Ebola. Now she has it, now she doesn't?

Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 5 months ago to Politics
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When will the truth be made public?
This is one more example of hiding the truth about Ebola.
No explanation whatsoever, but now the Dallas nurses are "cured."
SOURCE URL: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/24/358553648/dallas-nurse-nina-pham-now-ebola-free-to-be-discharged-today


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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
    I do not understand your objection. When a person gets over a virus infection and has no more symptoms or signs of the virus in his body, he is referred to as being "cured". What is different about this nurse, to you?

    Jan
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    • Posted by 9 years, 5 months ago
      Of course, I am skeptical. It's the US government announcing it and they haven't been completely truthful about details regarding Ebola, mostly making statements that are irrational based on the data disclosed.
      They gave no indication of treatment, no updates on condition, and suddenly both nurses are cured of a disease that supposedly kills 60%+ of those who are afflicted.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
        FYI. Here is an abstract of an article from the New England Journal of Med a few days ago:

        (quote)

        Ebola virus disease (EVD) developed in a patient who contracted the disease in Sierra Leone and was airlifted to an isolation facility in Hamburg, Germany, for treatment. During the course of the illness, he had numerous complications, including septicemia, respiratory failure, and encephalopathy. Intensive supportive treatment consisting of high-volume fluid resuscitation (approximately 10 liters per day in the first 72 hours), broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy, and ventilatory support resulted in full recovery without the use of experimental therapies. Discharge was delayed owing to the detection of viral RNA in urine (day 31) and sweat (at the last assessment on day 40) by means of polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) assay, but the last positive culture was identified in plasma on day 14 and in urine on day 26. This case shows the challenges in the management of EVD and suggests that even severe EVD can be treated effectively with routine intensive care.

        (endquote)

        I suspect that the death rate in US and Europe will be closer to 30%, and it appears that conventional therapies are successful in even some pretty bad cases.

        That being said, I am REALLY UPSET with the CDC. They have been 'the source of the Nile' for accurate and competent medical laboratory information and action for the last 40 years, and they are acting like bumbling, politicized idiots.

        Jan
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 5 months ago
          "That being said, I am REALLY UPSET with the CDC. "
          I have not followed this. I don't have high expectations of gov't. What is CDC doing wrong at this time?
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          • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
            They concealed that animals (including dogs and pigs) are known to be secondary reservoirs of ebola. They are still concealing that the Reston strain of ebola (which is not pathogenic to humans...and may indeed serve as a foundation for a vaccine) is suspected of having an airborne mode of transmission. They have advised against quarantine measures on arrival from W Africa, and then reluctantly initiated a pretty pathetic self-monitored self-quarantine period (which does not seem to be being well heeded). They apparently did not provide any direction to hospitals with ebola patients on the kind of quarantine precautions that were necessary. They specifically released a nurse (who should have been in quarantine) to travel...until she came down with symptoms.

            These guys are supposed to be the top in the world and instead of speaking accurately about ebola they have been making vague reassuring statements (that have been subsequently shown to be false or inaccurate). (eg the assurance that any US hospital had SOP's that would allow it to handle ebola patients safely.)

            I feel that they are subscribing to the "do not tell the little people anything that will scare them" philosophy. The result of this is that their own reputation is being trashed. Ebola is not a 'bad' disease insofar as transmission is concerned, but their behavior increases the danger as the public looses confidence in the medical system. Plagues are a numbers game and they must be handled correctly. We know how to do this; it is no secret. What we are now doing is a great job of botching this.

            Jan
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            • Posted by khalling 9 years, 5 months ago
              And they allowed their EMPLOYEE to publish an article emotionally appealing for policy / protocol changes which influenced Gov. Cuomo. Was that their intention? Why haven t they made a statement about that? This is really unbelievable incompetence and lack of skilled leadership.
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              • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
                This is another think that has been mishandled. If you indeed treat the returning medical personnel as criminals, you WILL have made a self-fulfilling prophecy on discouraging them from going to Africa to fight ebola there.

                How about this instead: Let us take a military VIP quarters building and make it the quarantine site. Then, when a doctor or nurse returns home from Africa, let's welcome them as heroes, take their picture for the paper, put them in a limo and drive them to their VIP quarters, where they are plied with custom meals and superb internet access for the duration of their quarantine.

                Jan
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              • Posted by 9 years, 5 months ago
                imo, this was just the media display to give Cuomo an excuse to reverse his decision.
                "... the one thing I've learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears."
                G'Kar, Babylon 5, Mind War (1994)
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 5 months ago
              "they have been making vague reassuring statements"
              They probably think don't rock he boat. Don't cause a panic. Unfortunately lying is more likely to cause a panic than telling an unpleasant truth.
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            • Posted by 9 years, 5 months ago
              "They concealed that animals (including dogs and pigs) are known to be secondary reservoirs of ebola. "
              Saturday they stated that Pham is going to play with her dog. The dog is supposed to be in quarantine. Were they planning to dress her in full protective garb and to use proper procedures to protect her and clean up afterward? Who will be paying the thousands of dollars for this cute idiotic photo-op?
              Dallas city officials apparently overruled that idiocy on Saturday, but the Dallas judge still continued his happy talk:
              Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued a statement Friday saying Pham would be able to see her dog Saturday but City officials supervising the dog’s care said no and Jenkins acknowledged Saturday that experts decided it would be a bad idea.

              “There’s no risk to her to be around the dog, but the top veterinarians in the state say the regimen we have the dog on, on monitoring, needs to not be interrupted and that the excitement of seeing her, and the separation anxiety when she would leave the quarantine area would be detrimental to their monitoring,” Jenkins said.

              La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
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          • Posted by scojohnson 9 years, 5 months ago
            It was only about a year ago that the Auditor-General came down like a ton of bricks on CDC for their employees being stupid & careless. They were walking around in normal lab coats carrying petri dishes containing live pandemic virus and bacteria samples, leaving them out on tables in plain view and unsecured/unguarded and not behind locked areas, etc. Until this ebola thing erupted, Congress was ready to start firing all of them, starting from the top.

            Fort Detrick should be the only place that stuff is handled, as they have adequate security and a military posture & practice. The CDC needs to stick to making handout cards that look like the dumb safety-belt how-to's on an airplane and showing people how to put on protective garb.

            The problem with federal employees doesn't matter what agency, etc. They self-proclaim this wizardry level of work ethic, etc., but are really just lazy, make mountains out of mole hills of problems, and the over-arching problem is the self-protectionist actions of their own jobs out of fear they may have to work in the private sector instead and "produce" something every day. The "secret sauce" is that huge percentages of the workforce are contracted out to the private sector to work alongside their federal counter parts and do the "all others" because a federal employee will not usually do anything not specifically enumerated in their written job description.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 5 months ago
        "suddenly both nurses are cured of a disease that supposedly kills 60%+ of those who are afflicted. "
        I've heard the cure rate is 50% with treatment. jlc says it may turn out to be closer to 70%. Assuming with treatment 50% die, the chances of two particular patients surviving is equal to doing two coin tosses. The chances of _any_ two patients surviving, not ones you picked before you knew if they would survive, is 100%. _Some_ patients will die and others will survive; we just don't know who until the disease runs its course. This is basic to all infectious diseases and not a conspiracy.
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        • Posted by 9 years, 5 months ago
          CG, we aren't sheep. The fedgov has a habit of lying to the people it is supposed to serve. In my opinion the likelyhood of getting the truth from the fedgov is lower than surviving Ebola. So I am a vociferous critic of this purposeful policy of either withholding information or outright lying. When more than one person is involved in such activities it is conspiracy.
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          • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
            freedomforall -

            We are not sheep. I have spent the 39 years between 1975 and now in the medical industry - the first 17 of those years working at the bench in laboratories. The CDC was god to us. Now I am going around shouting, "Feet of clay! Feet of CLAY!"

            The CDC has some of the top brains in clinical pathology in the world. Now they are acting like brainless adolescent politicians (maybe a redundant phrase). What I am seeing from my seat is the philosophy, "The little people are too dumb to handle the real facts. We will tell them just what they 'need' to know so that they will react in the manner we think they should." and then "Woops. The 'little people' are literate and the internet is ubiquitous. Hey - they keep turning up with inconvenient facts that we had intended to conceal!"

            Big Loss of Veracity time for the CDC! They are going to have to work very hard to salvage their reputations after this. Or not.

            Jan
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          • Posted by scojohnson 9 years, 5 months ago
            I actually think its more of a problem of incompetence than malicious intent in most cases. There are 3 million federal employees, its like calling all Republicans the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that somehow involves 90 million people or so. The IRS thing is probably malicious... but the CDC bumbling just seems like incompetence. These people don't "treat patients". They go to meetings where they whine about their benefits and travel allowances.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 5 months ago
            I don't trust the gov't either. I just don't think there's a conspiracy here, just a lot of people who are unhappy and looking for a disaster to blame it on. It's unlikely Ebola will give them their disaster, but sooner or later bad things in some form happen to everyone; I'm okay with it not being Ebola.
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        • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 5 months ago
          Your statistics calculation is off. If the cure rate is 50% and survival was random, then the chance of any two patients surviving, would be 50% of 50% - or 25% - if the outcome was random, which it is not. Survival in a country with advanced medical treatment makes the problem not a random one mathematically.
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          • Posted by scojohnson 9 years, 5 months ago
            True, in every case, the odds of survival are pretty much "reset". If you have 6 people that are sick, and the first 4 survive, that doesn't automatically mean that #5 has a 75 or 80% chance of dying to reset the statistic. It just means that over a very large population study, you would expect to see the statistic as it is.

            For all of the bumbling, there is a certain level of truth to better care levels in the US with isolation, bed rest, fluid levels retained, etc., compared to being treated outside in a mud hut behind a fence in 100 degree humid heat.
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          • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 4 months ago
            JB, thanks for taking this thread onto a more rational, non-conspiracy-theory-bent direction.

            Dying from Ebola virus depends on prior health conditions, whether you came or come in contact with someone expelling liquids rife with the virus, whether you can get fluid replenishment and nutrition, and probably a raft of other reasons!

            To use any ONE 'survival' or 'fatality rate' is just plain nonsense without accounting for the total environment of the 'next victim.'

            People are starting to get that clue and even health officials and some mainscream media folks are admitting that the panic reactions in the media were 'maybe a little bit overblown.'

            As Usual.
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            • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 4 months ago
              Thanks, plusaf. I was not saying that we shouldn't be concerned. The financial implications of having Ebola in America are not small. However, the media overblows just about everything, as you said. That is in their best interest.
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              • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 4 months ago
                You're welcome, and thank you, too, again.
                I didn't mean to imply that Ebola is not a danger to US citizens, but I am glad that more calm voices are finally getting the word out that we all ain't gonna die of it any time soon...

                Critical Thinking in the US is dead, at least in the mainscream media. Nobody looks into details which make the difference between panic, worry and BFD...
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                • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 4 months ago
                  Unfortunately the mainscream media is thinking about Ebola. They know that a scared public is beneficial to their political colleagues and simultaneously helps them with the bottom line. It is definitely in their best interest. Did you ever read Michael Crichton's book called State of Fear?
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                  • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 4 months ago
                    Haven't read it, but a few friends have and it sounds, from their comments, spot on.

                    Remember "West Wing"? The Prez spent precious few minutes in his Situation Room... why does "Woof Blister" spend every waking minute in his? Yep... to get you to watch the next commercials and make him money.

                    Could make me sick. Then again, it doesn't, because I never watch his show... :)
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 5 months ago
          How do you get 100%? For a set of 2 with 50% chance each, the outcomes would be HH, HT, TH, TT - thus only one chance in 4 is both survive, 50% that one survives, and 25% that both perish. Really, for an engineer you don't know your math.
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          • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
            Robbie -

            I interpreted CircuitGuy's email to mean that the probability of survival of someone who has already survived is "1". We have (fortunately) a very small sample volume and two people surviving can be just the luck of the odds.

            Jan, not a mathematician
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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 9 years, 5 months ago
    The photo op with the "cured" nurse was pure staged propaganda. First they scare us to death with the contagion peril and FEMA coffins, then it's all hugs and roses, Obama showing fearlessness in the presence of a potential Typhoid Mary. I would expect health workers to have stronger immune systems to begin with. So should we now relax, with things under control, or should we continue to gear up for a pandemic? What are we being distracted from with this exaggerated crisis? Paranoia may well raise its fevered head.
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    • Posted by 9 years, 5 months ago
      We should hope that "Mary" has infected the administration, the con-gress, and all the parasites in the Dark Center with terminal honesty. Transport the rest of the banksters from NY to DC and lock it down.

      Seriously, will Pham be involved in a fatal "accident" sooner, or later?
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  • Posted by fivedollargold 9 years, 5 months ago
    Nice coincidence that she happened to be vacationing in DC immediately after recovery from a deadly illness. Apparently, she didn't want to get stiffed for her ticket. And while taking a White House tour, another cheerful happenstance. She runs into BHO and he happens to recognize her. Perfectly understandable given how much he learns from television.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 5 months ago
    The death rate was established in an environment of lower health individuals, with lower care capability, and an environment of ignorance of infectious disease that doesn't respect sanitation and modern healthcare.

    For healthy people, who identify infection early in the cycle, who are cared for and have modern techniques used (evidently, Nina Pham had a blood transfusion from the doctor who had earlier survived, thus enhancing her own body's ability to fight the infection), then survival seems to be rather high.

    The real issue is not survival, but initial infection. Since it has a relatively long incubation period, then a very virulent form of contagion, keeping the outbreak contained to a level where proper care can be given is the key. This makes quarantining those at risk of exposure for a time period longer than the incubation period, essential. Otherwise we risk the situation where the medical resources would be overwhelmed, and survival rates would skyrocket.
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  • Posted by Tbird7553 9 years, 5 months ago
    I saw an interview with one of the doctors who received the experimental drug that "cured" the first two doctors that returned here with the virus and he said he had given blood to others in the U. S. Infected with the virus. That might be the answer?
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 5 months ago
    we have become inured to lies from the feds, to the
    point that even good news is suspect. it's like the
    turd in the punchbowl principle -- you just lose
    your appetite for the whole buffet. -- j

    p.s. we are soooooo glad that Nina and Amber
    are doing well == this is not negative about
    them, in any way at all !!!

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  • Posted by natvbaby 9 years, 5 months ago
    That is the problem they don't want to spread panic but people should be able to know everything that's going on.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 5 months ago
      "That is the problem they don't want to spread panic but people should be able to know everything that's going on"
      Giving people information and means to act on it prevents panic. Panic comes from lack of information and/or feeling trapped.
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      • Posted by natvbaby 9 years, 5 months ago
        Yes you are right, they just don't seem to realize the more people know the less panic will erupt. Plus, I live in a place where they are already going buts about this stuff and they know pretty much nothing except what is onon the news channels. Everyone seems to be freaking out about it but don't know all the facts.
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  • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 4 months ago
    Oh, and maybe I didn't get the original intent of the posting...

    If I get the flu and recover, do you consider me to 'not have the flu any more,' or do I still have it, by some measure you're not sharing?

    If a patient contracts Ebola, has symptoms and blood tests show the virus is in their system, yet they 'recover' and later show no symptoms or don't fail any blood testing sampling, do they 'still have Ebola' or not?

    Without some description of your criteria for that go/no-go choice, the question loses its meaning.

    Unless you're Woof Blister and your paycheck depends on Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt...
    :)
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