Ebola Is A Bigger Threat Than You Realize.

You can stop rolling your eyeballs right now. I actually have a considered argument that I have given great thought to in the past few months. Read the blog and then continue to roll your eyeballs all you like. But read it first.

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There is a tremendous amount of news regarding Ebola at the moment. I get more than a bit of news that the average person doesn’t see through some contacts I have, some groups I belong to, and some experience I’ve had working with, and having, infectious diseases. My view of this is fairly solid, and it’s not relying on black helicopters, tin foil hats, or visions from Thetans.

Let’s lead off with an anecdote first: Two years ago I visited Haiti. Two years ago I got dysentary. Two years ago Immodium and a strong antibiotic dealt with the dysentary. Two years ago I flew back to the United States feeling just fine. Four hours after I landed I developed all the symptoms of Dengue Fever. My bathroom rug was never the same. I should have been in the hospital, but I was too sick to get out of bed and call an ambulance: the high fever and hallucinations, combined with dehydration, will do that to a fellow. Thankfully I recovered without further ado in about a week. I felt terrible for a month. Had I known how sick I was, I would have been at the hospital for sure.

That’s how febrile diseases impact you: it’s very fast and horrendously powerful. I don’t think that the current CDC endorsed method of dealing with Ebola is appropriate. I don’t play a doctor on television, nor have I gone to medical school. But the warning signs that we’re being fed a ration of pablum are making my antennae twitch.

Today I got an alert from a missionary support group I belong to that they are discouraging any travel to that region. The VA hospital I use had Ebola warnings posted starting in the parking ramp: If you have been to West Africa, or in contact with those who have been, and have the following symptoms contact our medical staff immediately. I have also talked to several people in the first responder world who are very nervous about this in the wake of their training.

No big deal, you say, they’ve treated all the people infected here and cured them all except that first guy in Dallas. Yes they have. And at what cost? Not that saving lives is a bad thing, nor should we deny care to the sick. But each one of those patients requires a massive amount of care, isolated rooms, special linen and trash service, decontamination of ambulances, decontamination of planes, decontamination of bowling alleys, etc. Each patient is going to cost approximately $300,000 to treat.

In onesies and twosies this is manageable. But wouldn’t it make more sense to isolate anyone coming back from a medical mission, or from one of those countries, for the full 28 days? (21 is the protocol. I like a little insurance in this case – throw in free cable and gourmet meals.) It’s going to be cheaper. The argument is that you will stop the great humanitarians of our age from going to treat the sick. Yes, it will stop a few narcissists from making the trip. But the real saints? 30 days extra after risking their lives so that others may be safe from infection? I don’t think it would be an issue. If you can go and work there for a month, budget two. Three months? Budget four. It prevents the spread of a contagion.

Here’s the nub of the problem: it’s very expensive in both manpower and money to treat a single patient. There are finite resources available to safely handle these patients. What happens when a cluster breaks out, and it will happen here just as it does in Africa, and twenty or thirty people are infected? That effectively shuts down two major hospitals to treat the people. Multiply 30 patients x 25 health care providers and you now need 750 doctors, nurses, orderlies, janitors, etc., to handle the cases. All of whom are now at some risk. For many metropolitan hospitals that’s the end of treating anyone else for a while.

Spread that out now to an ambulance/paramedic system where you have everyone who responds to the scene needing to be monitored and disinfected. Two paramedics, five firefighters in my area will be exposed, as well as a couple of cops. Should they go home that night? Who does their job while they are out of circulation? Who cleans that ambulance if they’re all in isolation? Who goes to the heart attack call down the block while they check it out for being a hot zone?

It’s not the individual patient that creates the panic, it’s the cascading effect. We can handle a case here and there, but one big outbreak in any city and you will see store shelves cleared, EMS shut down, and hospitals vacant. It’s the chaos factor that is the problem.

So the next time they tell you on the news that it’s being handled and you’re a sissy and a panic patient to worry about it, think of the real costs to our infrastructure if a group of 10 people in a mid-sized city come down with Ebola.

But don’t worry: our state department is busily working on plans to bring non-citizens in for treatment as I type this up. It’s as reliable as rocket launches that we will be able to handle this as well. And we’ve been launching those things for over 60 years. Heck, Ebola is only 40 years on our screens. We’ll whip that just as well and twice as quick-like.

Just for a change, couldn’t we err on the side of caution?

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