Dealing with Ebola Quarantine

 

What's the big flap over quarantining a person suspected of being infected with a highly contagious killer disease?

Is it the WORD "quarantine?"

According to http://www.merriam-webster.com,

quar•an•tine

1: the period of time during which a person or animal that has a disease or that might have a disease is kept away from others to prevent the disease from spreading

2: the situation of being kept away from others to prevent a disease from spreading

A health professional returning from an Ebola-infected area was incensed that New Jersey's government ordered her into a hospital's infection disease section for 72 hours; long enough for her to be tested.

While in the hospital the health care professional had 'round-the-clock care, meals, medications and - I'm guessing here - telephonic contact with the outside world. And she didn't even have to clean the bathroom or wash her dishes. Like being in a hotel with room service. On New Jersey's tab.

After three days in New Jersey - I lived there and it can seem an awfully long time - she was released to go to her home in, I think, Maine, where she will be quarantined at home - where she will have no visitors, no one to cook, clean, and wash dishes for her; hopefully someone stocked her cupboards and fridge before she arrived; otherwise groceries and other necessities will have to be left on the front stoop.

MEANWHILE, the CDC, playing catch-up with its recommendations, is telling people who might be carrying Ebola to check their temperatures twice-a-day.

Wonderful. Once the symptoms are present - high fever being one of several - the person is infectious; able to easily transmit the disease. Better, the person should be isolated- is "isolated more "PC" than quarantined?" - in a controlled (i.e., hospital) setting.

The U.S. military that is sending personnel into the Ebola danger zone plans to quarantine the returning people in Italy for 21 days, Ebola's incubation period. But if you are in Uncle Sugar's military, you do what you are told when you are told. I'm sure those about to be quarantined want to get back to their loved ones as much as the health care professional did, but I doubt there will be any loud complaints. To be fair, they will be in a group isolation just like boot camp (basic training); the Italian countryside just beyond their tether. Unlike the healthcare professional, the military men and women will have to do their own housekeeping (although I doubt any brass will visit to inspect the area).

As a child I was quarantined on more than one occasion: mumps, rubeola, and rubella - I don't think I escaped any childhood disease. It made life difficult being kept at home, and there was a large sign on the door that read

QUARANTINE

A police line's yellow Do Not Cross tape is far less effective in keeping people at bay that the sign with the large print word "QUARANTINE."

Call me old fashioned - or just plain "old," that's true, too - but quarantining people arriving from an area of infection seems a reasonable precaution; in Risk Management terms, risk mitigation.

Animals arriving from, or being sent overseas are quarantined.

Produce coming from overseas is sometimes quarantined and sometimes destroyed at the point of entry.

Quarantine is a legitimate method to control the spread of contagions.

I can't understand why anyone would complain at what most would consider a minor inconvenience - and with room service yet.

Opuscula KneeJerk

 

I'm not sure if "knee jerk" is one word or two or if it applies to a hasty reaction to something or to the person who is reacting*.

But the incumbent at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC comes to mind for both options.

Knee Jerk #1: Sending U.S. military personnel to fight the ebola epidemic in Africa.

Knee Jerk #2: Training and arming "moderate" terrorists in Syria and Iraq to combat the so-called Islamic State which, it seems, is considered an "extreme" terrorist group.

When will we ever learn?

Obviously not on Obama's watch.

Ebola

It's nice that the U.S. might be able to help the folks in Africa who contracted the normally fatal disease.

But, just as sending troops into combat puts American lives at risk, so does sending American troops to fight a disease that has a 90% fatality rate.

According to Wikipedia, The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal. Spreading through the air has not been documented in the natural environment. Fruit bats are believed to be a carrier and may spread the virus without being affected. Once human infection occurs, the disease may spread between people, as well. Male survivors may be able to transmit the disease via semen for nearly two months.

The problem is, there is little in the way of laboratories where the disease runs rampant, so it is not easily diagnosed.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a page of links that cover all ebola-related concerns.

According to the CDC's "risk of exposure" information,

High risk exposures

A high risk exposure includes any of the following:

• Percutaneous (e.g., needle stick) or mucous membrane exposure to blood or body fluids of EVD patient
  

• Direct skin contact with, or exposure to blood or body fluids of, an EVD patient without appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE)
  

• Processing blood or body fluids of a confirmed EVD patient without appropriate PPE or standard biosafety precautions
  

• Direct contact with a dead body without appropriate PPE in a country where an EVD outbreak is occurring*

Low risk exposures

A low risk exposure includes any of the following

• Household contact with an EVD patient
  

• Other close contact with EVD patients in health care facilities or community settings. Close contact is defined as
  
  1. being within approximately 3 feet (1 meter) of an EVD patient or within the patient’s room or care area for a prolonged period of time (e.g., health care personnel, household members) while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., standard, droplet, and contact precautions; see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations)
     

  2. having direct brief contact (e.g., shaking hands) with an EVD patient while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment.

• Brief interactions, such as walking by a person or moving through a hospital, do not constitute close contact

Today the U.S. has an experimental drug that was successfully used on two American ebola patients. Unfortunately there is no stockpile of a drug deemed, even now, as "experimental."

According to Israeli sources, the blood of a person who survives being infected by ebola contains an antibody that seems to preclude that person from contracting ebola again. There was discussion in the U.S. of taking blood from one of the two survivors and using it on the remaining U.S. ebola victim, Meanwhile, the Israelis - and others - are searching for a serum to counteract the disease.

Training and arming "moderate" terrorists

Proving that neither the country's chief executive nor his advisors have ever read a newspaper or history book, and certainly never heard the expression "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, December 16, 1863 - September 26, 1952), Obama is proposing to train and arm "moderate" Islamist terrorists, those doing battle against the Islamic State.

Perhaps he intends for the U.S. to once again arm the Taliban as it did during the Cold war days when the Taliban were fighting the Soviets. The Taliban, having sent the Russians packing, promptly turned the weapons on the U.S. and anyone who wanted real or pseudo-democracy in Afghanistan.

Today, U.S. personnel are being murdered by U.S. trained Iraqis armed with U.S. weapons. These Iraqis are supposed to be America's allies.

Even if the Iraqis stopped killing the people sent to help them, as late as September 17, 2014, a U.S. general states that Half (of the) Iraqi Army Incapable Of Working With America - and this while the Islamic State takes over more and more of Iraq.

Training and arming terrorists to combat another terrorist organization and expecting peace and appreciation for America from a "moderate" terrorists group is a political pipe dream, especially when both extremists and moderates share so much ideology.

Although Obama promises "no American boots on the ground," that is a blatant lie. Even today there are several hundred "advisors" in Iraq. The incumbent is following in the footsteps of every president since Harry S Truman left office. In Dwight D. Eisenhower's time, the soldiers were part of "Military Advisory Groups" or MAGs. (To be fair, neither Eisenhower nor those that followed him remembered history and the fact that the Vietnamese had sent the French packing.

Obama is doing only one thing different from his predecessors is that he promoted, urged on by his far left, liberal money people, to work to instigate the "Arab Spring" which has brought instability throughout the reason. Obama, and his advisors, - one again - failed to do their homework to see that the former European powers had accomplished with their arbitrary borders.

Most of the "Islamic" countries in the region are artificial - they are composed of individual tribes, many who hate their neighbor. Only a strong central power, e.g., Sadam in Iraq, Sadat in Syria, could keep a lid on local warlords. The liberals either failed to understand that or elected to disregard what was obvious to previous administrations.

 

* Kneejerk: an immediate unthinking emotional reaction produced by an event or statement to which the reacting person is highly sensitive; - in persons with strong feelings on a topic, it may be very predictable.