Experts: The Fact that a Nurse Wearing Protective Gear Still Caught Ebola From Her Patient is "A Sign That the System Is Working"

Actually, what he's referring to specifically is the fact her ebola has been identified by doctors and that she's now in isolation.

But it is weird that in a case where a nurse wearing full protective ebola gear -- per all the protocols -- nevertheless is infected with the deadly disease, it's said to be "a sign that the system is working."

They just seem to have one mode: Reassure The Public. Whatever happens, they reassure the public.

I personally would be more reassured if they were dealing more candidly with the public instead of just saying "Oh sure we expected that to happen."

The news that a health care worker might have the disease is not completely unexpected, an infectious disease specialist told CNN's "New Day." "I think we've always expected that there may be another individual who will come down with the Ebola from the transmission of this one particular person, and we always felt that it was going to likely be one of his close contacts or one of the health care workers, because that's the way this virus works," Dr. Frank Esper said.

Esper said Texas officials have been keeping a close eye on people who had contact with Duncan.

"I will tell you that the fact that we identified this individual so quickly is actually to me a sign that the system is working," he added.

I don't know that health care workers are reassured that the "system is working" when someone wearing protective gear nevertheless gets infected.

These are our frontline soldiers against this horrific disease.

The Director of the CDC insists there was a breach in protocol:

"At some point, there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection," he said at a news conference Sunday. "The (Ebola treatment) protocols work. ... But we know that even a single lapse or breach can result in infection."

However, officials are apparently unable or unwilling to specify what this breach in protocol is:

The CDC said Sunday that there was a breach in protocol in Texas, but officials haven't elaborated on what that means. Instead, they said the protocols laid out for American hospitals work.

Serious questions linger. How could a nurse at an American hospital contract the virus? Is the situation a one-off, an instance of human error, something that probably wouldn't occur again? Or could there be more to it?

How did it happen?

On Monday morning, an official with direct knowledge of the Texas nurse's case told CNN that CDC disease detectives have interviewed the Texas nurse several times and think there were "inconsistencies" in the type of personal protective gear she wore and with the process used to put the gear on and remove it.

This sounds like what they hope is the case -- that their protocols were not followed, and thus transmission occurred.

But their inability to specify which part of the protocol was not followed strongly suggests this is what scientists call "guessing." Or even just "hoping."

Confirmed: The director of the CDC admits that his statement that there was a "breach in protocol" is in fact just a surmise.

"I think the fact that we don’t know of a breach in protocol is concerning, because clearly there was a breach in protocol," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden concurred in an appearance on CBS News. "We have the ability to prevent a spread in Ebola."

What he's saying is: We know our protocols work, so if there was an infection, it must be the case that there was breach of protocol.

This isn't very scientific.

That Hot Air post reports that our US troops in West Africa will almost certainly be infected with Ebola.

I don't even think there's a question of that. Those troops are putting their lives on the line to save the world.

Some will not come back to us.

Incidentally, this is going to sound awful, but I support the deployment of the troops to control the ebola outbreak.

The fact is, if this disease really breaks out -- and if people in the infected countries begin fleeing for their lives to non-infected countries, thus infecting those countries in turn -- we would have a global health crisis on our hands of a scale not seen since the Spanish Flu.

So we should definitely keep admitting people into the US from the affected countries, obviously.

Oh, and you'll not be surprised to hear MSNBC and the left is claiming ebola is the rightwing's fault.

And there's some good news and bad news in suspected cases. The suspected case in Boston seems not to be an ebola infection. However, a man who had visited South Africa (not one of the Hot Zones, note) recently showed fever and vomited on a flight into LAX.

Captain Jamie Moore of the Los Angeles Fire Department held a press conference shortly after the female passenger on flight that landed at LAX was assessed, and said there was 'no reason to believe' that she had been exposed to Ebola.

He says the woman most likely had some sort of 'air illness'.

Probably, but worth keeping an eye on. Who knows, perhaps her flight to the US was from somewhere like Johnannesburg, but she had actually originated from West Africa.

That is pure worrisome speculation on my part, however: As the reported facts stand, they say she only traveled to South Africa, and not West Africa.

posted by Ace at 02:42 PM

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