Following the news as a second healthcare worker in Texas has apparently come down with Ebola - after flying to Ohio and back on a regular passenger flight - one thing has become clear. The biggest danger is the Stupid on display in so many places. Some of it is criminal, deliberately criminal.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
There's no question that Ebola is dangerous; it comes with a high mortality rate and a course of disease that turns people into factories of contagion - using them up to create mass copies of the virus in blood and body fluids. We don't have a vaccine; we barely have experimental drugs to treat it. (More on that below.) But... we can handle it through an old technique: break the cycle of transmission to new victims with early diagnosis, isolation and infection control. We can reduce mortality with supportive care, the sooner the better.
And we can stop being stupid.
Stupid is as stupid does. Sometimes it's the result of inexperience and overconfidence. Sometimes it's the result of 'misunderestimating' a situation. Those kinds of stupid are at least understandable; coping with anything new and dangerous can throw even experienced people for a loop initially. There's an inevitable learning curve.
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley had a a look at the Ebola situation from several perspectives. The latest involves the second nurse to develop Ebola, one of many health care workers who crossed paths with Thomas Eric Duncan before his death. Despite being on health watch, she flew a commercial flight to Ohio and back - despite already starting to run a fever. Why? *(CBS links don't embed well, and may come with toxic commercials.)
As the initial situation began to unfold, it was assumed that standard American health care could cope with Ebola. The Texas authorities thought so, as did CDC, NIH, and others. There's no mystery in how to deal with Ebola, as cited above. The problem was putting into practice what needed to be done. CDC has taken an important step - admitting mistakes, learning from them, and moving rapidly to improve the response.
Joan McCarter has a detailed examination of why the initial response proved so inadequate: inexperience, improvisation, budget cuts, and institutional inertia. One factor is that the front-line medical personnel - the nursing staff - are not represented by a union at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. CBS reports that a national union of registered nurses has been calling for better Ebola training and equipment for months; if the 'people on the ground' had had more input from the beginning through a union, things might be very different right now. Charles P. Pierce certainly gets it.
It is nearly impossible to know what to write on a blog devoted to politics concerning the Ebola story that would enhance in any way our understanding of what's going on with the disease in this country, let alone what's happening in west Africa, where entire countries are on the brink of dissolving under the force of the virus. (I do believe it would be very helpful if we could keep it out of an election for county judge in which the primary issue seems to be Who's The Biggest Yokel? More proof that an elected judiciary is the second-worst idea in American politics.) But one thing I do know -- National Nurses United is raising the correct kind of hell on behalf of the grunts on the front lines of the fight against this disease.
And that's where we begin to cross from understandable stupid to the far more serious willfully stupid.
The Party of Stupid
Anti-union, anti-labor sentiment translates into policies that are dangerous to public health in general, though it takes something like Ebola to get the general public's attention after decades of deliberate union-bashing by the right. Texas is already a dangerous state for workers. It's part of a larger antipathy to the idea that government should have some role in making life better for ordinary people.
Prior to Ebola's arrival, the big healthcare story in Texas was the determined drive to shut down healthcare clinics thousands of Texans depend on - over abortion. Ironically, the backers of the drive claimed it was concern over ensuring quality of care. The refusal of Texas Governor Rick Perry to expand Medicaid in Texas means even more people in Texas are being denied access to health care. There are suspicions Duncan, the original Ebola victim, was sent home from the hospital for lack of health insurance. One wonders just how badly Texas politicians have crippled its ability to protect public health in service to the conservative's anti-government, anti-women ideology
And on the national level, Republicans have done more damage in the name of smaller government: cuts to NIH funding, cuts to the CDC, cuts to preparedness. Again, Joan McCarter describes the gory details. Meanwhile, this video has Republican knickers in a twist.
If you want a very unpleasant comparison, the threat of Ebola and the way the Republicans have put us at risk for political gain is rather like the threat of Climate Change - only faster. Quick or slow, willful stupid is a planetary scale public health threat.
Stupid With Criminal Intent
If there's one way of spreading stupidity that's dangerously effective, it's this: scare the shit out of people. Fear makes people do really dumb things, ignore what they know, act against their own interests, make bad situations worse. Fear isn't just the mind-killer; it's a leading cause of death in a very real sense. The New York Times is on the case.
Experts who study public psychology say the next few weeks will be crucial to containing mounting anxiety. “Officials will have to be very, very careful,” said Paul Slovic, president of Decision Research, a nonprofit that studies public health and perceptions of threat. “Once trust starts to erode, the next time they tell you not to worry — you worry.”
The risk of Ebola infection remains vanishingly small in this country. The virus is not airborne, not able to travel in the way that, say, measles or the SARS virus can. Close contact with a patient is required for transmission. Just one death from Ebola has occurred here, and medical care is light-years from that available in West Africa, where more than 4,400 people have died in the latest outbreak.
By contrast, in some years, the flu kills more than 30,000 people in the United States. Yet this causes little anxiety: Millions of people who could benefit from a flu shot do not get one.
“We’re familiar with the flu, we’ve had it and gotten better — we feel we know that threat,” Dr. Slovic said.
So, at a time when we need to have confidence in the people tasked with public health, and rely on their leadership, what's going on?
Sean Hannity, among others, is doing everything possible to gin up public fears and discredit the government.
...And one final note is that a Purdue University professor, who has been studying Ebola for more than a decade, told Fox News that it cannot be ruled out that Ebola could, in the future, go airborne. The longer the epidemic exists, the greater the chance becomes.
Some are calling the issue of Ebola the 2014 election's “October surprise.” The incompetence of our government officials to handle this crisis certainly isn't sitting well with Americans as we head into November.
Listening to Hannity's radio show today, I heard him repeatedly attack the CDC and President Obama over Ebola. He deliberately went for the scariest way of spinning every new development. The use of the phrase "October Surprise" is a tell - Hannity and the rest of his ilk are doing their best to use fear of Ebola to trash Democrats - you can practically hear him salivating over the prospect.
This poll reports on Americans and their worries about catching Ebola; buried among the findings is that more Republicans are afraid than Democrats. If they're watching/listening to the Right Wing Echo Machine, it's not surprising. Democrats really need to take
a cue from Ed Kilgore and make this a teachable moment.
Meanwhile, Hannity's like someone yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, in hopes that Obama and the Democrats will get trampled in the panic.
Stupidity is a Capital Crime - Hannity and the whole Conservative Movement are recidivists. It's past time they got called on it.
UPDATE: I should probably mention two other drivers of Stupid: Greed and Ambition.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
Hat tip to
zenbasson for finding this
Shep Smith video clip. It will probably get him fired from FOX - I'm sure it got a lot of pushback. (If anyone has the stomach to get through the screening process, you might call Sean Hannity's show and ask him why he and Smith seem to be living in different universes.)
PREDICTION: The head of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden is set to testify before the House of Representatives today. Expect the Stupid to be on full display as Fear, Greed and Ambition strengthen their grip on the situation. It would be interesting if somewhere in the questioning that is to ensue, Dr. Frieden held up this book, or perhaps this one.
UPDATE 2: In comments, mosesfreeman started a thread on Clipboard Guy, a man who got noticed by the media because while the team loading the second nurse onto a plane for Emory and the nurse herself were all wrapped up in isolation gear, he was on the scene in normal clothing and a clipboard. This, needless to say, caused a certain amount of excitement and speculation. Presumably, IF the rest of the team was doing their job correctly, his risk should have been minimal and the report linked cites a reason for his lack of gear:
A spokesperson for Phoenix Air, the airline flying Ms Vinson, told ABC News the man was their medical protocol supervisor and was giving verbal directions to staff who have limited vision and mobility in the suits.
The spokesperson said: "Our medical professionals in the biohazard suits have limited vision and mobility and it is the protocol supervisor’s job to watch each person carefully and give them verbal directions to insure no close contact protocols are violated.
"There is absolutely no problem with this and in fact insures an even higher level of safety for all involved."
Whether or not he broke protocols, there are several things that can be taken from this.
1) Initial impressions may be misleading - and need to be examined.
2) We really need better protective gear for healthcare workers dealing with this.
3) The media and the Internet is ready (as always) to jump on anything and run with it - even if it's over a cliff.
Keep Calm and Carry On.
UPDATE 3 This diary is proving to have 'legs' - new comments are still showing up, along with Facebook likes and Tweets several days after it was first published. I'm glad to have written something that people are finding of some worth.
While the news from Texas is (knock on wood) still watching and waiting for any new cases, elsewhere things are getting worse. Republicans have decided to make Ebola the October Surprise campaign issue they'll try to ride to victory on in the midterms. In a sane world, no one would buy this for a second, but it seems Americans have been so conditioned by fear, they just might pull it off. They've already gotten one thing they demanded: a Czar. They are also demanding a travel ban (easy to talk about, hard to do and probably counterproductive.) and their favorite: "SEAL THE BORDERS!!!!
What they never talk about is how to do it or how to pay for it. They have no idea how to do the first, unless you believing "sending in the troops" is magic, and for the second, they have no intention of ponying up any money or doing anything else that might actually be effective. Quite simply, the whole charade is to capitalize on honest fears and build up the hysteria until they get what they want - victory at the polls.
Sean Hannity is beside himself, of course, and had the GOP healthcare fraud Betsy McCaughey, of Death Panel infamy, on his show to crank up the fear-mongering to 11. Hannity is attacking the new Ebola Czar for being a political operative instead of a doctor (already a GOP talking point). The fact that the Czar, Ron Klain, has experience working at the top levels of government, has extensive management skills, and a reputation as an effective leader in a crisis carries no water with Hannity.
The ability to muster resources, move quickly, and act decisively have proven very effective in at least one small corner of the outbreak in Liberia. NPR has a fascinating story of how Firestone Corporation recognized what was happening and stopped the spread in the area it controls.
Harbel is a company town not far from the capital city of Monrovia. It was named in 1926 after the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Harvey and his wife, Idabelle. Today, Firestone workers and their families make up a community of 80,000 people across the plantation.
Firestone detected its first Ebola case on March 30, when an employee's wife arrived from northern Liberia. She'd been caring for a disease-stricken woman and was herself diagnosed with the disease. Since then Firestone has done a remarkable job of keeping the virus at bay. It built its own treatment center and set up a comprehensive response that's managed to quickly stop transmission. Dr. Brendan Flannery, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team in Liberia, has hailed Firestone's efforts as resourceful, innovative and effective.
Currently the only Ebola cases on the sprawling, 185-square-mile plantation are in patients who come from neighboring towns.
No politicizing, no whining over costs, no dithering - intelligent, directed action based on good information. That's something desperately needed in the U.S. to stem the tidal wave of Stupid gathering over the nation.
Sometime within the next 2-3 weeks, it should be known if the original case of Ebola in Texas has spread to anyone besides the two nurses. (Here's a BBC article on the odds anyone on a plane might have been infected - short version, extremely unlikely though not zero.) If no further cases develop, if no further mistakes and foulups occur, the hysteria might begin to subside. Might. If more cases develop, expect the partisan faux outrage to mount, and real fears to increase to dangerous levels among the general public - especially if the media continues to feed off it. The Republicans will ride this as far as it will take them.
Obscured in the growing political storm over Ebola is this rather salient point: IF the Republicans take the Senate and keep the House, two thirds of our national government will be in the hands of Conservatives who have forgotten how to govern and do not believe in governing - all they know how to do is disrupt to service their greed and ambition. They are not the people who should be running things. Ebola is not the biggest thing we have to fear.
