Now, both are deadly weapons, and there is ZERO about Ebola in my towns' Urgent Care. It is not politically expedient to condemn Ebola, but yes a gun.
I can only say I can't wait for the schadenfreude I will feel when I see bureaucrats resigning. Thank god Julia Pierson, former head of the Secret Service who couldn't run a n ice cream stand if her life depended on it, has resigned. Now we just need a dozen or so more to quit and the house can be straightened up...
