Remember the original CDC guidance regarding Ebola? You know, no need to worry unless an exposed individual became symptomatic – and no recommended restrictions on their movement unless the person had a fever of 100.4F or higher? Those policies allowed the second US nurse who acquired Ebola in Dallas to travel halfway across the country while incubating (and, potentially, while in the early stages of being symptomatic).
Well, apparently even the CDC can recognize being whacked in the face by reality. They’ve now changed their tune much closer to what common sense says it should have been all along. The CDC now recommends that anyone who is at “high risk” for Ebola exposure should “stay home” for 21 days.
However, don’t start singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” just yet. Under the new CDC guidelines, “stay home” doesn’t really mean “stay at home 24/7”. Such individuals would indeed be allowed to leave their homes – to “jog in a public park”, for example – but would also be told to avoid “congregate gatherings” like sports events.
Yeah, that last bit makes just no freaking sense at all. Last time I checked public parks can get pretty damn crowded, especially in big cities. People jogging in a crowded park sometimes bump into other people – while sweating profusely. They also often drink from public water fountains while jogging or after they finish. Sometimes they clear their throat and spit, too.
I just can’t see how crowds at public parks differ substantially from other “congregate gatherings” like sports events. Those at high risk should be told to stay home – period.
Frankly, IMO the CDC simply hasn’t gone far enough here. “Stay home” should be unconditional.
And they’re IMO missing the boat in another way, too. Depending on voluntary, unenforced quarantines . . . is problematic. We’ve already seen multiple examples of people who knew they fell into the CDC’s “high risk” or “some risk” categories thumbing their nose at common sense (probably due to the “It can’t happen to me” mindset) and put others at risk by going out in public within 21 days of exposure.
Depending on voluntary self-quarantine will work just as well as the following. Put a cookie jar on a low table. Tell your mischievous 5 year old to keep their hands off, since they’ll be having dinner in a hour. Then leave them alone and unsupervised in the same room with that cookie jar for that hour.
In other words: without enforcement, home self-quarantine is just not going to work worth a damn. People are people; everyone thinks, “It can’t happen to me” – until it does. And all it will take is one idiot guessing wrong to cause a serious problem.
The CDC has also moved the goalposts on how it defines Ebola exposure risk categories – and IMO, this time they’re moving them in the right direction. Previously, spending an extended amount of time in close proximity to an Ebola sufferer without protective equipment was considered “low risk exposure”. Now, it’s categorized as “some risk” – a new, higher-risk category. Spending a brief period of time in close proximity to an Ebola sufferer was previously not categorized as any type of exposure. Now it’s categorized as a “low-risk” exposure.
Under the new guidelines, the CDC recommends local health authorities should make the call on whether or not to restrict movement of “some risk” exposure individuals. The whiny ditz and special little snowflake recently returned nurse who was quarantined in New Jersey, then allowed to return to Maine falls into the “some risk” category under the new guidelines.
Perhaps the Maine public health officials will show some backbone and continue to follow the New Jersey lead. Unfortunately, until there’s an outbreak there I’m not holding my breath.
Finally, in semi-related good news: the kid hospitalized in NYC as a possible Ebola case had a negative initial test for the virus. He’s still in isolation pending future follow-up testing. If that future testing shows he’s not infected, he’ll be given the green light to go home.
The doctor who was cured by ZMapp has condemned the nurse’s detainment as a “police state tactic.” Obviously he has no idea what a police state can and will do. Can you say “disappeared”?
In other news, Australia (no shock) manned up and imposed a travel restriction – no one from the affected countries gets in.
Friggin’ ankle bracelets are not terribly expensive; home quarantine, 21 days from entry in the country, too easy. Violators can be involuntarily quarantined and, when cleared, face charges of reckless endangerment. That ain’t a police state, that’s the government doing its first and primary duty – protecting its citizens from a very real threat.
Route all flights from west Africa through Thule AFB. They probably have a little excess capacity that could be used for a quarantine.
Let’s hope that whoever is running the CDC has the bollocks to tell Obummer to butt out the same way MacArthur told Truman to butt out. Of course, MacArthur got fired – then went on to become a folk hero.
Semper Idem: I’d guess you haven’t been exactly following this too closely. The CDC director has been one of those fornicating this up by the numbers from day one.
“Finally, in semi-related good news: the kid hospitalized in NYC as a possible Ebola case had a negative initial test for the virus. He’s still in isolation pending future follow-up testing. If that future testing shows he’s not infected, he’ll be given the green light to go home.”
I am truly glad this youngster is okay. I was worried.
It seems timely on this the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Jonas Salk, to point out our country USED to have the testicular fortitude to deal with disease and public safty in an adult manner.
“At the start of the 20th century, during the 1914 and 1919 polio epidemics in the U.S., physicians and nurses made house-to-house searches to identify all infected persons. Children suspected of being infected were taken to hospitals and a child’s family was quarantined until that child was no longer potentially infectious, even if it meant the family could not go to their child’s funeral if the child died in the hospital” (Maurer, Frances A. & Smith, Claudia M. (2005). Community/Public Health Nursing Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences. p. 185.)
In this, as in so many things facing our country, we as a Nation really do seem to lack the moral and ethical fortitude make the hard choices anymore.
I am calling complete bullshit on Kaci Hickox.
How do you get to be in Africa and not be quarantined? How does she dare expect, with the CDC protocol folly that we would expect any less than Q? Christie was right. And to even try to convince anyone she is an epidemiologist investigator who knows anything makes me laugh.
The good Dr. Brantly can just zip it about the police state.
Protocols are still barbarian at best for this virus and there should only be one clear objective: If you have traveled to Africa and want to gain entrance into the US, you must agree on paper with a signature to be quarantined. No ifs, ands, or buts. 21 days. In every state.
If the gov’t wants to fuck with my health and suddenly relinquish its control back to the states, I’ve got a problem with that. Absolutely.
Dereliction of duty, yet again by this clown and his followers. They want it all ways…and it simply cannot be done. Obama giving us the finger, again and again and again.
(*side note: The predictions that more are going to be without health insurance can add me to the list for the second time. We will no longer have benefits after 2015 because even with 60k people at the spouses new job, they’ll save money by paying the fine. Another SITYS moment. No one is immune.)
I do not know how you distinguish between the risk groups 1 and 2, especially in light of the large number of medical people who have died, with no idea when they contracted the disease.
The lefty nurse who refused to quarantine herself in NJ upon returning to the US from West Africa is now in Maine. She had a low-grade fever but reportedly tested negative for Ebola c/o preliminary testing. She traveled to Maine by car with what some accounts call her partner and others call her boyfriend. In any event, my take on this is that she is irresponsible and selfish. Her lefty politics aside, one would think that a healthcare professional would understand the very real anxiety of many Americans when it comes to Ebola and accept a quarantine order. But, no, not her. Instead, she traveled hundreds of miles, stopped at some number of places, no doubt, in route to Maine from Jersey and is thumbing her nose at quarantine there too. Meanwhile, the NY Post reports that the NYC doctor with Ebola initially told police that he quarantined himself in his apartment upon his return from West Africa but that credit card records showed he actually had been traipsing all over town. He came clean about his irresponsible and selfish travels when asked directly about the contrary evidence. So, we have a president we certainly can’t trust, a CDC that says quarantine is counter productive but then hedges on that, and healthcare professionals who, frankly, are themselves a threat to the well being of others. Yeah, we’re in great shape.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
Correct. This is precisely why I said above that “voluntary” or unenforced quarantines . . . really aren’t. Absent enforcement, human nature guarantees that someone will think, “It can’t happen to me.,” and violate same.
IMO that mindset is particularly common among many healthcare workers – particularly doctors, many of whom often seem to act as if they’re at least demigods if not full deities. They see illness daily, and often cure it; they’re in general healthy themselves and avoid same while doing so. So they come to believe, falsely, that it literally can’t happen to them.
As several have now found out the hard way, Ebola “don’t play that”.