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Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

nytimes.com

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Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#11

Post by sigmar »

msie wrote: post #2

The doctor should have known better than to go to a bowling alley soon after he returned. Whether or not he was contagious now they have to perform contact tracing and disinfect the place.

well, he went to a bowling alley eight days after getting back to NY. What is more egregious is that the NYTimes is reporting he was feeling sluggish on Tuesday, why didn't he self-quarantine or contact someone earlier than today?

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#12

Post by googler_314 »

Before judging this man for going bowling etc., we should bear in mind that he caught Ebola working for Doctors without Borders in Guinea. I would guess that without workers like him, the risk to Americans and others outside Africa, would be much higher, since the disease would be spreading much faster within Africa. Hopefully he recovers and we can improve travel policies if necessary.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#13

Post by uptown »

natch wrote: post #7
msie wrote: post #2

The doctor should have known better than to go to a bowling alley soon after he returned. Whether or not he was contagious now they have to perform contact tracing and disinfect the place.

Not to mention riding the subway. Good luck doing contact tracing with that. I'm not saying he was contagious. I hope he wasn't. Was the bowling alley public subway trip really a must-do thing, for someone who had just directly worked with ebola patients? Could this kind of thinking not be part of the training for this kind of work, I wonder?

It took the MTA over three weeks to remove a used condom hanging from the pole of an F train. I'm guessing whatever trains he took haven't been scoured beyond the bare minimum.

http://gothamist.com/2014/10/14/used_condom_f_subway.php

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#14

Post by bjz_ »

googler_314 wrote: post #12

Before judging this man for going bowling etc., we should bear in mind that he caught Ebola working for Doctors without Borders in Guinea. I would guess that without workers like him, the risk to Americans and others outside Africa, would be much higher, since the disease would be spreading much faster within Africa. Hopefully he recovers and we can improve travel policies if necessary.

Agreed. He might have been silly for being out in public right after having come back from Africa, but I'm sure he did more good over there in preventing the spread of the disease (which helps us), than he might have done when coming home. Lets hope future doctors learn from this.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#15

Post by bjz_ »

georgemcbay wrote: post #10
maxerickson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think discipline is the bigger issue than awareness. Even someone who absolutely knows better can end up thinking that the bad thing can't happen to them.

Yup. In my experience with experts I'd say especially someone who "knows better" can end up thinking that the bad thing can't happen to them right up until they, in a fit of being human, have an oops and it does.

Yeah. I hate this 'holier than thou' attitude that some folks on this thread are displaying. We are all human, and we all do stupid things based on our psychology. The best we can do is create systems to help guard against our own mistakes.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#16

Post by akjetma »

Do location-based services work in the NYC subway? I suppose you could also infer locations and transfers based on train schedules and tower handoff times upon emerging from stations. I mean, if there is a 21-day gestation period between infection time and the ability to retransmit the disease, it seems like it would be worthwhile/possible to look into.

Apologies for the cliche 'use technology to solve all the problems' HN comment.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#18

Post by uptown »

akjetma wrote: post #16

Do location-based services work in the NYC subway? I suppose you could also infer locations and transfers based on train schedules and tower handoff times upon emerging from stations. I mean, if there is a 21-day gestation period between infection time and the ability to retransmit the disease, it seems like it would be worthwhile/possible to look into. Apologies for the cliche 'use technology to solve all the proble…

Not the underground tunnels. Some of the stations have service, but not most.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#19

Post by joe_the_user »

"Many signs point to the viral load not being highly infectious at the beginning. Duncan was sent back to his home by the hospital and lived with his fiance who was taking care of him for two days before being readmitted. She wore no PPE yet appears to be uninfected. If sitting next to someone infected on a bus or subway is enough to pass it on, there would be a million cases in West Africa by now, not 10K. It appears to be primarily caregivers at the later stages of the disease, and the custom of kissing corpses that appear to be spreading the disease because the viral load is extreme at that stage. This doesn't mean that the potential contacts of this person should not be traced or that it was good idea for him to go bowling, but the sky isn't falling just yet." wfjackson https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8501792

Please look at this first

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