Still Chasing Their Tails

(CNN) -- A hospital official apologizes for blunders in handling Ebola. Schools close for fear of possible exposure. And health officials consider putting 76 hospital workers on a no-fly list after an infected nurse flew on a plane with a fever.

Here's the latest on the Ebola in the United States:

Hospital official: 'We are deeply sorry'

The Texas hospital where an Ebola patient died and two nurses became infected is apologizing for mistakes made when first confronted with the deadly virus.

Dr. Daniel Varga said the hospital mishandled the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who was originally sent home from Texas Presbyterian Health Dallas hospital even after he had a fever and said he was from Liberia.

"Unfortunately, in our initial treatment of Mr. Duncan, despite our best intentions and a highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes," Varga, the chief clinical officer for Texas Health Services, said in written testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola. We are deeply sorry."

Well, isn't that nice. They're sorry. Deeply sorry. Which should be such a comfort to the THOUSANDS of people now directly impacted by their failures.

How could it happen? Like this.

 

Days after Duncan returned to the hospital, he died from the virus.

But Varga did outline a timeline of the hospital's preparation, saying hospital staffers were given guidance on looking for Ebola symptoms several times over the summer.

All of which "guidance" was OPTIONAL, not mandatory. Well done, THP.

 

He said the hospital has made several policy changes, such as updating the emergency department screening process to include a patient's travel history and increasing training for staffers.

They've HAD to make the changes, when it became clear in 2 seconds that each change didn't work, that their EHR was wonky, that nobody was thinking about Ebola even after they knew they were dealing with it, and because what pitifully little training they'd had was wholly and criminally inadequate to meet any standards or allow them to safely care for patients, whether those with Ebola, or those without it, or keeping one safe from the other. As revelations from the nurses on the spot have revealed virtually overnight. THP was making this up as they went along, because they'd NEVER actually treated an infectious epidemic like an actual possibility.

 

CDC considers grounding Texas hospital workers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering putting 76 health care workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list, an official familiar with the situation said.

The official also said the CDC is considering lowering the fever threshold that would be considered a possible sign of Ebola. The current threshold is 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The idea came after news that Amber Vinson, a nurse who cared for Duncan, flew home from Cleveland to Dallas after reporting a fever.

Vinson called the CDC to report an elevated temperature of 99.5 Fahrenheit. She informed the agency that she was getting on a plane, a federal official told CNN, but she wasn't told to stay grounded.

 

Vinson was also considered by local and federal infection authorities to be at virtually no risk whatsoever after she and 75 others treated Duncan, which was why she was self-monitoring her temps at all - something she was doing with accuracy and precision - and even called federal CDC officials multiple times to confirm there was no problem.
CDC Director Frieden, following his typical MO, has now said "she shouldn't have gotten on the plane" as though the error was the nurse's fault, rather than forthrightly stepping up, and saying "MY agency and MY subordinates screwed that up royally, that jackass will be fired immediately, and we're re-training the idiots around here to start using their heads for something besides a butt plug, and I apologize that MY agency needlessly put two planeloads of passengers and numerous people in Cleveland at direct risk of contracting Ebola for our unforgivable assclownery, yet again"

Instead, after telling everyone that somebody else shouldn't have done something, he contradicted all previous statements, and assured them all that the passengers were at minimal to no risk, and tried yet again to palm this off as the nurse's fault.

 

This continued behavior by Frieden and pattern of trying to shift blame is pathological and reprehensible. He should be fired, if not actually prosecuted in at least two states and the District of Columbia for reckless disregard for public safety and several thousand counts of endangering the public.

And BTW, how in blistering hell can anyone advocate for grounding potentially infected healthcare workers as a possible disease vector, and then out of the other side of their mouths keep mouthing the platitude that grounding 150 W.Africans arriving every day for the three most heavily infected countries "isn't on the table"???
Pardon, your bullshit is showing, you bunch of cacophonous monkeys.

 

Vinson, 29, is now being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has successfully treated two other patients.

Staffing issues at the hospital were behind the decision to transfer Vinson to Emory, a federal official told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

"What we're hearing is that they are worried about staffing issues and a possible walkout of nurses," the official said.

Clearly then, those staff members aren't the shit-headed morons that THP management, Texas health officials, or the CDC have proven to be at every step. Reportedly, their ER is STILL closed because of a mass walk-out as well. That, coupled with rumblings that they're about to lose their ICU for the same reason, are the ONLY signs of intelligent life in this crisis since it started barely three weeks ago. If they'd put those front-line doctors and nurses in charge of this problem, we'd all be much better off than we are with the current Clowncarnucopia of Failures running the circus.

 

Hospital employees can quarantine themselves

On Wednesday night, the hospital released a statement offering a room to any employee who is concerned they may have been exposed to Ebola.

"Texas Health Dallas is offering a room to any of our impacted employees who would like to stay here to avoid even the remote possibility of any potential exposure to family, friends and the broader public," the hospital said.

"We are doing this for our employees' peace of mind and comfort. This is not a medical recommendation. We will make available to our employees who treated Mr. Duncan a room in a separate part of the hospital throughout their monitoring period."

Welcome to the Hotel Ebola. Come for the job, stay for the quarantine. having recklessly endangered it's own staff members, they'd now like to try and paper over that problem by keeping them at the hospital (without offering to pay them) "voluntarily", in an meager effort to contain the disaster management has pulled down on their own heads.

While giving themselves yet another CYA opportunity to BLAME THE STAFF MEMBERS when they don't "voluntarily" opt for being separated from their families, indefinitely, and taking advantage of THP's "generous" offer.

 

How about this, THP? You screwed the pooch, you pay the piper. If those staff members aren't safe to go home because you screwed them over, and they ought to be quarantined away from family members, and since they work for you, you eat the payroll for keeping them on the clock 24/7 for this little workplace exposure for the entire 21 days, as a financial incentive to you not to keep screwing the pooch in the future, and liquidated damages to them for your bone-headed incompetence?

Stupid should leave a mark, and the $40K penalty bonuses (minimum) apiece you'd owe, times 74 as-yet uninfected staffers would be a fair price to pay for scaring the hell out of the community, risking your workers' lives, and endangering their families and the community.

So how about it, you cheap bastards? If you're "deeply sorry" how about making this right?

Yeah, I thought not.

Several Texas and Ohio schools close

News of Vinson's travel on a Frontier Airlines plane led to school closures in two states.

In Texas, a few schools in the Belton Independent School District are closed Thursday because two students were on the same flight as Vinson from Cleveland to Dallas -- Frontier Airlines Flight 1143, the superintendent said.

And in Ohio, two schools in the Solon School District in suburban Cleveland are closed Thursday because a staffer "traveled home from Dallas on Frontier Airlines Tuesday on a different flight, but perhaps the same aircraft" as Vinson, the school district said in a statement.

"Although we believe what the science community and public health officials are telling us about the low risk of possible transmission of the virus through indirect contact, we are nonetheless taking the unusual step of closing the dual school building for Thursday so that we can have the schools cleaned and disinfected," the statement said.

So now we've terrorized a few hundred or thousand more schoolkids and their parents, now three states away, for the continued failures at treating Ebola like a contagious disease, and taking basic measures to halt its spread:
Like shutting off all passenger travel here from there, by any route;
Like mandatorily quarantining potential infectees immediately and proactively, to prevent exactly this latest bout of assclownery, now across multiple states;
Like firing those who demonstrated repeated inability to do such basic management and quarantine surveillance, at every level from Dallas County to the CDC.
if we want to protect people from Ebola, the first step has to be getting rid of the Volkswagen full of sad clowns running this show at every level.