You know this statement isn't even funny !!!

Poor old Duncan, I heard that he's too weak to talk on the phone today. At least he's got the best of care while so many other suffering Ebola patients back in West Africa aren't even getting any IV fluids, a clean, comfortable bed or nausea/diarrhea/pain medication. Many of them are lying dying on the ground alone outside overfull clinics if no one helps them go back home when they are turned away.

There are money-raising campaigns for countries hit with volcanoes, violent storms and other catastrophes and I wonder when some celebrities or sports stars will start to raise funds to help those poor people in West Africa. Time to donate.

Liberia has a ratio of 1 doctor for every 100,000 people and a $543 per capita income. They are the 4th poorest country in the world . Of course things are so out of control but not just with the 2,800 people that have died from Ebola. The country has Aids and TB killing more people there than any other disease. We living in the US are very sheltered from the reality of the rest of the world. As Americans we are very spoiled and so many complain instead of embracing all that we should be truly grateful for to live here.

Oooppps! Now there is a plane grounded in New Jersey, arrived from Brussels with a sick passenger on board....CDC is on the way to remove the passenger....wonder if they will make all the people on that plane remain in isolation, if this DOES turn out to be positive for the ebola virus, for 21 days until they can see if any of them have caught it. Praying this is just some person that has air sickness! Update on our patient....his condition has worsened and he is now critical.

Oh my gosh! That would just be awful if there was a symptomatic (aka contagious, in ebola's case) person on a FLIGHT. What a nightmare. I hope it's just the flu or something...

Amen, so grateful I was born right here in the USA. Doctors always say they wait for a critically ill person to start complaining as that tends to show they are getting better so I guess we are pretty well off as we complain loudly when anything isn't handled to perfection! Tends to keep us all on our toes - that's for sure.

Nj eb
 

Looks like the person on the NJ plane does NOT have the virus and the rest of the passengers were released. Aaaah! But I am sure this will not be the last scare.

Thank GOD!!! What a horrific nightmare this is turning out to be......that poor cameraman is coming back Monday....(that entire team of journalists will be quarantined, and I think I heard they are looking at the necessity of these journalists all flooding over there, taking all the same pics, over and over....may be making changes in that protocol, which I feel would be advisable). ....think I heard he is going to.....Montana??? I think everyone else that is being watched or monitored closely has turned out not to be ebola so far....there is one patient that has malaria! Can you imagine??!! "OH thank God it is JUST malaria and not ebola!!!!!"

I heard on the local news that Thomas Eric Duncan has been intubated to aid his breathing, his condition having been downgraded to critical. I pray he can hold on and win his terrible battle with Ebola and that none of the innocent children he came into close contact with contract this awful disease and have to go through what he is going through now. I hate to see anyone critically ill but seeing a critically ill child fighting for its life just destroys me.

Correction: That journalist that is coming back on Monday with ebola, is going to Nebraska.

Golly, Dr. Rick Sacra, who beat Ebola, has now been hospitalized today in the Boston area with what his doctors think is possible pneumonia rather than another strain of Ebola. Here is a link to the story.

Former Ebola Patient Dr. Rick Sacra Hospitalized - NBC News

We may not ever know the TRUTH about alot of this.....Sorry, but I have absolutely NO confidence or trust in anything I am told by the people in charge. The prevalent thread seems to be if you hide your head in the sand deep enough, "bad news" just doesnt exist.....deny, deny, deny.

Dr. Sacra
 

Oh no, the poor guy, hasn't he been through enough?? Hope this bug he has can be treated successfully and he can be really well again.

I was glad to see this in print today.....while the politicians and the CDC and the hospital Administrators are all harmonously chanting all the "correct rhetoric" to keep everyone calm and confident, the first line of defense against any pandemic situation, is first responders and hospital staff. By their OWN admission, they feel woefully unprepared for this ebola event. I copy and paste the interview below because it shows all the hundreds of facets that are not realized let alone not being addressed. We did not even have protocols in place to determine HOW to transport infected materials from a contaminated apartment, or how to effectively destroy these materials. Permits that did not exist, to cover all these questions, had to be "produced", and hopefully, with the gross lack of knowledge people in this country have about every aspect of ebola, they got it right. The interview below points out the severe lack of preparedness that actually exists in this country.....not "fear mongering" here, just taking off the rose colored glasses and letting people see what the medical community actually feels.

"Dr. Edward Goodman, an infectious disease doctor at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas that is now caring for the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in this country, believed his hospital was ready.

The hospital had completed Ebola training just before Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in their emergency department on Sept. 26. But despite being told that Duncan had recently traveled from Liberia, hospital staff failed to recognize the Ebola risk and sent him home, where he spent another two days becoming sicker and more infectious.

"The Texas case is a perfect example," said Micker Samios, a triage nurse in the emergency department at Medstar Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in the nation's capital.

"In addition to not being prepared, there was a flaw in diagnostics as well as communication," Samios said.

Nurses argue that inadequate preparation could increase the chances of spreading Ebola if hospital staff fail to recognize a patient coming through their doors, or if personnel are not informed about how to properly protect themselves.At Medstar, the issue of Ebola training came up at the bargaining table during contract negotiations.

"A lot of staff feel they aren't adequately trained," said Samios, whose job is to greet patients in the emergency department and do an initial assessment of their condition.

So Young Pak, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said it has been rolling out training since July "in the Emergency Department and elsewhere, and communicating regularly with physicians, nurses and others throughout the hospital."

Samios said she and other members of the emergency department staff were trained just last week on procedures to care for and recognize an Ebola patient, but not everyone was present for the training, and none of the other nursing or support staff were trained.
"When an Ebola patient is admitted or goes to the intensive care unit, those nurses, those tech service associates are not trained," she said. "The X-ray tech who comes into the room to do the portable chest X-ray is not trained. The transporter who pushes the stretcher is not trained."
If an Ebola patient becomes sick while being transported, "How do you clean the elevator?"Nurses at hospitals across the country are asking similar questions.

A survey by National Nurses United of some 400 nurses in more than 200 hospitals in 25 states found that more than half (60 percent) said their hospital is not prepared to handle patients with Ebola, and more than 80 percent said their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.Another 30 percent said their hospital has insufficient supplies of eye protection and fluid-resistant gowns.

"If there are protocols in place, the nurses are not hearing them and the nurses are the ones who are exposed," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, which serves as both a union and a professional association for U.S. nurses.

Unlike influenza or the common cold, which can be spread by coughing and sneezing, Ebola is only spread by contact with bodily fluids from someone who is actively sick. That means the risk to the average person is low, but for healthcare workers, the risk is much higher.

As of Aug. 25, more than 240 healthcare workers have developed the disease in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, and more than 120 have died, according to the World Health Organization.

Many of these infections occurred when healthcare workers were removing the personal protective gear - masks, gowns, gloves or full hazmat suits used to care for the patients, said biosafety experts.

Sean Kaufman, president of Behavioral-Based Improvement Solutions, an Atlanta-based biosafety firm, helped coach nurses at Emory University through the process of putting on and taking off personal protective equipment (PPE) while they were caring for two U.S. aid workers flown to Atlanta after becoming infected with Ebola in West Africa.

Kaufman became known as "Papa Smurf" to the Emory nurses because of the blue hazmat suits he and others wore that resembled the cartoon character.

"Our healthcare workforce goes through so many pairs of gloves that they really don't focus on how they remove gloves. The putting on and the taking off doesn't occur with enough attention to protect themselves," he said.

Nurses say hospitals have not thought through the logistics of caring for Ebola patients.

People say they are ready, but then when you ask them what do you actually have in place, nobody is really answering that," said Karen Higgins, a registered nurse at Boston Medical Center.Higgins, an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse, said hospital officials have been teaching nurses on one of the regular floors how to care for an Ebola patient.

"I said, well, that's great, but if the patient requires an ICU, what is your plan," she said. "They looked at me blankly."
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This should cause everyone concern. All these healthcare professionals have families they go home to.....if they are infected, they infect their families, and then just stand back and watch the dominoes fall. Now is NOT the time to concern ourselves with political correctness or issues of profiling....we are not talking about who is allowed to enter the party. This is a matter of life or death.