The Ebola Travesty in the Dallas Hospital

Special: The Ebola Travesty in the Dallas Hospital - October 16, 2014

The shocking revelations of incompetence and possible criminal behavior are coming more rapidly than the public can absorb the facts of the matter. First, this week, under protection of anonymity, nurses at Texas Presbyterian "Health" Center, blew the whistle on top staff and management, alleging a cover-up of the extreme negligence related to the second and final visit of the late emergency ward patient Thomas Duncan. By then,TPHC was aware that Mr. Duncan was from Liberia, had been turned away days before after a cursory examination and antibiotics. When he returned, he was by then exhibiting severe symptoms that soon proved fatal.

Yet, the nurses allege that the patient was still left in the company of other patients for hours; that senior staff attempted to prevent his being taken to an "isolation" ward; that protocols regarding protective clothing were not enforced, and that numerous hospital employees went in and out the so called "isolation" ward without the prescribed protection in the period before Duncan died.

Now, two nurses are exhibiting severe symptoms, both of whom attended the patient and were in close contact to his bodily fluids. To our knowledge, no announcement so far explains with any certainty how the virus was transmitted to the attendants.

Incredibly, one of nurses flew home to Ohio to meet with family and friends at a wedding planning party on or about October 8. Even though she is reported to have been experiencing an elevated temperature, she again boarded a commercial jet and returned to Dallas this past Monday, October 13. Therefore, all of the people with whom she congregated in Dallas before she left, all of those with whom she met in Cleveland and Akron and all of the passengers of two commercial jetliners, not to mention innumerable other persons as well, in Ohio and Dallas with whom she had contact while virulently contagious, are also at risk.

No one told the you lady not to use public transportation. She, however, knew she was ill by the time she boarded a Frontier airlines jet in Cleveland, after her stay there. Sorry, no free pass, young lady with numerous degrees.

Dr. Tom (Prozac) Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control— he of the calm demeanor, has to feel more like Edward J. Smith, Captain of the ill-fated HMS Titanic with each passing hour. Captain Smith reportedly regretted not ordering all of the lifeboats to be launched immediately, once he knew the hull of the "unsinkable" ship had been breached. Dr. Frieden offered his regrets this week. "I should have sent the CDC Infectious Disease team directly to Dallas" upon learning of the crucial condition of Thomas Duncan, late of Liberia.

The allegations of incompetence and a possible attempt at a cover up is not reassuring to the nation.

We fear that things related to this issue are going to get far worse before they get better.

-Phil Richardson, Curmudgeon, Observer and Storyteller.

Phil's current post can be read at: http://www.imrightagain.com

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