Ebola is here, Dallas, Texas

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Really interesting op-ed on CNN about wildlife being the main reservoir for many deadly, emerging diseases (not just Ebola), and policies to avoid future outbreaks:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/09/opinion/osofsky-ebola-wildlife/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

If alternative, safe sources of nutrition can be made practically and reliably available, people should simply stop eating bats and primates. This is not the voice of conservation speaking here; it's the voice of public health and common sense.

Knowing that bats are uniquely positioned in the animal kingdom as veritable virus factories, we need to know where people rely on access to bats as a food source. There are such places in the world, but there are likely as many if not more locales where bats are a preferred food, but not an essential one.

It's important to note that the current Ebola outbreak appears to have originated when a 2-year-old child either touched a captured bat or consumed meat from one.

Bats seem to be a unique source of zoonotic viruses (viruses transmissible from animals to people) -- from SARS and Ebola to Nipah and rabies -- just to name a few. Because of this we should work to discourage the capture, killing and consumption of bats, the disruption of their roosting trees, and the establishment of farms right where they defecate and urinate.

The same can be said for primates, our closest relatives. We share a lot of diseases with them, and indeed we know that HIV/AIDS arose from the butchering and consumption of chimpanzees. If we can make sure those in need of nutrition can get it in other ways, humanity would be much better off not eating primates of any kind.
 
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Welcome to the third world. I sent this article to a friend with the US Fish and Wildlife Service - even here in a (distant) US territory, some bats are considered a delicacy. I figured maybe she could have some better luck trying to protect the Marianas Fruit Bat if the locals are afraid of catching Ebola. Otherwise, they could care less about the USFWS. They love them so much they cook them and eat them with all the fur on them, because they like the smell and taste (the bats piss themselves all the time because they are hanging upside down).

 
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Yeah I saw that. What a dipshit. The least he could have done was waited for April 1st to do it.

 
Did you see where the Dallas Hospital mgmt threw the nurse under the bus that also now has Ebola? Failed to follow protocol or some BS.. Id like to see some of these stuffed suits follow the protocol..

Wife pointed out that right now in the US they are at a 1:1 ratio of (Infected Ebola:Infected Aid worker) ```````` (which aint good)

I am sure John Stewart told everyone there is no problem, but we are not prepared for anything like this. .or much of anything on US soil for the last 20 years or so..

 
Did you see where the Dallas Hospital mgmt threw the nurse under the bus that also now has Ebola? Failed to follow protocol or some BS.. Id like to see some of these stuffed suits follow the protocol..


That's the kind of shit that drove my wife out of nursing. We need to restrict flights from West Africa and quarantine people who are coming in to this country that "may" have Ebola as dleg suggested.

 
actually my bad it was the CDC Director, another one of Obama's "The Buck Doesn't Stop Here" guys..

 
^These fears are understandable. I have wondered about this myself, and had several conversations with colleagues about it. Do you chlorinate the hospital waste stream? And if so, how do you avoid killing off the treatment process? These are legitimate questions and the CDC needs to remember that there is a hell of a lot more to public health than just clinical care... I fear this aspect of public health (sanitary engineering and environmental health) has been all but forgotten over the past few years in government. If we are indeed putting up a "whole government response" to the Ebola epidemic, then we should be seeing guidance from CDC (as well as EPA and related agencies) on ALL aspects of the treatment train, including the disposal and treatment of ALL wastes. Every utility and landfill in the country needs to be contacted and trained, in addition to contractors and other workers who come into contact with wastes. The risks are NOT limited to nurses (although they obviously are at the highest risk). Yellow fever, malaria, cholera, and so on, were defeated by good sanitation and careful engineering as much as they were by medicine. I doubt Ebola is any different, in that respect.

 
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^ from what I've read, ebola doesn't live long in wastewater.

 
Did you see where the Dallas Hospital mgmt threw the nurse under the bus that also now has Ebola? Failed to follow protocol or some BS.. Id like to see some of these stuffed suits follow the protocol..

Wife pointed out that right now in the US they are at a 1:1 ratio of (Infected Ebola:Infected Aid worker) ```````` (which aint good)

I am sure John Stewart told everyone there is no problem, but we are not prepared for anything like this. .or much of anything on US soil for the last 20 years or so..
Mrs Dex and I discussed this a bit last night. There are strict protocol in place anytime there is a "containment" requirement (yes, there are other diseases out there besides ebola that need contained), but you have to remember that the staff responsible for care are human. All it takes is an itchy nose that you rub with the back of your hand without thinking about it. You don't even know you did it. Another common issue Mrs Dex told me about is that it's common for nurses to strip off their containment gowns, gloves, masks, etc and when they try to put it in the trash find the can is full so they will use their foot to compress the trash a bit to allow room. No one thinks about what's on the bottom of their shoes.

 
Also, All hospitals have protocols, but most all hospitals suffer from poor management and do little training (for something like this)coupled with very high turnover.. Doesn't really provide a good formula...

For example:

If you were in the military prior to the first gulf war, you learned to put on your chemical suit MOPP gear blindfolded, you practiced 20 times a day. Your life depended on learning out to put it on & take it off... My wife polled her friends working in various hospitals(large ones) and no one is doing any training / implementation of whatever their hospital is...

 
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