Time to Quarantine?

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.

Are You Afraid of Ebola? You Should Be...

Why? Many of you have read the first few chapters of my story "Virestorm" about a nefarious plot to trigger an outbreak of Avian flu. If that seems frightening the possibilities with Ebola are truly staggering.

Let's start with a few statistics.  As of 9/30 7400 people contracted the disease and 3439 have died. We have now had our first confirmed case on US soil and Spain has had their first. The disease has a 50% mortality and is transmitted in blood, urine, saliva, sweat,  and feces. The dormant period is up to 3 weeks and you are contagious when you have initially mild symptoms of fever, sore throat and cough.

OK, big deal, the CDC says they will have no trouble containing the outbreak in Texas monitoring the 50 exposed people. Texas doesn't scare me, what scares me is what Texas tells me could happen.

Give me a moment to expand. I was talking to a biomedical expert 2 weeks ago and she confirmed the virus can live on soiled clothing for at least a few days. I can think of lots of ways trouble could happen. When I was talking to a friend about it on Saturday he thought I was describing a new Clancy novel.

So, let's imagine there is an evil person or group who wants to cause terror and disruption. How might they do it and could the plot already be in action? Maybe our person in Texas was just a test to see if the virus could make it into the country and to see how well we responded. If that's the case the hospital failed the initial test as Mr. Duncan was sent home contagious. During the next few days he was in contact with many people.  But, the scary aspect of this is how easily he made it here and once ill was able to circulate among the population.

What would happen if someone was able to gain access to tissue and bring it here? I don't think the idea is too farfetched. I was just reading that in the poorer areas of Africa people are tossing infected bodies into the local rivers for disposal. How hard would it be for a Jihadi to grab one of these bodies and take a chunk of diseased tissue and put it on dry ice or liquid nitrogen and manage to bring it in to our country?

Once here he could walk through a crowded subway rubbing infected tissue onto unsuspecting hands. I'm sure someone would end up rubbing an eye or nose or mouth and perhaps this person would start their 21 day incubation period. What happens when the unsuspecting person becomes contagious with typical flu symptoms a few weeks later and is transmitting the virus to others on public transportation? Imagine a few people doing this in a few major cities. If Jihadists are willing to blow themselves up I believe they would be willing to die of a tragic disease to achieve their aims.

How disrupted would our economy be when hundreds if not thousands of people became either infected or placed in quarantine? We can't forget that taking down two office towers and killing 3,000 people resulted in a severe impact on our nation and economy.

You can even twist the plot a little. Our own president was riding an elevator a few weeks ago with an uncleared contractor with a bad history and was carrying a weapon. Maybe the sloppy secret service could allow someone with an Ebola tainted cloth come in contact with the President or a family member or member of the cabinet. Maybe aim low and just infect a US congressman.

I think that if 9/11 caused us trouble we have no idea how bad it could really be. Forget about grounding airplanes. If we had a well orchestrated attack we would be shutting down transportation, schools, sporting events. The list goes on.

You are reasonable if you ask if there is anything we can do. I don't think we can completely prevent something this evil but I think we better be prepared. Personally, I am beginning to think that anyone traveling from those areas of Africa should be placed in 21 days quarantine. And I'm not afraid of us forfeiting some civil liberties for the next few months particularly regarding monitoring of telephone and electronic communications. I also suggest being prepared to park yourself and your family at home for at least a few weeks if something does happen.

That reminds me, I better tell my wife to buy some more canned goods!