Is That Helpful?

I bet they are.  I bet they are.  Business will likely take a hit there.

(Isn't it a little early to all this a "crisis"?)

Dr Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer at Texas Health Resources, conceded that errors were made by Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, which sent Thomas Duncan home after he complained of a fever and abdominal pain following his arrival from his native Liberia last month.

“Unfortunately, in our initial treatment of Mr Duncan, despite our best intentions and highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes,” Varga wrote in testimony to the US Congress. “We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola. We are deeply sorry.”

[...]

Texas Health initially explained its failure to diagnose Duncan, who did not have health insurance, by saying that a nurse had not shared the patient’s travel records with a doctor. However, it has subsequently retracted this statement.

  The Guardian

Real nice there. Dump on the nurse.

“In our effort to communicate to the public quickly and transparently, we inadvertently provided some information that was inaccurate and had to be corrected.”

“Inadvertently” – right.  "Inaccurate" - right.

He conceded that this had been “unsettling to a community that was already concerned and confused.

[...]

“We didn’t correctly diagnose Mr Duncan’s initial symptoms, and we’re sorry about that,” Varga said. “It wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for.”

[...]

[ CDC director, Dr Thomas] Frieden, however, sought to allay public fears over the virus. He said he and his colleagues “remain confident that Ebola is not a significant public health threat to the United States” due primarily to the virus not being easily transmitted.

Seriously? It seems like it’s been pretty easy to me. They can’t even tell us how that first nurse got infected. And how many people (like me and all the farmers in this county) don’t go to the doctor when they have a fever, even with “projectile vomiting” and “explosive diarrhea”?

Specialists at Emory University Medical Center in Atlanta have also found that the virus is present on a patient’s skin after symptoms develop, underlining how contagious the disease is once symptoms set in.

The virus can survive for several hours on surfaces, so any object contaminated with bodily fluids may spread the disease. According to the C.D.C., the virus can survive for a few hours on dry surfaces like doorknobs and countertops and can survive for several days in puddles or other collections of body fluid. Bleach solutions can kill it.

  NYT

That makes it pretty easy in my book.

They really need to shoot straight on this so that people know exactly what they need to be doing to protect themselves and prevent spread instead of trying to cover their asses and offer confusing, contradictory, and evasive responses meant to avoid panic. There’ll be a panic they can’t control if they let this get out of hand trying to obfuscate and keep their reputations clean. Blaming nurses isn’t going to take care of this one.

That NYT article purports to give the facts about Ebola, but when discussing the absence of a vaccine or "FDA approved" treatment, it fails to mention the Russian vaccine ready to undergo testing in live situations.

It also answers the question: What is the United States doing to help?

President Obama announced Sept. 16 an expansion of military and medical resources to combat the outbreak, including the deployment of as many as 4,000 American military personnel to Liberia and Senegal. He said the United States would help Liberia in the construction of more than 17 Ebola treatment centers in the region, with about 1,700 beds, and would also open a joint command operation to coordinate the international effort to combat the disease. But military planners say construction of the centers have been delayed because of the difficulty in getting heavy equipment to the areas.

Meanwhile. Democracy Now! reports that the " small island nation of Cuba has sent more than 160 doctors to West Africa to treat patients and help stem the spread of this epidemic."

And Doctors Without Borders has thousands of people working in West Africa, but is “maxed out” on available resources.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, a medical charity that has been at the forefront in the fight against Ebola in West Africa, said it was reaching its limit and urgently needed other organizations to step up the efforts against the deadly disease.

The organization currently operates six centers in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with a total of 600 beds. Its personnel on the ground have grown from about 650 at the start of August to about 3,000 currently.

  Huffpo

Sorry, our doctors are too well paid here to perform face lifts and other elective surgeries.

And, by the way, stories keep mentioning the fact that the original Ebola patient did not have insurance.  Maybe we could pick up the tab for this out of the US Treasury.