Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Doubling Down On Stupid



CDC Director Frieden, after getting shelled for two days for blaming the victim, has now issued a non-apology apology, and clarified that he's very sorry if you understood him to be saying exactly what he did say:

"I want to clarify something I said yesterday. I spoke about a breach in protocol and that’s what we speak about in public health when we’re talking about what needs to happen. And our focus is to say, "Would this protocol have prevented the infection?" And we believe it would have. But some interpreted that as finding fault with the hospital or the healthcare worker. And I’m sorry if that was the impression given. That was certainly not my intention."

What he said, over and over, and what was repeated by his cohort Fauci at NIAID, was that despite "not knowing what happened", "there was a breach in protocol".
And since the person who has Ebola is the one who was supposed to follow the protocol, the only possible impression to those who speak English is, in the opinion of the top two doctors from the federal government in charge of infectious disease response, that
the nurse got Ebola because she fucked up.

The way to walk that back is to simply say. "I'm sorry. We don't know what happened or why this person got infected. But we're looking at every possible cause, and when we know more, we'll tell you and everybody, to prevent it from ever happening again.
I'm sorry for blaming someone on the basis of no evidence, and sounding as if I had any reason to ascribe blame to an experienced clinician with years of nursing experience, and specialty certification in critical care nursing. It was wrong of me, and I withdraw those remarks unreservedly."

But that would require both a soul and a brain.

Frieden, clearly, has neither.

And just for fun, it's come to light that there were nearly six dozen other staff members who had close contact with Duncan along with Pham, all wearing the same PPE ensemble as her, and all now on a 21-day twice daily supervised monitoring program.
More importantly, the nurses and staff caring for Pham now are wearing the exact same PPE ensemble that Pham used when she acquired her Ebola exposure. So if it turns out to be a gear or procedure problem, they're all potential next-tier Ebola victims too.

Which means the death toll of Ebola carrier Duncan and @$$clown Frieden could just keep going and going and going...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

But, but, but...I keep hearing that we'll NEVER have an Ebola epidemic here. After all, TOP MEN are handling the situation.

Gag me!

The "TOP MEN" are a bunch of arrogant, political, ass-kissing, presumptuous, statist assholes that they are going to get many thousands or more killed in a very painful and gruesome manner. They see nothing wrong with letting in Liberians and others from highly infected nations because to prevent them from coming here would be...wait for it...wait for it...drumroll...RACIST!

Spare me the BS - this is all about pResident Obola having made a huge mistake (or simply not giving a damn), learning that the results may be catastrophic, and trying to find a way to either blame Republicans, or at the least to postpone the day of (political) reckoning to after the election next month.

Which is why I wouldn't be upset if certain key officials got a case of a certain Turd World disease that is "impossible to get without direct bodily contact" (so long as they don't infect anyone else).

Anonymous said...

WHO claims 'incubation period' (aka how long it takes victim to suppress hemorrhagic symptoms is actually up to 42 days.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/14-october-2014/en/

William said...

But wait a minute. Is this guy not the same one who was to tell New Yorka's what size soda to drink...figures.

RandyGC said...

I'm sure you noticed the carefully parsed phrase "breach in protocol", because admitting that it could also be a failure of the protocol(that is she did everything perfectly and it still didn't work) doesn't reflect well on the TOP. MEN.

RandyGC said...

William, if this political hack expended even half of the energy and passion he directed against smokers and large soft drinks while being Bloomberg's HealthenFührer, Monrovia would have been a glowing glass crater 2 months ago.

Anonymous said...

Nebraska Medical Center says that although they have ten beds in their bio-containment unit, they can only handle three patients!

http://www.livewellnebraska.com/ebola/nebraska-med-center-nursing-official-unit-could-care-for-no/article_c76696f0-5302-11e4-af42-001a4bcf6878.html

Iaato said...

Except that there was no protocol. Go figure.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/13/nurses-warn-system-failure-ebola-spreads-us-healthcare-worker

http://prosperouswaydown.com/death-grip-worldview/