An American health worker who experienced a high-risk exposure to the Ebola virus while in Sierra Leone is being sent to a Nebraska hospital for observation and possible treatment, hospital officials announced Saturday.I had a sudden epiphany.
"This patient has been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious," said Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha. "However, we will be taking all appropriate precautions. This patient will be under observation in the same room used for treatment of the first three patients and will be carefully monitored to see if Ebola disease develops."
Most of the United States is suffering an "influenza epidemic". How would you tell the difference between someone in the early stages of Ebola and some poor soul that has the flu?Also remember that 1200 people were being monitored for Ebola within our borders just a couple of weeks ago.
If I didn't know better I would think we're under biological attack. Ebola, Enterovirus D68 and now a flu so severe that its killed a healthy, active 3 year old girl.
To answer your question, no, I don't think this is an attack.
I do think it points out how frail modern medicine actually is. We might be better at healing broken bones and dealing with illness in normally healthy people, but when nature throws a wrinkle into our plans (like when they guess wrong on the flu virus that will hit) we're helpless.
You know those quick oil/fluid change franchises,...that's what most modern hospitals are like. Process oriented industrial systems with lots of good technology, but not flexible or adaptive. By the way, the "cleaning function" is the Achilles heel of the system.
ReplyDeleteShe had a flu shot.
ReplyDeleteBe very wary of them, for reasons of shoddy manufacturing as much as anything else. Think open-air vat-labs in India where contamination is way too easy.
Also, only about 15% of tested 'Flu' cases are caused by a Flu virus. The rest are actually allergies, or environmental toxins with similar symptoms.
the challenge is how rapidly the virus mutates and how long it takes to create a vaccine, it takes about a year or close to it to make it, and so world health officials have to guess what strains will be most prevalent, as a virus is technically not a "living" organism as it can not use energy, reproduce on its own, grow, etc it must have a host to do these things. anti virals are also very hard on the body, thats why they are not given alot, as are stronger antibiotics as they can damage major organs.
ReplyDeletei worry about bacterias that become resistant to antibiotics, as our addiction to antibiotics has made many conditions resistant to current ones and few new ones have been created as they are arent profitable.