Delay In Dallas Ebola Cleanup- WORKERS BALKING AT TASK

[KittyWampus]

I can not figure out who exactly is responsible for cleaning up the stricken man's apartment. Is this a job that is contracted out? If this is contracted out, who gets the job? Are they reliable or the cheapest? The fact that our privatized health care system is so totally geared towards reaping profits for investors leads me to wonder how well prepared the USA really is in dealing with infectious diseases.

I have some degree of confidence in government agencies, civil servants and medical staff but much less in the medical system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/dallas-ebola-case-thomas-duncan-contacts.html?_r=0

Delay in Dallas Ebola Cleanup as Workers Balk at Task
By KEVIN SACK and MARC SANTORAOCT. 2, 2014

DALLAS — More than a week after a Liberian man fell ill with Ebola and four days after he was placed in isolation at a hospital in Dallas, the apartment where he was staying with four other people had not been cleaned and the sheets and dirty towels he used while sick remained in the home, health officials acknowledged on Thursday afternoon.

Even as the authorities were reaching out to at least 80 people who may have had contact — either directly or indirectly — with the patient, Thomas E. Duncan, while he was contagious, they were scrambling to find medical workers to safely clean the apartment.

The four family members who are living there are among a handful who have been directed by the authorities to remain in isolation, following what officials said was a failure to comply with an order to stay home. Texas health officials hand-delivered orders to residents of the apartment requiring them not to leave their home and not to allow any visitors inside until their roughly three-week incubation periods have passed.

The orders – known as communicable disease control orders – are permitted under the state’s health code. Violations could result in either criminal prosecution or civil court proceedings.

But even as the orders were being issued, there were concerns about the conditions in the home where they were being ordered to stay.

snip

The Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Lakey, told reporters during an afternoon news conference that health workers should have moved more swiftly to clean the apartment but that they had had trouble finding an outside medical team to do the work. They encountered “a little bit of hesitancy,” he said.

[librechik]

1. duh. Expect more of this. n/t

[Avalux]

2. Ignorance!!! This is reminding me of HIV in the 80s....

we haven't learned a thing. Back then, physicians and other healthcare workers refused to treat those infected because of ignorance. It's no different with this. An infectious disease is an infectious disease; and Ebola is not easy to contract. Universal precautions!

[KittyWampus]

3. If you have properly educated staff they should know that. But if contractors hire

people who aren't properly educated, we do have a problem.

In my mind, there are/were trained professionals dealing with this issue.

Now, I fear it's some corporation who hires people that get paid minimum wage.

[jwirr]

21. IMO the clean up crew should be as educated as all the other workers or we just add more people to

the exposure list. They should also have protective clothing. This whole situation needs to be taken seriously.

[uppityperson]

4. Yup. I remember in the not so distant past people saying they would not use someone with HIV+ for

pick a category of business. I remember people backing away from me when telling them I worked with HIV+ people, wondering if I was safe to be near since I might, I don't know what, carry HIV cooties.

Universal precautions. Know them. Use them. Understand that that is one of the reasons it is spreading in W Africa is because they do not understand or are not able to use them.

[pnwmom]

6. Except that this waste is far more hazardous. nt

[Avalux]

8. Because the mortality rate is higher?

Universal precautions apply to all pathogens.

[pnwmom]

9. The amount of virus needed to transmit the infection is lower,

and, of course, the disease progression is much faster.

[AverageJoe90]

7. That may be true.

And I don't think it's going to get nearly as bad as what's happened in Liberia & Sierra Leone in particular. Still, though, every bit of precaution helps.

[WinkyDink]

20. EXCEPT--Hello? There are biohazard-suited DOCTORS dying from contact! YOU volunteering?

[uppityperson]

26. Some of them said they touched the outside of their contaminated suits when removing them, thusly

infecting themselves.

[former9thward]

28. So you are volunteering.

Great! It will be nice to have someone there who does something perfect everytime.

[uppityperson]

33. Explaining how they got exposed is volunteering or claiming perfection?

I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

[former9thward]

38. I know exactly what they mean.

The poster says all that is needed is "education" for the workers. Well you can educate forever and not everyone does their job perfectly everytime. Do you? Most of the time if you make a mistake it is not a fatal one. Here it can be. Look at all the doctors who have died of the disease. If I was a worker I would not do the job. Let the "educators" do it since they think it is so simple.

[uppityperson]

39. I have not worked with ebola but have with other fatal infectious diseases. And have educated people

in universal precautions and how easy it is to miss something. You touch the outside of the suit or isolation clothing, then a door knob when opening a door to the washroom, wash using towels to turn off the water, pull the door shut with the door know and voila. Contaminated again.

And yes, I have had people yell at me complaining how difficult it is. It is hard, very hard.

I was trying to pass on information here about why "biohazard-suited DOCTORS" were "dying from contact". Simply wearing a hazmat suit does not mean you can not expose yourself.

"It's no different with this. An infectious disease is an infectious disease; and Ebola is not easy to contract. Universal precautions!"

Those doctors in W Africa that are "dying from contact" also were living in villages and areas where there were dying people laying in the streets dying, children having seizures while lying on bloody floors in their version of a hospital and in their neighborhood streets.

A big difference from the situation here.

[Avalux]

41. And how do you know this?

Please provide details of a case, where a doc who follows the necessary precautions dies from contact. How did that person become infected? Are you claiming that ebola is easy to contract?

[CreekDog]

36. it's easier to contract Ebola than it is to contract HIV

not only that, what do you think the workers are making? $15/hour? would I clean that for $15/hour? nope.

[misterhighwasted]

5. Suppose they lived in Preston Hollow or Southlake or...one of those neighborhoods?

The apartment complex is located in a lower income, multi culture area of NE Dallas.

[WinkyDink]

22. This is a pointless path of argument. It isn't the income; it is the populace from AFRICA, as in----

LIBERIA.

[Generic Other]

40. The Ebola Symposium at Duke Medical

said that the greatest fear is that it would get loose in a metropolitan area. That has never happened before. Usually, the sickness has been contained in small villages. American inner cities have pockets of poverty where slumlord squalor has created neighborhood blight that rivals and surpasses places in other third world nations.

I have confidence that the professionals in the healthcare field will not let us down. But it is necessary for us to help them contain the disease. Forcing the government to put an armed guard at your door because you insist on trivializing why you have been quarantined is stupid and could be deadly. I think Americans can act with common sense in this matter, but I do wonder if they will.

[valerief]

10. Texas. No regard for people's health. No regard for the environment. No regard

for workers' rights. Work will definitely be farmed out to immigrants who don't speak the language and don't understand the risks.

Texas can't be spending money on safety when there's money to be handed out on platters to oil companies.

[summerschild]

11. Dallas surely has a hazmat team. SEND THEM IN!

[undeterred]

31. That's who should do it.

[AngryAmish]

12. You first.

Worker safety is a term and condition of employment. If they feel unsafe then they can't be punished for collective action.

The odds of me cleaning up after an ebola patient: 0-0.

[KittyWampus]

14. I have a job. The point being, shouldn't there be trained professionals to deal with this who are

educated and equipped to do the job properly?

[AngryAmish]

15. Obviously, since hemmorraghic fever virii are endemic to Texas

[KittyWampus]

16. WTF? The ebola outbreak has been on the horizon for weeks/months… EVERY state should have a protocol

in line to deal with this.

This is supposedly a first world country.

And trained and equipped staff should not balk at DOING THEIR JOBS.

[Louisiana1976]

18. Texas, being a Red state, is like a third-world country.

[WinkyDink]

24. As if every single community has the resources for what seemed far-fetched.

[KittyWampus]

42. not every single community needs to. That's why we have state and federal government.

[AngryAmish]

27. Do those folks know that they are trained and equiped properly?

BTW, who exactly is trained for this? Or did they go to the temp agency and put haz-mat suits on some suckers and tell them to go clean?

I would do it but I think the price would be about 25k an hour. Plus armored knees, boots, ventilators and those suits with air pumped into it.

Then and only then would I ride into the valley of death, cannons to the left of me and whatnot.

[kestrel91316]

19. Nobody uses the term "virii". Just sayin'.

The term "hemorrhagic fevers" would have sufficed.

Virus. Viruses.

Virion is what we call a single virus particle. Virii may be the Latin plural of that, but nobody ever uses it. And yes, I've studied university level virology. "Virions", perhaps, whether it is correct Latin or not.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. But don't he sound real smart and doctor-like

May have even read The Hot Zone in the 90's. That's book-larnin!

[kestrel91316]

30. Reminds me of the people who only know about science-y stuff because they have read about it in

books on on the intertubes. They mispronounce a lot of common terms, and I go "WTF did that person just say???" If they'd sat through a single lecture about it, they'd know the correct pronunciation. Journalists do it all the time.

[AngryAmish]

29. This reminds me of the graffiti scene in Life of Brian

Monty Python - Life of Brian - Graffiti Lessons:

[WinkyDink]

23. For what reason? Ebola was never HERE; indeed, it was never out of rural Africa.

[CreekDog]

37. i think if they were offering them enough money and safety, they'd do it

if you expect people to get crappy pay and do their regular jobs for that, you're probably right.

if you expect people making crappy pay to subject themselves to cleaning up after an Ebola infection, i'm glad you're wrong.

[quadrature]

13. Who is their union steward? ...nt

[etherealtruth]

17. Based on the absence of public awareness and fear (whether warranted or not , fear is present)

I can't understand why a HAZMAT team was not called in to make sure the cleanup was done correctly and QUICKLY. HAZMAT teams are expensive .... but what cost do we place on human life?

[grasswire]

32. Dr. Sanje Gupta said today on CNN that they can't find crews willing...

....to do the cleanup. This was a few hours ago. No commercial cleaning service was willing to do the job.

[cwydro]

34. CNN showing video of a man hosing the sidewalk down.

With a hose, with no hazmat suit...presumably the water will go into the sewer system.

This is the area where the patient vomited repeatedly.

This is crazy stuff.

[B2G]

35. great

Just more evidence that it could never spread here. What with our stellar infrastructure and all...

I'm beginning to think we are fucked.