Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

US troops arriving in Liberia to help contain Ebola

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #76


    Marines Arrive In Liberia To Gather Blankets For Syrian Rebels

    MONROVIA, Liberia — About 100 Marines with Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response Africa have arrived in Monrovia to join the fight against the Ebola virus ahead of Army troops who will arrive later this month.

    Dubbed Operation Firewater, their mission will be to gather blankets, pillows, and bed pans to provide interim resupply to Syrian rebels currently embroiled in combat operations with ISIS forces throughout their region of conflict, according to Pentagon spokesman Gen. Jeffery Amherst.

    The Pentagon wants to continue sending humanitarian aid to the rebels in the hope they will soon be capable of routing the self-proclaimed Islamic State in conjunction with ongoing airstrikes. Simultaneously, American troops will support Liberian health care efforts by providing logistical support in removing infected materials and by constructing new medical facilities.

    “This is all part of a complex operation in support of crises in both regions,” said Amherst. “We don’t want either threat to spread to the United States and infect our young people with pathogens or propaganda.”

    While unable to determine exactly where the logistical aid would be sent, Amherst did confirm regional commanders would use a vetting system to determine which opposition forces will get the Liberian resupply. The process would include the help of “regional partners” to help resupply critical areas like the city of Raqqa.

    “Anyone can ship arms to local fighters,” Amherst said.”But when it starts getting a little chilly during the campaign, those rebels will gratefully swaddle themselves in a warm, fuzzy blanket born of pure American goodwill.”

    Duffel Blog intrepid reporter Epic Blunder contributed to this article
    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

    Comment


    • #77
      Originally posted by astralis View Post


      Marines Arrive In Liberia To Gather Blankets For Syrian Rebels

      MONROVIA, Liberia — About 100 Marines with Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response Africa have arrived in Monrovia to join the fight against the Ebola virus ahead of Army troops who will arrive later this month.

      ...
      Brilliant!

      Comment


      • #78
        So given US based medical personnel have become infected under ideal containment conditions, what's the best guess for the number of military personnel that will be infected in Liberia? Will those infected be flown back to the U.S. for treatment or quarantined within Liberia?
        In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

        Leibniz

        Comment


        • #79
          Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
          So given US based medical personnel have become infected under ideal containment conditions, what's the best guess for the number of military personnel that will be infected in Liberia? Will those infected be flown back to the U.S. for treatment or quarantined within Liberia?
          I'm betting that the military team in Liberia has better infection control procedures than the Dallas hospital, but if they do get infected they will probably fly them to Atlanta where other Americans infected previously were taken and treated successfully.
          sigpic

          Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
            I'm betting that the military team in Liberia has better infection control procedures than the Dallas hospital, but if they do get infected they will probably fly them to Atlanta where other Americans infected previously were taken and treated successfully.
            Quite possibly, though it's not just the Dallas hospitals standards which may or may not have been poor. The CDC has been back peddling on their initial claims of poor procedure. As it turns out they also gave nurse 2, Amber Vinson, permission to fly despite her reporting a fever.
            That's not my point though. The military won't be operating to keep the disease from the general population, the disease is endemic within the population they are now embedded in. Will all personnel wear hazmat suits all the time? And how many infected soldiers will the U.S. health system be able to absorb at the current standard of care? How many private jets does the CDC have, and how many hospitals can devote an entire ward and team to just one patient?
            In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

            Leibniz

            Comment


            • #81
              Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
              That's not my point though. The military won't be operating to keep the disease from the general population, the disease is endemic within the population they are now embedded in. Will all personnel wear hazmat suits all the time? And how many infected soldiers will the U.S. health system be able to absorb at the current standard of care? How many private jets does the CDC have, and how many hospitals can devote an entire ward and team to just one patient?
              The disease appears to be at its most dangerous in terms of transmission when the infected person is in the final stages, so not every person who is infected is themselves dangerous at all times. Not all US personnel will be in direct contact with Ebola patients & I assume US personnel can largely be confined to an area that has minimal contact with the local population. So, the number of people in danger is limited. Hazmat suits won't be required at all times. No idea how many people facilities in the US can currently hold, but there is no reason to believe those facilities can't be expanded. The CDC doesn't need a fleet of private jets to transport military personnel. They have their own air transport if they need it. USAF.

              Just to repeat, Nigeria faced a situation where an the infection entered the country uncontrolled and spread within and outside Lagos uncontrolled for weeks. They had 20 cases & 8 deaths. Nigeria! I know the US health system is flawed, but I'm going to go out on a limb here & predict that it can handle any cases transported under controlled conditions.
              sigpic

              Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

              Comment


              • #82
                also most of the military will not be in direct contact with the bodily fluids of ebola victims.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                Comment


                • #83
                  Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
                  So given US based medical personnel have become infected under ideal containment conditions, what's the best guess for the number of military personnel that will be infected in Liberia? Will those infected be flown back to the U.S. for treatment or quarantined within Liberia?
                  If I remember correctly, if there are infected personnel they will be flown back to the US for treatment.

                  Also, all deployed soldiers will be quarantined for 21 days once back in the States.

                  Interestingly, the US troops will have hardship pay, not combat pay.

                  As for number of infected, with that many in country in those kinds of environments, and not all (or even most?) of them being infectious disease experts, I think it will be a credit to the leadership and planning if none are infected. Let's hope that's the case.

                  Next problem: the military personnel are building the field hospitals, but no one is sure who will staff them. IMO, this is now the most critical part of the problem. The next couple of months will be crucial. If the number of weekly infected hits 10000 as WHO projects:

                  1. There may not be the army of qualified indigenous or foreign medical personnel needed to care for and contain the disease.
                  2. The population may start to panic. Civil order might break down further. We might start seeing a refugee crisis out of West Africa, and that means that the disease is going to surge into the neighboring countries or other destination countries.

                  Right now the efforts should focus on either stopping that, or delaying it for as long as possible to buy time for:

                  A. Vaccine production and testing (more important because it's scalable), and production of more Zmapp (less scalable and therefore less important).
                  B. Preparation for hospitals in the US, Europe and else where to deal with more Ebola cases. In the US at the moment, we clearly are not.

                  It looks to me like this may be getting away from us because of the personnel shortages. We desperately need that vaccine so that medical personnel can have enough protection so that larger numbers of them can be deployed.

                  I suspect this is probably why the CDC opposes a travel ban from West Africa. If you impose a travel ban, then people are REALLY going to start wanting to get out and volunteer medical personnel are going to think thrice about going in. You are going to make the shortage of qualified personnel worse, and you might start a panic. Then you will have the exact opposite effect you want.

                  At some point, if the number of cases keep growing, there will be an inversion where quarantine measures will do more good than harm. At that point, not only the US but Europe need to coordinate to do concerted travel bans and US military personnel in country will need to help evacuate remaining American citizens from Liberia. If that happens, that's probably going to be the point of highest vulnerability for our military personnel.
                  Last edited by citanon; 17 Oct 14,, 15:11.

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                    Hazmat suits won't be required at all times. No idea how many people facilities in the US can currently hold,
                    According to the news cast yesterday the number of fully equipped and qualified treatment beds in the United States is 10.

                    Not centers. Beds.

                    Fully equipped and qualified means that the facilities can provide full modern intensive care to Ebola patients without significant risk of care personnel being infected. That means intubating patients, putting them on life support, fighting multiple organ failure, which is quite different from Nigeria and West Africa where presumably people are given minimal care and allowed to live or die on their own.

                    The Dallas case has shown that local hospitals in the US are not prepared to do the above safely, yet. Serious work needs to be done to prepare them. In the mean time, the CDC needs to help expand those qualified treatment centers in case there is a surge of infected patients. Are they doing that? You would think so, but then, you would also think that they would know not to tell a possibly infected nurse who treated Thomas Eric Duncan not to get onto a plane with a fever.
                    Last edited by citanon; 17 Oct 14,, 15:36.

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      What in the world were they thinking?!!!

                      Dallas lab worker quarantined aboard cruise ship, other passengers stranded aboard | Fox News

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        To be honest, I am far more worried about human stupidity causing other people to get infected than hospital readiness.
                        Most major US hospitals that have the ability to handle infectious diseases can handle Ebola cases if they get their staff trained properly.

                        But when idiots keep getting on airplanes and cruise ships after messing with Ebola, it becomes clear that people are still operating according to business as usual instead of respecting the threat.

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by SteveDaPirate View Post
                          To be honest, I am far more worried about human stupidity causing other people to get infected than hospital readiness.
                          Most major US hospitals that have the ability to handle infectious diseases can handle Ebola cases if they get their staff trained properly.

                          But when idiots keep getting on airplanes and cruise ships after messing with Ebola, it becomes clear that people are still operating according to business as usual instead of respecting the threat.
                          This illustrates one of the main differences between the developed world and Africa that can make diseases actually harder to contain here: our people are much more mobile. In Lagos, your average slum dweller may not get out of his neighborhood more than a couple of times a year. Here, many of us travel hundreds of miles, fly across the country, or.... get onto cruise ships routinely.

                          Also, as much regard as I have for our hospitals and health care system, there are plenty of idiots everywhere and lots of mistakes that happen in our hospitals. Hospital associated infections cause about 100,000 deaths in the US every year (although bacterial contamination is probably far more insidious and hard to remove than Ebola). It's going to take a lot of training and preparation to get these places ready to handle Ebola. Leadership and culture at each hospital and from the health authorities are going to be crucial.
                          Last edited by citanon; 17 Oct 14,, 15:52.

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Another problem that is cropping up in my area is that hospital CEOs don't want to take Ebola patients. They saw that Texas Presbyterian lost a TON of their normal business as soon as word got out that they had an Ebola victim there. People started canceling their doctor's appointments and even cancer treatment. That kind of thing could easily bankrupt hospitals, and a lot of them don't want to take the risk.

                            We are also running into a political issue with the waste generated from treating an Ebola patient. The leadership at the state level of government just changed the law to say that Ebola waste cannot be transported on Kansas roads until it has been treated in an autoclave. The problem is that hospitals treating an Ebola patient generate around 40 bags of biohazard waste per day. Generally this waste is shipped to a company with the ability to dispose of large quantities of biological waste, but that is now against the rules for Ebola. The autoclaves hospitals have on site are designed for sterilizing surgical equipment and can only handle something like 1 bag every 2 hours.

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Originally posted by SteveDaPirate View Post
                              Another problem that is cropping up in my area is that hospital CEOs don't want to take Ebola patients. They saw that Texas Presbyterian lost a TON of their normal business as soon as word got out that they had an Ebola victim there. People started canceling their doctor's appointments and even cancer treatment. That kind of thing could easily bankrupt hospitals, and a lot of them don't want to take the risk.

                              We are also running into a political issue with the waste generated from treating an Ebola patient. The leadership at the state level of government just changed the law to say that Ebola waste cannot be transported on Kansas roads until it has been treated in an autoclave. The problem is that hospitals treating an Ebola patient generate around 40 bags of biohazard waste per day. Generally this waste is shipped to a company with the ability to dispose of large quantities of biological waste, but that is now against the rules for Ebola. The autoclaves hospitals have on site are designed for sterilizing surgical equipment and can only handle something like 1 bag every 2 hours.
                              Steve, are most of the major hospitals in your area private? It sounds like you guys have your work cut out for you, though it's good that Ebola is finally forcing us to run through this exercise. After this, I hope we will be much better prepared for the next large scale infectious disease crisis.

                              Comment


                              • #90
                                Of the six I work with directly, two are private, and the rest are nonprofit entities that are not affiliated with the state. In some cases they cannot legally turn a patient away. However, the hospital leadership's plan in that case is to try to work out an arrangement to transfer them to Omaha or Atlanta asap.

                                The problem is that Omaha and Atlanta don't have unlimited facilities (assuming they agree to take them at all), and they really need to be figuring out how to deal with Ebola patients who will be staying in their hospitals long term.

                                It feels like people are still burying their heads in the sand and hoping they don't get a case. Which is unrealistic considering we have an international aid organization located here who is planning to start shuttling hundreds of aid workers to Liberia and back every month very shortly.
                                Last edited by SteveDaPirate; 17 Oct 14,, 16:15.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X