I'm not exactly sure but in one of the article that I was just reading someone "speculated" the Congo?

I guess the next question would be who or what failed in his medical screening before entering the US?

CDC - Medical Examination - Immigrant and Refugee Health

Well, let the games begin! Just in, hot off the press!
"


RN Ebola Strike and National Day of Action – November 12


From California to Maine, registered nurses plan to make their voices heard louder on Nov. 12 with a National Day of Action for Ebola Safety Standards.

This comes after hospitals across the country refuse to set proper safety protocols and training with optimal personal protective equipment.

Please sign petition: Tell President Obama and Congress to mandate hospitals protect nurses and healthcare workers.

National Nurses United | National Nurses United Urges You to Take Action Now
A centerpiece to the actions will be a two-day strike by 18,000 RNs and nurse practitioners at 66 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics who have pressed the giant HMO for improved standards for weeks. Kaiser officials have repeatedly dismissed the nurses’ concerns.


NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro and NNU Vice-President Zenei Cortez, who is also chair of the Kaiser RN bargaining team

“Kaiser has shown a complete disregard for the safety of nurses and patients in the face of a disease that the World Health Organization calls the ‘most severe acute health emergency in modern times’,” said Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of NNU and a Kaiser nurse. “We will not be silent while Kaiser puts all of us, our families, and our communities, at risk.”

Another strike will take place at Providence Hospital in Washington, DC, affecting 400 RNs.

“We’re striking to protect ourselves and our patients,” said Providence RN, Rose Farhoudi.

In addition, Ebola safety actions are tentatively set for Augusta, Ga., Bar Harbor, Me., Boston, Chicago, Durham, N.C., Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Lansing, Mi., Massilon, Oh., Miami, St. Louis, St. Paul, Mn., St. Petersburg, Fl., and Washington DC, as well as a number of other California locations.

The list of actions will continue to grow, as nurses are contacting NNU across the country.

Nurses are demanding that all U.S. hospitals follow the precautionary principle in safety measures for Ebola, which holds that absent scientific consensus that a particular risk is not harmful, especially one that can have catastrophic consequences, the highest level of safeguards must be adopted.

That means nurses and other caregivers who interact with Ebola patients are provided the optimal personal protective equipment, including full-body hazmat suits that are body fluid, blood and virus impervious.

Meet American Society for Testing and Materials F1670 standard for blood penetration
Meet F1671 standard for viral penetration
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-approved powered air purifying respirators with an assigned protection factor of at least 50, with full hood
Leave no skin exposed or unprotected
Hands-on interactive training on proper donning and doffing HazMat suits
NNU has also repeatedly called on the White House and Congress to direct all hospitals to meet these standards.
“We know from years of experience that these hospitals will meet the cheapest standards, not the most effective precautions. And now we are done talking and ready to act,” said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.
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This is good....Now.........I want to know what they are doing about rogue, defiant nurses that refuse to follow Health Department Rules/Guidelines and insist they are above the law. This is all the demands the nurses are making on hospitals, which are ALL valid concerns, truely. Who is going to get the healthcare workers that have been hailed as conquering heros, under control and corral them into quarantine where they can be accurately and honestly monitored, since they can not be trusted to do so themselves.

There was an update and he is no longer infectious. I tried to Google search his name and some pretty horrible websites/forums came up. :thumbdown

nurse
 

Have to give my opinion on this nurse that refuses to think of the public safety. Just a selfish me only attitude. I wish someone would revoke her license. Being a nurse she should be held to a higher standard of protection for people. She may feel well but could have that virus. When she gets that fever I feel sorry for the people who she was around. My daughter is a nurse and you better believe she would have more consideration for the public, stay home and chill until the quarantine is over. Poor judgment from a nurse who should be thinking of others not herself. God first, then others, then me. She needs to live by that!

But all the epidemiologists, virologists, nurses and doctors just back from West Africa and medical authorities have empirical data to show she isn't contagious unless she is very ill with Ebola, running fever and spewing bodily fluids infected with a high viral load, so how is she putting anyone at risk?

Does your nurse daughter think those in the Ebola ward at Bellevue and the NIH, Emory University Hospital should all be sitting in their homes now, too? Aren't they showing poor judgment by going about their daily lives or is it just this one nurse?

Yes, but since she showed a fever at one time, I think they have to go on the side of caution. She says the thermometer was broken and she may be right, but I can understand why authorities wouldn't want to take a chance since there is so much they don't know. It just seems like her actions are spreading the panic, and that in itself isn't a good thing.

But they have worked with this Ebola virus for 40 years and they do know its behavior. Because the CDC had inadequate protective gowning protocols, an ER doctor missed a diagnosis or PPE doffing was done inappropriately or failed after working with very ill patients and workers got sick doesn't change the nature of the virus and how it infects people.

There isn't one bit of empirical proof that a well person who tests negative twice for Ebola over time and isn't symptomatic or even running fever can spread any virus, let alone enough to infect anyone else even if they're sputum or mucus - all she's got to share since she's not vomiting or having diarrhea or bleeding in public - got into anyone's body. Once there is evidence it comes from asymptomatic people and gets those who touch anything a healthcare worker's once touched sick, then we can all panic. Until then, let her live just like Dr. Fauci and the other Ebola workers at Bellevue, Emory and NIH are living.

If Maine really thought she was a true public health hazard, they would have a court order based on science allowing them to seize her, have a bio-containment ambulance sitting across the street from her house with hazmat suits at the ready and if she stepped foot out of that house, they would use a bullhorn and tell her to stay put, dress in PPE and go take her into custody and the ambulance would rush her into isolation. And the Departments of Public Health in Baltimore, Atlanta and New York would do the same for their Ebola workers if they tried to leave their homes.

If she hadn't shown a fever, I'd agree with you. I'm with those who error on the side of caution, there wasn't one bit of empirical proof at one time that someone could pass along typhoid and be asymptomatic. I'm just saying that I can understand why officials acted the way they did. I'm just very suspicious of her. The way she excuses her "fever" by saying it was a hot room, since when does a hot room cause a fever? Did she do something to manipulate the skin sensor thermometer, is this about money and lawsuits? Will this make it easier for the next person who actually has the disease to get out of quarantine? I don't think she's acting in the best interest of the public.

There are some people that have no fear of ebola....there are others that do fear this disease. How arrogant and disrespectful for anyone in the health care profession, to defiantly and smugly challenge quarantine rules, just because they think they know everything there is to know about this disease, even though none have managed to cure the disease or come up with a vaccine to prevent the disease.....

There is NO cure for this disease and for these people to just "blow off" the very real fear most of the people in this country have for this disease, is unconscionable at the very least. Until the learning curve catches up with the populace, these health care workers that choose to risk their own lives, should try to at least understand what is going on with the limitations imposed, and if they dont want to respect the quarantine, stay in Africa for your quarantine....or tour all over Europe for your 21 days, giving the virus the chance to infect you if it happens to be present in you. To return to the US and then defy any and all attempts to keep this disease from even remotely, possibly running rampant across this country, just because YOU dont like being restricted......give me a break! I can only imagine even at its worse, that quarantine she was confined to in NJ, was better than anything she had been tolerating willing and happily in Africa. She was squeeling like a pig under a gate about how inhumanely she was being treated....that was just her being a noise maker, an attention getter.

She was sent back to Maine, and that still was not good enough...she wants the opportunity to mingle and socialize with as many people as possible, and until she is allowed to do that, she is going to "gritch and pizz and moan" about HER rights, HER this and HER that.......selfish, selfish person and certainly no "hero". Heros do not act like spoiled brats, throwing temper tantrums to get what they want. She may just run into someone from that town that feels like THEY are being threatened, and she may not appreciate how they handle her sassy butt.

It's looking very much like the cure is our own immune systems if our bodies are supported with fluids, electrolytes, anti-nausea drugs, pain medication to keep the stress of the muscle pain, headache down and possibly some antivirals, antibodies from the compatible blood of the surviving Ebola patient. Then there was that German man who had no blood and no experimental drugs but just supportive care and he survived. Sounds like just supportive care alone might be the trick until our bodies can mount enough antibodies to kill it off if we get to it early on before the viral load is out of control.

So far, we've only had one death in this country out of nine cases and that was from a man not wearing PPE who was around a sick patient vomiting blood and was misdiagnosed after giving a sketchy, inconsistent history. Even workers who are treated in other countries are getting well if they get good supportive care early on.

And Dr. Fauci and all the other Ebola teams in this country - they couldn't be carrying vectors who are lurking without fevers/symptoms just waiting to infect?

FORT KENT, Maine (AP) — A Maine judge gave nurse Kaci Hickox the OK to go wherever she pleases, handing state officials a defeat Friday in the nation's biggest court case yet over how to balance personal liberty, public safety and fear of Ebola.

Related Stories

Efforts to compromise with Maine nurse stall Associated Press
Ebola quarantine: why judge sided with nurse Kaci Hickox Christian Science Monitor
Judge rejects strict limits on U.S. nurse who treated Ebola patients Reuters
US judge says nurse can leave home in Ebola row AFP
Maine judge sides with science, lets nurse Kaci Hickox leave her house Vox.com
Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere ruled that Hickox must continue daily monitoring of her health but said there is no need to isolate her or restrict her movements because she has no symptoms and is therefore not contagious.

The judge also decried the "misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information" circulating about the lethal disease in the U.S.

After the ruling, a state police cruiser that had been posted outside Hickox's home left, and she and her boyfriend stepped outside to thank the judge.

Hickox, 33, called it "a good day" and said her "thoughts, prayers and gratitude" remain with those who are still battling Ebola in West Africa.

She said she had no immediate plans other than to watch a scary movie at home on Halloween in this town of 4,300 people on the remote northern edge of Maine, near the Canadian border.

Maine health officials had gone to court on Thursday in an attempt to bar her from crowded public places and require her to stay at least 3 feet from others until the 21-day incubation period for Ebola was up on Nov. 10. She would have been free to jog or go bike riding.

But the judge turned the state down.

View galleryKaci Hickox fighting quarantine
Kaci Hickox (L) and boyfriend Ted Wilbur go for a bike ride in Fort Kent, Maine October 30, 2014. Hi …
Gov. Paul LePage said he disagreed with the ruling but will abide by it. Officials said there are no plans to appeal.

"As governor, I have done everything I can to protect the health and safety of Mainers. The judge has eased restrictions with this ruling, and I believe it is unfortunate," LePage said.

Later in the day, the governor lashed out at Hickox, saying: "She has violated every promise she has made so far, so I can't trust her. I don't trust her. And I don't trust that we know enough about this disease to be so callous."

Hickox was thrust into the center of a national debate after she returned to the U.S. last week from treating Ebola victims in West Africa as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders.

She contended that the state's confining her to her home in what it called a voluntary quarantine violated her rights and was unsupported by science. She defied the restrictions twice, once to go on a bike ride and once to talk to the media and shake a reporter's hand.

In his ruling, the judge thanked Hickox for her service in Africa and acknowledged the gravity of restricting someone's constitutional rights without solid science to back it up.

"The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola," he wrote. "The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational."

Hickox's quarantine in Maine — and, before that, in New Jersey, upon her arrival back in the U.S. — led humanitarian groups, the White House and many scientists to warn that automatically quarantining medical workers could discourage volunteers from going to West Africa, where more than 13,500 people have been sickened and nearly 5,000 have died from Ebola.

Hickox has been vilified by some and hailed by others. She has been getting a similarly mixed reaction from her health care colleagues.

On a popular nursing website, allnurses.com, some nurses felt the 21-day quarantine was a sensible precaution for those returning from a high-risk area, while others were more critical, accusing her of giving nurses everywhere a bad name.

Hickox has said she is following the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation of daily monitoring for fever and other signs of the disease. She tested negative for Ebola last weekend, but it can take days for the virus to reach detectable levels.

Her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, said Friday that the two of them weren't planning to go into town in the immediate future.

"I'm just happy that Kaci is able to go outside, exercise. It's not healthy to be inside for 21 days," he said.

Judge rejects attempt to isolate nurse

I didn't say she was trying to infect anyone, I'm suspicious because she admits the thermometer showed she had a fever, but blames it on the hot room, and also, all the lawsuits already. In the hospital, she doesn't seem a bit frightened that she might have the disease, nor relieved she doesn't have it. She's on the phone hiring lawyers. Because I wouldn't act that way, it makes me wonder about her and her motives. This board is getting so sarcastic lately. I feel like your statement to me was just to ridicule my statements.

I don't know Hickox' motives or actions and whether she will sue but likely she just wants to be treated like other Ebola healthcare workers who have had much more freedom. NIH, Emory and Bellevue workers are out and about the city, even now, not sitting in their homes being watched by police.

Oh, I thought you were tougher than that, Nancy! I wasn't trying to offend you personally. C'mon. I had no intention of being sarcastic to offend or ridicule you - just to make a sharp point using my words that there are some out there who honestly think we're going to be over-run with cases of Ebola caught from those with no symptoms or masking them with ibuprofen just before temps are taken. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings - it was not even in my head. I'll sit on my more tangy phrases and wordings with you from now on, okay?

You are assuming that ebola exists in a vacuum and has remained consistent throughout its existence. The point some experts (medical scientists) are trying to make is that ebola has and is evolving. That is one of the biggest points of interest in studying the current outbreak in Africa that is much, much larger than any recorded to date.

21 Days - The Atlantic

No, I'm not tougher than that. I was learning a lot from you, and didn't expect to you react in such a way. I'm tired of all the "sharp" points people are using lately. I mean so many of these threads are just opinions, why all this emotion, if we don't all agree exactly? I just don't trust Hickox and was trying to explain why.

Unfortunately, they can not line the people up, just THEM alone, so THEY can volunteer to be exposed, that wouldnt mind getting ebola, since there has only been one death here to date, and willing to go through the harrowing and uncomfortable and rather "messy" and exhaustive bloody course this disease offers up, hoping supportive care will eventually, hopefully pull them through.....just so that self serving mouthy woman can throw caution to the wind and socialize at will. There are many, many more that really do not wish to go through all that illness, all that bloody vomiting, all that bloody diarrhea, keeping their fingers crossed that their luck holds out and they are not the second person that dies from it.

All the people with a compromised immune system had better get in the second line, becvause if all these experta have guessed wrong, or if that virus mutates just a smidgeon, well they wont be quite so cavalier.

Maybe you are overreacting a little bit to a phrase used to make a point about a disease being thought by some to have changed its nature of infection, when we have no actual evidence it really has. And please don't look to me for Ebola information! I only parrot my version of what I hear/read the medical professionals say, as do we all in our posts unless we directly quote someone by name or list credible links from respected medical experts.

Where people's lives and the liberty of even one American is the issue, yes, emotions and opinions become strong and heated during discussions. But on a public forum, spirited words never should be intended to hurt or or taken personally during open, public debates unless one person makes a frank, ad hominem attack on another or infers or implies mean or ugly things about another person - which can really hurt those who've been so impugned.

Otherwise, we all post essentially "walking on eggshells", overly concerned our words will be misunderstood or taken wrong by one or more people and our freedom to speak our minds becomes tailored-to-please the majority and stilted. I apologized for my phrasing though it wasn't intended in any wrong way to disrespect you or anyone else personally.

So, whether or not we trust Hickox, at least to this point, she nor Dr. Fauci or any other Ebola nurses, doctors, aids working with Ebola patients in America, show no evidence of being a health risk to others and the very moment one of them does, isolate that person, test and begin immediate treatment if Ebola is suspected or diagnosed.

I just heard on our local news that Nina Pham's little Bentley was released from quarantine at midnight and that she can reunite with him at 9:00 a.m. today. There will be live coverage of it! Her one "human contact" has been cleared also though the CDC are still monitoring 76 people. I can't wait to see Bentley's reaction when he sees her again. He's been such a trooper during all of this - only getting to have contact with a person through layers of protective gear.

AWwwwwwwwwwww - YAY!! Love it. Thanks for posting this happy info :).

Scientists and medical experts always have disagreements about almost any subject or pathogen's behavior, from typhoid in the 20's when they found carriers existed, to polio, to AIDS, as you know, but the overwhelming majority who are observing the behavior of the Ebola disease the last 8 months or so in the field, during the current epidemic, don't agree that the disease is any easier spread and that's based on empirical evidence from real cases and not theory or mathematical computer modeling.

If some people don't run fever(and what reading constitutes "fever", who takes it and records it, with what instrument), they mostly do get other symptoms and know they are sick and go into one of the isolation/treatment programs to try to save their lives. If all of the data is correct - and we don't know that yet - some 13% of patients are said not to get fever or have any symptoms at all, or spew vast quantities of bodily fluids, so how are they going to spread the disease to others? And are their titers even truly high enough to be contagious should they somehow get bodily fluid into us?

The only way the totally asymptomatic could spread Ebola is by a single droplet of sneezed/coughed mucus or blood during a cut landing in our orifices or on our body which we then wipe into our mouth, nose, eyes or that slips through an opening in the skin? Will there be enough viral load in that droplet to actually sicken us if the one who spread it to us isn't even sick, spewing vast quantities of bodily fluids or running fever, titering high levels of virus? Theoretically, some say it's possible, but also say their chances of contagion of their asymptomatic Ebola case would be infinitesimally small as they aren't spewing virus everywhere.

Studies being quoted by those making dire predictions depend on accurate history and accurate record keeping in West Africa, are often taken from scared/grieving family, friend, neighbor of a very sick or dead patient and don't even know the circumstances surrounding how a patient got the disease as they weren't observing their lives 24/7 for the past 21 days or even know what symptoms they had. Others lie to protect the family from stigma.

The medical investigators taking Ebola histories, keeping records are often whomever the agency running the clinic can get to work there for a few hours or days, ask the questions and record the data and those respected, credible doctors and nurses working in the field today understand that the history of the disease given about any patient under those conditions may be specious, incomplete. The data-keepers over there also know that more reported cases will bring more help and funding. I far more trust the histories/records/data kept in the Western/European countries right now while good record keeping personnel are hard to come by in West Africa.

Just saw Bentley kissing his Nina on the chin and her holding him in he arms. They look so happy and his little tail is just wagging!!! During the speeches, with the major holding him and him kissing the mayor, while Nina is talking, he's just taking the crowd in like a pro. Nine looks like a million dollars! You'd never know she was so sick so recently.

They would take her license if she was a teacher. Just saying. :eek: Oh wait, my bad. Lol. Just had a teacher moment there. :D

And this is why I am so fearful of it. I have a disabled child who has a repaired heart defect. I have thyroid disorder which sadly does affect my immune system. People need to be thinking about others instead of just themselves! I am being cautious. People can call me silly if they want to. However, I teach science and I know what can happen. This virus is capable of doing WWWAAAAYYYY more than people are understanding. I do not think we are being told everything. I think we will find out a lot more about AFTER the elections!!! Because that is the main concern right now!

Now it seems she has become a "Joan of Arc" for all the returning Health Care Workers, telling them all there is no choice but to fight this quarantine idea! So she has REALLY opened up a can of worms, as far as the general public's health fears are concerned. Dont guess we can "write in" the PM of Canada, along with his Health Department, on the ballot on Nov 4th!!! How refreshing to have a government that makes a decision, creats a law, then stands by it with enforcment. Canada just canceled exit visas for anyone returning to Canada that has taken care of ebola patients, without first going thru the 21 day quarantine, as advised by the CDC. THAT is what should be done....keep these "heros" over there until they meet the 21 day quarantine requirements to re-enter this country, then we dont have to concern ourselves with this big mouth. We have not heard the end from this arrogant, defiant, selfish, unprofessional nurse, who has no regard or concern for what the people in THIS country fear or think. It is all about HER. She has successfully challenged and defied three politicians and "won", so she is now going to be a loose cannon that she thinks, cant be stopped.

This presents both sides of the picture.

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

SNL always kills it! :p Kaci Hickox reminds me of a nurse that absolutely hated me at one of our hospitals. :rolleyes:

I realized yesterday that the hysteria surrounding Ebola probably would have been nonexistant if Thomas Duncan would have been treated properly. What would the news been able to feed on then :confused: "Man treated for Ebola in TX Hospital Released"? Does that spread concern and fear.

I think the only thing that spreads concern and fear is, " ....largest ebola outbreak in the history of the disease....", "....7000 dead from ebola outbreak....", "....157 healthcare workers dead from ebola in West Africa....", "......doctor that treated ebola returns to New York , now admitted to hospital infected with ebola....", and then the "coup de gras"...."nurse returning from treating ebola patients defiantly refuses to be quarantined the 21 days as suggested by CDC for returning health care workers, out for bike ride, states no one has anything to worry about....".
These quotes are paraphrased and the numbers may be off just a tad, but I think these are the headlines that have the rest of the world fearful, even terrified, in some countries. Then of course there is the headline that told us of some plan that is being "quietly" floated around about bringing non citizens infected with ebola to the United States for treatment. THESE headlines are the cause of our fears!