The Ebola patient in Dallas died.

NOLABridesmaid · October 2014

That's sad.

0Face · October 2014

**nodding** yes. very sad.

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

I agree that it is sad that he has died but I also believe that if he had survived, he should have gone to jail.

He knew he had been VERY exposed to a deadly and contagious disease and still chose to board multiple international flights and put hundreds and potentially thousands of people at risk. I strongly believe that he felt that he would get better treatment in the US and rushed to get back so that if/when he became ill he would be taken care of in a US hospital. Unfortunately, he seemed to be only thinking of himself at that point.

Heffalump · October 2014

bahamabride2015 said:

I agree that it is sad that he has died but I also believe that if he had survived, he should have gone to jail.

He knew he had been VERY exposed to a deadly and contagious disease and still chose to board multiple international flights and put hundreds and potentially thousands of people at risk. I strongly believe that he felt that he would get better treatment in the US and rushed to get back so that if/when he became ill he would be taken care of in a US hospital. Unfortunately, he seemed to be only thinking of himself at that point.

I don't know. I guess we can speculate as to what he thought, but we'll never really know. He did have his temperature taken as he was boarding the plane, and it was normal. So he wasn't running a fever at the time, and it's my understanding that that's one of the first symptoms. He may have been freaked out by the whole situation (who wouldn't be) and gotten out as soon as he could in order to either avoid catching it, or get good treatment if he did eventually get sick. It's impossible to say, but it doesn't seem like he knew he was sick when he boarded the flight. And honestly, if I thought I was fine, I'd want to get the hell out before I got sick and died, too.

dharmabunny · October 2014

Because criminalizing HIV/AIDS really stopped that epidemic in its tracks.

GBCK · October 2014

He did say that he would have rather stayed and died than do what he did in exposing his FI and family to the disease.

If he *knew*, he's an ass. But it's hard to ignore self-preservation as a motivator for doing something basic like getting on an airplane so you're not caught in the middle of a deadly plauge

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

Yeah I get the logic from his perspective, it would be scary. But also knowing that he had been so exposed and was very likely to get it, he risked the lives of everyone he encountered, including his fiance and her family in the states. Not good. They're now saying that a police officer who entered the apartment where he was staying has been admitted to the hospital with Ebola-like symptoms. Hopefully he just has the flu, otherwise they're going to start referring to Thomas Duncan as "Patient Zero" in the states.

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

dharmabunny said:

Because criminalizing HIV/AIDS really stopped that epidemic in its tracks.

I really don't see this as being remotely the same. I would happily sit next to someone on a plane who I knew had HIV/AIDS, it's not transmitted though proximity and doesn't have symptoms that cause highly infections bodily fluids to come from every orifice. Ebola, not so much.

VarunaTT · October 2014

Well, as long as you don't let the person you're sitting next to bleed or vomit on you, you're probably going to be okay. I mean, in general, if I see someone bleeding, I don't go shake their hand.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

This part is interesting:

**The R0 is integrated over the time that a person is infectious to others. For HIV, this could be years. But for Ebola, that time is only about a week. So even though they have similar R0s, Ebola's infections per unit of time is much higher than HIV's.

Heffalump · October 2014

I'm resurrecting this thread because the following directly addresses some of @bahamabride2015's points:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/10/airport_screening_for_ebola_did_thomas_eric_duncan_lie_and_should_liars.single.html

NOLABridesmaid · October 2014

Plus, it doesn't look good that everyone else received blood from the survivors except for Mr. Duncan, and they have all survived., and he didn't. Doesn't look good at all, and I hate to say it, but you already know what I'm thinking.....

PMeg819 · October 2014

NOLA, I'm not going to assume I know the ins and outs of Ebola care but I think there has to be more than that. As evidenced, this hospital clearly doesn't know how to treat patients with Ebola as they have a nurse who now has it. They aren't following their own isolation and protection policies. While the two doctors who went to Emory were treated and lived, they knew early on that they had contracted it and were able to be on top of their treatment. Call it a race issue or what- but I think that points to their own ability to have access to quality healthcare and their own knowledge. I think that by the time he was diagnosed (which was clearly a failure of the hospital) it might have been too late for a transfusion.

I do think the hospital was negligent in this, and I'd like to hope that race didn't play a role in that.

NOLABridesmaid · October 2014

I don't think race is the only reason he died but I think it played a factor. In addition to him not getting fast treatment, the hospital incompetence, not being a citizen, and running out of the needed meds(so they say.) He was screwed all the way around.

I think there are always more that comes into play with these kind of things.

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

I don't disagree with any particular point in the article other than this:

"It is also not true that Duncan is guilty of putting more lives at risk because of this decision."

In the case of Ebola, the R0 (number of people an infected person generally infects, this can be higher or lower) is 2. So far, that we know of, he has infected at least one more person and it will be very fortunate if it stops there. It could have been many more given the number of people he likely encountered on his journey and their various destinations after the encounter.

I get it, nobody wants to die, certainly not in a country that is being ravaged by disease and doesn't have the means to care for you properly. I just don't think that gives people the right to traipse half way around the world and lie in order to gain entry somewhere with better medical care, potentially exposing many many more unsuspecting people.

I say unsuspecting in that, if I were in Sierra Leone, where the disease is rampant right now and someone told me they had a fever, I would be taking a hell of a lot more precautions before caring for them than I would if someone here in the Bahamas, where the disease isn't present (yet) said the same thing.

bahamabride2015 · October 2014

And there is the second (so far). The article states that no fewer than 124 healthcare workers and family/friends had close contact with him while he was sick. Lovely.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-2nd-health-care-worker-in-dallas-tests-positive-1.2798937

jojobrn · October 2014

I think the CDC dropped the ball here for sure, we shouldn't have multiple health care workers getting infected. The gowning/gloving procedure for Ebola is a 20 minute long task that should be supervised by another RN, MD, someone, and I doubt that was happening in Dallas. Adding to the risk was the fact they had the gentleman intubated and were performing dialysis, both which increase the likelihood you are going to be exposed to body fluids and are NOT routinely done for care of ebola patients because of the risk and the fact they don't really do much but prolong the inevitable.

I am just glad the CDC backtracked on finger pointing at the RN as being completely at fault for her infection. Nope. Not when you have specially trained staff at the CDC on how to handle Ebola. That should have been on site immediately. This is a whole new level of contact isolation that I never had to deal with myself, I have no doubt if it was me caring for him, I would have likely breached isolation, unintentionally, without the proper training and supervision.

NOLABridesmaid · October 2014

Jo, my school nurse said the same thing you just did. So sad on all accounts.

*Barbie* · October 2014

I think the CDC/hospital staff dropped the ball on this (lack of training/oversight/preparedness) - the one thing that I have to question re: Duncan is why he didn't make a bigger fuss when they tried to send him home the first time? None of this "I was in Liberia" (which most people could not find on a map - hell, most Americans are lucky they could identify their state on a map...) - but "I was in direct contact with a woman who was sick with/died from ebola. you need to test me for ebola."

Lizzieyounce · October 2014

Nursing student here, first semester of clinicals so I'm a total amateur, but I'm horrified at what I'm seeing on the news. If it's true that these nurses only had standard issue PPE, as opposed to what care takers in Sierra Leone, etc have, then someone has dropped a giant ass ball here.

From what I've read, and seen, these nurses had their necks exposed and wore standard masks...not even N95's!! Plus its looking like in the beginning they were told that they didn't need shoe covers! We wear covers for c-diff patients, so I would think that one would with Ebola.

I hope that this isn't true, but I'm really not at all confident. I mean, why were the protocols, if there were any, different than the one's used in West Africa?

The Ebola patient in Dallas died.

Re: The Ebola patient in Dallas died.

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