Late Night Video — Shep Smith Tells You there is No Ebola Outbreak in America
Shep Smith says: “These are the facts — we do not have an outbreak of ebola in the United States. Nowhere.” And he takes the media (radio and TV) to task for hyperventilating when it isn’t needed. Bravo, Mr. Smith. When he’s on, he’s on:
Tags: Late Night Video
‘memba back when they said the first guy diagnosed was nothing to worry about and they had it all under control? Just an isolated incident. Nothing to worry about.
The avg. transmission rate for Ebola is 1.6 to 1.8 people per one victim. With all of our medical technology, we managed an average just like Africa.
You’ve working with what statisticians call a “small sample size.”
The two nurses who have contracted the virus in the US worked directly in providing medical care for the guy from West Africa who died from Ebola. This isn’t an existential threat to anybody in the US. If you get off on irrational fear, by all means. Who am I to tell you how to get yourself off? But it isn’t an “outbreak” and the chances of an outbreak are less than me getting struck by lightening today.
As for Smith, it’s difficult to praise someone for just plainly stating facts… but in this day in age I guess it’s a major accomplishment.
It’s a major accomplishment since every other program on his network is telling people that they are at major risk from ebola. Other networks are doing it too, but it is always interesting when Shep Smith decides that the Fox talking points of the day are not for him.
I’m sorry, but Shep (or should I say Shemp) is being incredibly simplistic in his evaluation of the layers of concern that should be applied here and that those levels of precaution need to be extreme to guarantee the safety of the American public. TWO certified RN’s, who had at least broad level training on infectious diseases and who were being instructed by doctors and other medical professionals, have now contracted the disease. That is not just a reflection of bad practices and irresponsible behavior. That’s a reflection of the insidiousness of this disease.
At this point, my greatest concern would be with the second nurse’s family and friends that may have been in close contact with her before she got on that plane. A kiss good-bye, a hung, a hand shake, all open up concern.
The next level, the ticket counter people, baggage handlers (if she checked a bag), the TSA agents, the boarding attendant, the flight attendants, the people who sat immediately around her, and so on, in other words, people with direct “secondary contact”. Beyond that, you get into everyone else on the plane, people that may have touched something that she had touched in the previous 8 to 12 hours and that would include people on the next couple of flights and so on……
If your objective is to eradicate the possibility that the disease not spread any further, you insist on layers of protection and oversight. If direct contact puts you in the 1:1.6 range of contracting the disease and your objective is to reduce that ratio to ZERO, you have to have extreme levels of protection…. It’s just THAT simple.
Do you really think the President is going to cancel a fundraiser and publicize that he called in half the Cabinet, just to stroke the American public’s hair and tell them, “There, there”???
Again, Shemp is ignorant and overly simplistic in his thinking.
That is not just a reflection of bad practices and irresponsible behavior.
I don’t know about irresponsible behavior, but yes, the current cases are certainly about bad practices. Climbing in and out of PPE is no joke and it is especially no joke in an infectious environment. It requires training and practice to keep up those skills. And hospitals all over the US are spending money on what they have to — and high priority infectious management isn’t a high priority.
And all of those people on the plane should be concerned if you could catch ebola from airborne exposure, but you don’t.
Do you really think the President is going to cancel a fundraiser and publicize that he called in half the Cabinet, just to stroke the American public’s hair and tell them, “There, there”???
Yes, actually. Because people like you would be screaming about “leadership” if he didn’t look like he was managing this business rather than go to fundraisers. In the meantime, Rick Perry is on vacation in Europe.
You are free to be scared and fearful, and in fact you may be more comfortable in the dear position. Just keep it to yourself. This isn’t worthy of the public’s hair on fire — at least not yet.
“That is not just a reflection of bad practices and irresponsible behavior. That’s a reflection of the insidiousness of this disease.”
You couldn’t be more wrong. Think about it for a minute without your fear goggles on: If it was easy to spread and 90% fatal, why did the first outbreak in 1976 die out fairly quickly? The fact is it’s NOT “insidious,” by which I assume you mean “easy to catch.”
It’s a very disorganized disease (fast and dirty) – which means it isn’t insidious. It’s not the least bit sneaky. It’s ridiculously obvious.
As this story unfolds it becomes apparent that the Texas hospital didn’t follow infectious disease protocol. That’s the problem.
But don’t let the facts stop you from building your Ebola bunker.
One has to remember that conservatives do much better when angry rubes are full of obsessive irrational fear
Now we certainly can’t have someone inside the propaganda machine questioning the misinfomration
And hey, Always Watching, we *still* have a one name per commenter rule here.
@AlwaysWatching… perhaps you should stop watching and start reading. Ebola doesn’t spread through the air or simply on surfaces. It spreads via bodily fluids. The baggage handler at the airline the nurse flew can’t contract Ebola.
You can’t get it by hugging unless your partner spits in your mouth… and even then the concentration in saliva is different than feces and blood.
You don’t know what your writing about so I suggest you stick to watching… in silence. No talking, no typing. It’s just that simple.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/16/the-sky-is-not-falling-and-ebola-is-not-out-of-control.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
“Speaking of air travel, the single most important epidemiologic fact arguing for the public’s safety is this: Patrick Sawyer, the American who flew from Liberia to Nigeria while sick with Ebola, spread infection to absolutely no one who shared the plane with him. This information should go a long way to assuring those Frontier Airlines passengers who accompanied the second infected nurse from Cleveland to Dallas this week.
And still more: Spain, where a nurse caring for two repatriated patients dying of Ebola herself developed the disease, has not seen a second case related to these men’s care or the ill nurse’s, despite what has been reported by local groups as a complete lack of preparation and appropriate supplies to minimize the risk of transmission. Despite a raging, unconscionable epidemic in West Africa, no other cases other than Duncan have appeared unexpectedly outside of Africa. Europe: Zero cases. USA: No further cases three weeks since Duncan’s illness began. Obviously past performance does not predict future returns and the world is not out of the danger zone but for now, the infected traveler is a rare event.”
It seems some want to interrupt my position as forwarding a hysterical “the sky is falling” attitude, when what I’m saying should be applied is, what I would call, a process of Pragmatic Precaution. And frankly, I don’t think that that type of approach deviates much from the Administration and the CDC.
To put it another way and I’m being to some degree hypothetical, if the chances of someone who has had direct contact with one of the nurses, statistically has 1 in a 10,000 chance of contracting Ebola, isn’t the most responsible approach to guaranteeing that NO ONE else contracts the disease from them is to “over-dial” the level of precautions applied to reduce the likelihood to 1 in a 1,000,000??? It seems like everyone is assuming that these nurses BOTH screwed up. Do we have definitive proof they did? Where’s the video tape that says they did? If you have definitive proof, please pick up the phone and call the CDC.
The other thing that I believe is noteworthy here is that, this conversation is amongst a group of reasonably educated (though it seems my reasonableness is in question) and responsible adults. What percentage of the overall populous of the U.S. may be less continuous in implementing average and reasonable safeguards when they discover they’ve come in contact with someone who is later diagnosed as having Ebola??? Some may go completely nuts. Others may just say, “It’s all BS, I won’t get it!” and about their business not caring.
If we implement now, what many seem to see as extreme precautions, don’t we virtually guarantee this won’t get out of hand?
It seems like everyone is assuming that these nurses BOTH screwed up. Do we have definitive proof they did? Where’s the video tape that says they did? If you have definitive proof, please pick up the phone and call the CDC.
You know how ebola is transmitted, right? For these nurses (like the other medical professionals who have contracted ebola) to get this, there was a failure of the infectious control system. And it doesn’t take much — just mishandling a sharp just used on a patient could be enough. Or scratching your eyes. This may or may not have been the fault of these nurses, but the infectious control system absolutely failed here. In a state that doesn’t believe in regulations. None of that is reason to have your hair on fire about this. The vast majority of the people reading this blog have no contact with people who have been in West Africa recently; an even greater majority of the people reading this blog don’t have the kind of contact with anyone who has been in West Africa recently that might transmit ebola to them; most of us are luckily not subject to medical care at a Texas hospital.
The other thing that is important to remember is where you live. The United States of America has a better public health infrastructure than any West African country. One of the reasons the media can put this under a microscope is that this kind of thing doesn’t happen here often. But you’ll note that the first nurse seems to be well on the mend and there is little reason to believe that folks who contract this here won’t get much better care and have a high likelihood of surviving.
Well Cassandra_m, we seem to be much closer to understanding each other, though I would still be inclined to err on the side caution. Coming from a Quality Control background, applying a “Six Sigma” (i.e. 1 in a million) approach, still seems the proper response.
And, you’re right about health care in the U.S. vs. Western Africa.
I just found a report from the CDC (9/27/14) regarding the rate of infection in Liberia and Sierra Leone…. not good.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6303a1.htm?s_cid=su6303a1_w#Appendix-tab1
Let’s get to one in 10,000 before jumping to one in 1 million. So far we’ve had fewer than 100 people in contact with Duncan and two cases, so 1 in 10,000 would be a significant improvement.