Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Ebola - It Only Seems To Get Worse (or we are in deep - deep - deep shit)

Yes folks, here I am again with more doom and gloom about Ebola. by now, you should know that a nurse has contracted the disease in Spain. It is believed that she caught it from a priest who had been brought to Spain from Sierra Leone to treat his case of Ebola. The thing is that there is a conundrum over how she could have contracted the disease from the priest since each of the two times she had contact with him, she was reportedly wearing a hazmat suit (source). If that is correct, several questions immediately come to mind and they need to be answered without delay because the lives of everyone treating Ebola patients could well depend on the answers. Some of those questions are:

If she was protected by a hazmat suit, each time she came in contact with the Ebola patient, how did she get Ebola?

Did the hazmat suit fail or was it flawed?

Are certain hazmat suits ineffective or less effective than others against Ebola and did she wear that type?

Did she don the suit correctly or incorrectly and thus cause a breach in the protection it offered?

Did she contract the disease from touching the suit as she put it on because it had been used previously and was not decontaminated properly?

Did she get it when being decontaminated, after contact with the patient (after the suit was cleaned and then as she took off the suit that maybe was not cleaned properly)?

If none of the above are found to be the reason she became infected then we must ask tougher questions:

Has Ebola mutated to be able to penetrate hazmat suits?

Did she purposefully expose herself by compromising the hazmat suit?

Did she unknowingly come in contact with someone else, in Spain, who also had Ebola?

As far fetched as the last three questions may seem, if it is determined that the hazmat suit was worn properly, that it was not faulty and that the decontamination was effective - then you must ask them too.

Several folks have been quarantined because she contracted the illness. They include her husband. Sadly, Spanish authorities have decided to kill their dog, over the objections of the nurse and her husband, and will incinerate its carcass (source). I think that quite foolish because were they to medically observe that dog under quarantine they might learn something that leads to a vaccine, a cure or a preventive measure. 

Then I remember that these are governments at work and I think we are frigging doomed.

All the best,
Glenn B

1 comment:

DEATHBUZZARD said...

I PREDICT HOSPITAL STAFF LOOKING FOR NEW JOBS SOON.