The question we need to ask ourselves is whether our officials are making the right decisions regarding this Ebola outbreak. I am sure you have heard the CDC say that there is no way an infectious outbreak of Ebola could occur in our country like it has in Liberia and Sierra Leone. This is because we have too sophisticated of a healthcare system and our population is able to exercise appropriate hygiene.
I beg to differ. In my opinion I am beginning to believe that Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH and Dr. Frieden of the CDC are not only wrong but maybe it is time for them to step down as head of their respective departments. While I agree that we are unlikely to have a scenario such as that seen in those West African countries where the corpses are tossed into the river we have duplicated their problem of having a healthcare worker using appropriate precautions now contracting this dreadful disease. Now, the CDC is reconsidering whether every hospital in the country is able to handle this disease. This is no surprise to me as we have seen hundreds of healthcare workers in Africa sickened and dying from this disease due to exposure at work while doing their best to exercise appropriate precautions.
My concern as I stated in my last post is not that we will have a massive outbreak of uncontrolled Ebola but rather the financial devastation an outbreak would cause our country. We need to look at the amount of effort we are expending in Dallas for a single patient that brought this disease to our country. We are now monitoring 50 people, one of whom has developed the disease, we have hundreds of CDC professionals in the city of Dallas both monitoring the disease as well as reassuring the public.
Do we have the resources to respond to this degree if we have individuals in multiple locations being diagnosed and treated for this condition? At what point does the cost of fighting the disease as well as the lack of adequate professionals trained in caring for the disease become overwhelming? I think we each need to ask ourselves if we would modify our behavior if someone in our community developed Ebola. Would you take your child out of school? Stop going to parks and other recreational activities? Would you treat a coworker differently who comes to work coughing and sneezing? If you were a healthcare worker would you feel confident that the patient you were seeing in your office or the emergency room was not a dangerous carrier of this disease?
I suspect that many of you would answer yes to at least one of the questions above. Therefore if we this infection is not contained to the two people in Texas we might see dramatic changes in behavior as we act to protect ourselves and in the process our economy could come to a serious halt. We must remember that the act of 911 where 3000 people died resulted in the freezing of aviation for only two days. How many days would we be shutting down airports if we were worried about the disease spreading throughout our country?
I think it is time to state the obvious. The inherent dangers in this disease require a much more aggressive response than we have seen by our government. I am not reassured that checking body temperature on individuals traveling from the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea is adequate to prevent additional transmissions in our country. I believe that anyone who has traveled to those countries should not be allowed to enter the United States until they have passed the 21 day incubation period. While this may seem inconvenient to the 200 people a day who wish to enter our country it is a hazard we should not risk!
Finally, now that I have finished ranting I would like to announce I have completed 5 more chapters of "Virestorm" and I will begin sharing them on this blog. Check back soon to see them posted.
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