Why not just send all confirmed Ebola patients to hospitals with level 4 units?

[Erose999]

Seems like that would be the thing to do, once they're diagnosed send 'em off to Emory or Nebraska. Those hospitals have the protocols and gear in place, as well as a track record of dealing with Ebola successfully.

[kestrel91316]

1. That will only get us so far. IIRC that's a total of 20 beds nationwide.

And the Dallas clusterfuck could yet generate far more new cases than that.

[Earth_First]

2. Perhaps.

However at the moment, there are only two infected.

Makes sense to me...

With any luck, we won't need the other 18.

[Daemonaquila]

3. Nice in theory, not good in practice.

1) The patient has to be sufficiently stable to transport. It's a lot of stress on a person's system.

2) It's a process that subjects a lot of people to potential exposure, from the nurses to the ambulance squads to the air and air medical personnel to the people in the vicinity of the airport, hospitals, etc. You're going to have to scrub down ambulances, planes, hallways, etc.

It's all about managing risk and outcome. Is it more risky to leave the sick person where they are, or to put that person "out in the wild" even with HOPEFULLY well trained people? Are you going to make the sick person sicker by subjecting them to hours of travel and extensive precautions.

The better answer, assuming the number of infected people is extremely small (which it is and which it almost certainly will remain), is that as long as you have a reasonably good isolation facility where the patient is, keep them there and send in a group of highly trained and experienced medical people to help the local staff with training, equipment, and advice. (Hey, CDC...)

[hollysmom]

5. it is the additional exposure that seems to be under played -

there was this article in my local paper.
Ebola cases shouldn't be treated in N.J., nurses group says

Nurses are panicking,this is not a good sign.

[TBF]

4. I agree in the short-term -

it seems like we should be curtailing travel to/from those countries (at least not open travel as we have now) and giving the best care we can to all patients here. Ultimately however we've got to beat the disease itself. From working with it to learning from the cases/research. With enough money thrown at it I have no doubt we could get to a vaccine.

We need to take it seriously, try to contain it, and work on the vaccine/cure. That is going to take money we'd rather use to buy drones and the like. And that is where the difficulty is - we have a Congress (specifically a House of Representatives) that would rather wage war than help actual people.