re: Nurse with Ebola given permission to fly by CDC

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21 days of isolation means 21 days of isolation.

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Any chance you have the hospital, local health agency, CDC, or other group that suggested this policy's official statement/letter suggesting 21 days of isolation?

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The nurse still should have known better, even with CDC permission.

I hope she makes it through ok, but I feel like common sense should have told her to stay off that plane.

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tis true i can't imagine she was in a hurry to get back to that hospital to get treatment ... I think I would have rolled the dice in cleveland.

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Any chance you have the hospital, local health agency, CDC, or other group that suggested this policy's official statement/letter suggesting 21 days of isolation?

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Fine. Technically she was under either controlled movement or conditional release. Most likely controlled movement.

Definiton:

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Controlled movement

Controlled movement requires people to notify the public health authority about their intended travel for 21 days after their last known potential Ebola virus exposure. These individuals should not travel by commercial conveyances (e.g. airplane, ship, long-distance bus, or train). Local use of public transportation (e.g. taxi, bus) by asymptomatic individuals should be discussed with the public health authority. If travel is approved, the exposed person must have timely access to appropriate medical care if symptoms develop during travel. Approved long-distance travel should be by chartered flight or private vehicle; if local public transportation is used, the individual must be able to exit quickly.

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LINK

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So she's to blame despite following protocol set forth by the authority on the matter.
Got it.

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For her sake I hope the CDC doesn't tell her to go to hell because based on history, she will.

Well, based on this line:

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If travel is approved, the exposed person must have timely access to appropriate medical care if symptoms develop during travel.

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It does not sound like "21 days of isolation means 21 days of isolation."

Here's what is reassuring:
She wasn't symptomatic on the plane. She didn't feel great, but she was afebrile, not vomiting, not having diarrhea. Had her blood been drawn then, she would have been, at best, on the cusp of being able to find the virus in her blood by PCR.

Now, if you don't know what PCR is, I'll offer a rather quick and simple explanation written at a level anyone should be able to understand that, hopefully, will not be insulting to anyone's intelligence. I will clarify further or more scientifically on any point.

PCR (polymerase chain reaction) takes a very, very small amount of virus and puts it in prime conditions with all the things it needs to grow absolutely rampant. In addition to everything it needs, it includes extra "primers" which bind to the virus and force the virus (or parts of its DNA/RNA, this varies by each individual protocol, of course) to multiply faster and faster. They're typically the most sensitive tests you can run, as they are designed to take extremely low amounts of virus and multiply it just for the sake of knowing if it's there. Think of it, simply, as putting a single virus + steroids in an environment where nothing can kill it.


Now, even THAT test cannot turn up positive results until patients begin exhibiting symptoms (which "feeling ill" and a "fever" that wasn't actually a fever either don't or just barely qualify). Perhaps more comforting: no one is harping of the second nurse, Amber Joy Vincent, in the House of Representatives as being a potential huge source of infection, as no one came into contact with her body fluids.

God you're such a gunner.


FYI, that approved travel was in reference to local transportation.

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Oh, and on a side note, 99.5F is not a fever. Not A Fever

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I keep seeing this posted, but I feel like the literal definition of a "fever" is jading perceptions. 99.5 may not broach the threshold to qualify as a fever, but if that's slightly above normal, standing body temperature for that nurse, shouldn't that be cause for concern considering her intimate interactions with an ebola patient?

The fact that health care personnel weren't being quarantined for 21 days after their last interaction with Duncan is mind boggling to me. Especially considering that the precautions those health care personnel took while treating Duncan were proven inadequate when the first nurse tested positive for ebola. What kind of moron doesn't think that the others were just as equally susceptible as that first nurse??

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Seems as if the "approval" phrase and recommending chartered flights leaves them the loophole/leniency/ambiguity to allow them to get on a commercial flight so long as they're flying to a city with a hospital. I'm not in the business of interpreting official statements or suggesting that I am a reasonable person.

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I don't know. The English seems pretty clear to me.

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Oh. Right now it's on. She called, discussed with the CDC, and was approved to get on the flight by the CDC, but the CDC rep at the hearing was not an actual part of the conversation. He has not seen the transcript of the conversation, but "(his) understanding is that she reported not symptoms to us."

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Yeah, it's clear now that she got approval and I think whoever did that screwed up.

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Yet free travel from Liberia to the US is still open, because Obama refuses to enact a travel ban from Western African countries. How inept is this fricking administration? Liberals really are the worst.

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This

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Would love to hear this. Right now, I don't believe her.

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Join the club. Much like I disbelieve most of the emotional letter of the nephew of Thomas Eric Duncan (Patient Zero). His timeline is now public, but I'm quite curious as to why he had a 103 fever (which dropped to 101.2, as if that was reassuring) and was sent home given a recent history of travel from Africa, even in the absence of an Ebola crisis (said it earlier, but there are a host of wildly infectious things there that need to be immediately treated with IV drugs). My guess is that he didn't give/wasn't asked about travel.


I still want to know what tests were run at that time, though.