Starting to wonder if Texas is any more competent than Africa in dealing with ebola!

[MoonRiver]

Sick man from Libera sent home with antibiotics.
Once the man is diagnosed, days later, the apartment he slept, sweated and vomited in is ignored by public health officials for days.
People cleaning up the mess don't wear protective gear.

[Louisiana1976]

1. It's a Red state--it can't be.

[pnwmom]

2. And a family member says SHE was the one to bag up the mess. n/t

[kestrel91316]

3. They clearly are not. The appear to have told 3 of the children with direct contact to go right

ahead and go back to school since they didn't appear sick.

CDC shows up, says WTF????? And now those 3 kids have been yanked and put into isolation, as FEDERAL GUIDELINES required at the start.

Texas public health officials are not willing or able to enforce federal safety guidelines re Ebola. Interpret that however you like.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. It's Texas.

Can you imagine the kettle that will brew over when some government regulator demands a right-wing family to remain in isolation?

[kestrel91316]

5. THIS is why I've said that we are in no better position to stop Ebola than Liberia is.

We've got just as much stupid - it just comes in different flavors than theirs.

[sendero]

15. Exactly..

.... and all of the assertions that Ebola cannot become a wider problem are predicated on the idea that people will not do blatantly stupid things. Problem is, they are.

For example that dude with a power wash at the apt. Was the material doused with bleach first? Because if not, he is now turning the bodily fluids into an aerosol. Brilliant.

[cwydro]

6. Using a hose to clean the vomit.

Utterly amazing.

[MoonRiver]

7. ALL OF THE ABOVE!

[Generic Brad]

8. Don't mess with Texas

It's already a mess!

[Generic Other]

9. You get what you pay for

or in this case what you have refused to pay for. Way to go Texas. Just another third world state.

[AverageJoe90]

10. I have reason to doubt that things are going to get as bad as they have in Liberia or Sierra Leone..

But especially because I'm living nearby, this still does have me somewhat concerned. There is indeed a serious problem with incompetence in our medical system.....not to mention the horrific greed of insurance bigwigs. And if we do start having more deaths, I'd like to hope, realistically speaking, it'd be a wake up call for this country, that we can't afford to keep letting these problems slide.

[PCIntern]

11. So yesterday I got slammed for posting with some irony

the fact that the "only known" Ebola case in the USA was in Dallas home of the fucked-up assassination of JFK and to some fair extent the fucked-up S and L scandal. Then Out of the Blue of the Western Sky came the deriders: "non-sequitur", the great Texas Hospital System, blah blah blah… once again I was persona non gratis around here because I stated the obvious truth: we are not of a mindset to handle LIFE AND DEATH until it hits us in the face and even then, we are sorely incompetent. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is WISHFUL THINKING: whereas it IS TRUE that Ebola is much much less virulent than flu or the common cold, YOU DON'T FRIGGING DIE IF YOU GET A COLD. You will probably die if you get Ebola and don't get FIRST CLASS TREATMENT. When was the last time that you got first-class treatment? Hell, they can't even assure the President that some asshole won't get into an elevator with him with a loaded gun. So how the hell are you going to assume that you're gonna be OK because you live here? I. Don't. Know.

I know I know…you don't like this post. Before you come after me again, listen to, or better yet, read the transcript of the prepared remarks of the CDC folk and the Administration. They read like a Cialis warning on a TV ad. It's like the reverse of the Libyan Red Line in the Desert, they are crossing the line each time they are told that it can't possibly happen. My favorite is old Doc Fauci telling us that even if a bunch of people were to catch Ebola, it would not be an outbreak. Because we have tracking abilities and isolation abilities. WTF? They won't even clean up the vomit. Give me a effing break.

[MoonRiver]

13. Yep, when exposure to bodily fluids is the one KNOWN way to catch this disease,

what do they do, why leave bodily fluids from an infected person lying in the street for a few days! Then, finally have some poor guy clean it up without protective clothing.

[PCIntern]

14. Exactly...

this country is so fucking stupid that if you wrote a book of what happens when it comes to LIFE AND DEATH, no one would believe it. Because: wait for it................nobody cares if anyone lives or dies. Unless it's their family or friend in which case it's a "horror".

[MoonRiver]

16. The infected guy in Dallas resided in a poor, immigrant community, I believe.

He also probably presented at the hospital without insurance. And he was a dark skinned "furner" to boot. Herein lies the source of the Dallas medical community's seeming indifference to the situation. Had the infected person lived in Westlake, for instance, we would be hearing about a very different scenario.

[PCIntern]

17. Right...AND

this is HOW IT HAPPENS.

I am so sick and tired of the corporate memes being bandied about here. What people need to do is go online and read a short course in virology. Nothing complex, just some basics. And then, come back to the conversation and tell us all about the great infrastructure of American Medicine and Politics and the abject lying going on in every sphere. It is unconscionable. Fact of the matter is that it takes a minimal amount of viral particles. If the person sneezes on the pole on the bus which you're holding or they had diarheaa and it's all over their hands and they touch the doorknob right before you, or they cough right on you while you're in the grocery store, you're infected. Doesn't matter if you think it is unlikely, it can happen if there are enough people with the virus and the notion of "likelihood" increases exponentially when you think about the numbrs of people involved. See it doesn't matter what THEY say or what YOU think...what matters is where the viral particle is or isn't and all the talking and posturing in the world won't make a difference if this sloppiness of reportage, of quarantining, of anti-intellectual feel-goodism doesn't stop. This is serious. Really serious.

On edit: this is a RHETORICAL "you", not you...

[otohara]

12. Had It Not Been For My Mom in 1954

She took me to the hospital during the polio outbreak and they said I had the flu.
They wanted to send me home but she pushed back and insisted they test me.

Things haven't changed all that much.