North Jersery dot com reports Christie/Cuomo Announce Quarantine of Passengers from West Africa.
Not that they have any expertise in medicine, public health, or science, but they do know how to respond toto kneejerk calls from those that are similarly not bound by facts and science. IOW, the ignorant and the stupid. Arrogantly so since they think they know better than the collective sciency brainpower of MSF, NIH, CDC, and European health agencies.
Guinea, Liberia, and Serra Leone need as many trained, temporary health care workers as they can get. Few will return from their generous volunteer work having been infected with Ebola. But, gosh darn it, one did and wander among the population when he was asymptomatic and therefore, not contagious. And in Christie/CuomoLand that means that health care workers returning from West Africa are too stupid and therefore, all of them must be locked up for 21 days.
More could/should be said about this, but I’ve already said most of it in my Ebola diaries and diary comments.
BTW — where’s the new “Ebola czar?”
NYTimes: White House Presses States to Reverse Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Orders
The differences between Obama and Christie/Cuomo may often be difficult to perceive, but sometimes he makes it very easy. For all his faults, he’s not a clueless clown constantly sticking his finger in the wind to see which way it’s blowing through the airheads.
The Obama administration has been pushing the governors of New York and New Jersey to reverse their decision ordering all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be quarantined, an administration official said on Sunday.
…
The decision for mandatory quarantines has not only opened a rift with federal officials, but also between New York City and the state.…
On Friday night, those carefully laid plans were thrown aside when Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo called for a mandatory quarantine of all medical workers returning from West African countries where they worked with Ebola patients.“The entire city was not informed, even the mayor’s office,” according to a city official involved in New York’s Ebola response. “The mayor was caught unaware.”
“The big picture decision was made in the absence of any deep thinking about what implementing the policy would entail,” the official said.
…
NYTimes Under Pressure, Cuomo Says Ebola Quarantines Will Allow Home Isolation
Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy for all medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday night that people quarantined in New York who do not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.
…
It was the second striking shift in Mr. Cuomo’s public posture on the Ebola crisis in 72 hours; after urging calm Thursday night, then joining Mr. Christie to highlight the risks of lax policy on Friday, Mr. Cuomo on Sunday night appeared to try to stake out a middle ground.
OTOH, Christie boasted today that the nation will soon follow his lead. Dumb and dumber are in their minds Presidential material. (Still hoping that the investigation of the NY/NJ Port Authority take them down and out and spare the rest of us from having to deal with them in 2016.
[Update 3 – Tuesday 10/28/14]
CNN Chris Christie on Ebola policy: ‘We’re not moving an inch’. Stupid and stubborn — qualities that Christie and far too many voters think make him Presidential.
How many people, including health care workers, that came in contact with Thomas Duncan between 9/20 and 10/3 have been infected with Ebola? Still a few days to go for the health care workers that treated him from 10/4 until he died on 10/8 to be cleared. And at the risk of being proven wrong, will go out on a limb and say that there won’t be any others.
Two and they were trained nurses who should have known better than to touch any patient’s blood or bodily fluids. That’s why I worry about the “you can only contract ebola by touching the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person”. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his girlfriend had contacted it (I gather she hasn’t) but two trained nurses did. Something doesn’t add up.
Fine nurses, but unlikely to have been highly trained in caring for highly infectious EVD patients. Expecting a zero transmission rate for health workers treating end stage EVD patients is a ludicrous standard unless the patients are in a bubble like the UK nurse was. Not at all strange that two nurses would contract EVD from the first US index case. (Eleven Nigerian health workers were infected from its first index case.)
It’s not known when these nurses were infected. Presby D hasn’t released the dates these nurses cared for Duncan. Based on the reported dates of their initial fever symptom, Pham was likely infected closer to Duncan’s admittance date than Vinson was. My guess is both were infected after the staff were using PPE and an error was made in taking them off or they weren’t fully covered.
Haven’t found a discussion anywhere about intimate contact (sexual) transmission. Possible before first symptoms? Or with or after first symptoms? Doubt there’s much if any data on it. I also haven’t found any documented case of transmission before an EVD victim has reached the highly infectious stage and is obviously gravely ill. And the data I’ve seen indicates that that stage is several days after the first symptoms. Teresa Ramirez in Spain wasn’t isolated until six or seven days after her first symptom and it’s now 19 days since she was isolated and there are no reports of infections among those she was in contact with and who have been monitored since then.
To be on the safe side, would recommend no sexual contact, including face sucking, for anyone being monitored for development of EVD. Although the mouth and sexual organs are probably not involved during the incubation phase of the disease. There was some report that the Ebola virus can linger in serum for a month or so after all tests show that the patient has been cured. I doubt that’s true.
Do want to say that when I read yesterday an initial report on the young child in Mali that had been diagnosed with EVD, I was very concerned. It read as if the child had been in Mali for several weeks and long past when she could have contracted EVD in Guinea and from her mother that apparently died from EVD. That would mean that this child isn’t Mali’s index case and she could be one of many second order cases.
BBC update: Ebola crisis: ‘Many exposed’ to infected Mali girl The child has died. No further details on or confirmation of how long the child has been in Mali , but
With luck those buses weren’t crowded and other passengers didn’t come into close enough contact with this girl while she was in a highly contagious stage of the disease. (Recall that Patrick Sawyer didn’t infect any of his fellow airplane passengers.) Contact tracing is always difficult, but nearly impossible in this case for the other public transit passengers.
The public health care system is working in Mali. But would feel better if the reports could verify that the child is or isn’t the index case.
WaPo: The real worry isn’t Ebola in New York. It’s Ebola in Mali.
Good article even if it doesn’t add to the information reported by BBC wrt to the first diagnosed EVD victim in Mali.
WHO report. Clarifies when the child entered Mali, October 19, and not several weeks earlier as a some media reported. This means that this child was Mali’s index case, and therefore, improves the ability of Mali to contain and eliminate Ebola.
Woman Quarantined In Newark Shows No Signs Of Ebola.
Great idea to keep her locked up while she remains asymptomatic and therefore, non-contagious just because she could have picked up the Ebola virus and it’s still in the incubation phase and she poses no risk to others.
UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital as part of Ebola quarantine
Recommend skipping the comments to the quarantined nurse’s OpEd. They are ignorant, mean, and vile.
The anti-fear-mongering politician (unlike the anti-science Christie/Cuomo chickenshits) shows how to lead: NY Mayor Eats Meatballs (Bloomberg link):
Yahoo News Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH, dismisses quarantine
ChicagoTribune: Quinn follows the C/C chickenshit lead.
The Guardian – Christie defends quarantine
A couple of interesting nuggets in the Guardian article. Scott(FL) stepped up with an order that … wait for it … is current federal policy.
And (might have to check to see if hell has frozen over):
Maybe mocking Issa for repeatedly saying “Eboli” and “Guyana” instead of Ebola and Guinea a few days ago kick started his remaining sane brain cells. Or maybe he hates Christie/Cuomo more than the hates Obama.
Note from the above linked NYTimes article:
Twenty-one people that worked with MSF in West Africa were allowed back into the US w/o quarantine. Only one contracted Ebola and developed symptoms after returning.
Thanks for all the updates and information — but I’ve got to stop reading this stuff; it’s not good for my blood pressure to be so enraged at the rampant stupidity.
“The rampant stupidity” in this country regularly bubbles up, boils over, and disappears when the fever breaks. I appreciate having a public place (even if the audience isn’t more than two) to record the stupidity of two high profile politicians and follow the developments in real time. Wish I’d have had the forum and sense to do that as the country freaked out and dashed off to destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Maybe with more rational people recording their observations of “the stupid” in real time, it will go away faster and all those that promulgated or followed the stupid will have more trouble later denying their stupidity.
It’s difficult not to get enraged at the stupid. But the alternative of not observing or becoming cynical aren’t any better. I’m striving for observe, record, and engage when not a useless exercise — probably won’t be any more productive than when I became enraged and passionately argumentative, but it avoids the anger that isn’t good for anyone’s health.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Not of contracting Ebola. Not yet, at least.
Not of stupid, venal political hacks like the thick and the thin of it pictured below.
Be afraid of the real bad guys.
The ones who would use such a disease to further control the population or cripple an enemy. So-called enemies of the U.S. and so-called friends.
People who willingly kill other people in blood for oil wars.
People who willingly kill other people in the name of “God.”
People who willingly kill other people for the sheer sake of power.
Watch.
Somewhere in a secure room…many somewheres, I will bet…there are talks being held about how best to use this latest disaster to win something. Win a religious war, win a sociopolitical war, win an economic war…win by any means necessary.
Bet on it.
Meanwhile the Cheney Party…even more vicious than the kinder, gentler Drone Party…is coming back strong.
Why?
How?
In part because the left didn’t insist on retribution for the war crimes committed by the Cheney party.
What’s that you say?
Yeah.
Right.
Look where it got us, this compromise.
Right back in the frying pan.
Next time…if there is a next time…next time we have a chance to take a moral stand even though it appears unlikely to win, let’s do it anyway.
Hey. Y’never know…
Sometimes the good guys do win.
But they don’t win if they don’t compete.
WTFU.
AG
P.S. Marie2…you write:
Well…yeah. Those two are indeed ignorant and stupid.
But…
How much trust should we give to Dr. Big Brother and the Pharmaceutical Holding Company? I’m not sure one way or another about the MSF or the European health agencies, but the NIH and CDC? Please. Federal to the bone, thus not to be trusted to be anything but bureaucratic squirrel traps run by Big Med.
Ongoing rot is endemic to the system as it now stands, up and down the line. I don’t care which way you look…health, education, national politics and politicians in general, the media, the military (overt and covert both), the corporate/economic system, what we laughingly call the justice system…whatever.
If it’s big enough it’s gone rotten. Bought lock, stock and diseased barrel by Big Corp.
Bet on that as well.
On the narrow issue of Ebola as a naturally occurring virus and the abilities of health professionals and public health agencies to respond effectively to outbreaks, which is all this diary and my previous ones have been about, I see no need to get all paranoid and introduce all the other ways public institutions and corporate medicine and health care are failing. Not to act like those idiot S. African presidents that denied the existence of HIV and how the virus was spread. (See The Folly of Faith-Based Health Care for a comparison between S. Africa and Brazil.) Or like those in Pakistan that killed polio vaccine health workers and have refused the vaccine for their children, some of whom have now contracted polio.
IMHO, the major contributors to good health and longer natural lives in developed countries are basic things like clean, potable water, sanitation, adequate nutrition, the standard vaccines, penicillin, TB and malaria medications, and public health protocols that identify and reduce the spread of disease, including public education. The latter is robust in the US wrt TB and was instrumental in leading the way on AIDS. Had those existed in adequate supply in West Africa, this latest Ebola outbreak wouldn’t have turned into an epidemic. Fear and “voodoo” medicine have been impediments for health workers.
I repeat my position.
You write:
You “see no need to get all paranoid and introduce all the other ways public institutions and corporate medicine and health care are failing?”
I do. And here it is:
As above, so below. And side-to-side, too. A bureaucracy that has been observed to be incompetent…an almost unnecessary repetition of terms seeing as how all bureaucracies are inefficient and thus more and more incompetent as they grow in size…a bureaucracy that has been observed to be incompetent on one level is not to be trusted on any level. As Cicero wrote: “Mendaci neque quum vera dicit, creditor.” (“A liar is not to be believed even when he speaks the truth.”)
And now “the news.”
“The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.”
Riiiight…
And there y’have it.
They lie.
When caught in a lie, they stonewall.
Why?
Because they have been told to lie and stonewall by their bosses straight on up the ladder, all the way to the White House.
Cicero was right on the money, and in following that money the truth buck stops stopping right here:
Whatever public remnant of trust for the NSA that had survived the two terms of Obama security state ramp-up was ruined by Brennan’s famous lie to the Senate. I believe that all trust for any Obama department deserves the same fate.
Why?
Mr. Cicero is why.
“A liar is not to be believed even when he speaks the truth.”
Bet on it.
If you cannot count on getting the straight scoop from any entity…a person, a company, a government, whatever…then you can no longer believe anything said by that entity.
WTFU.
AG
You’re O/T. There are plenty of opportunities for you to repeat your spiels at BT and other sites. And it’s incredibly rude and obnoxious to engage in thread hijacks when the diarist and other contributors spent a lot of time reading and/or researching an issue before writing (and I don’t dump a bunch of old canned fillers into my diaries either). I don’t do that in your diaries or to your comments. Have you no manners?
I am not off-topic; I am disagreeing with what you said. What you said is the topic. Firther, I don’t give a flying fuck about being polite nor do I care one way or another if people’s posts…including my own…get “hijacked” by anyone who is making any sense whatsoever.
“Manners?”
Sorry. I lost them in the war.
The war against the PermaGov.
Bet on it.
You write thast you and others spend…
How much time do you think I spend, Marie2? You think I just spin this shit out opf thin air>
And…”how much time is spent” really means nothing. Imagine how much time time is spent in DC figuring out ways to further pull the wool over the eyes of the already blind-as-a-bat sheeple.
“Time is money,” or so they say. These people spend billions to buy time. And you? You don;’t want to hear about it because you’ve sat at your computer for hours ferreting out…ferreting out what, exactly, Marie? That Christie and Cuomo are assholes?
Thanks.
I really needed that.
WTFU.
AG