Should Center for Disease Control (CDC) Director Tom Frieden Be Fired?

[TorchTheWitch]

110. no one is talking about that - it's his treatment we're talking about

Yep, the hospital fucked up in sending him home. And that should have been a HUGE clue that they were not at all prepared. True, Mr. Duncan could have been more forthcoming and told them that he suspected he had Ebola and that he had been in direct contact with someone who had it rather than only saying he was form Liberia or West Africa. Obviously those places didn't ring any bells for anyone in the ER to clue them in that he might have Ebola. That's not what's at issue here.

Once they admitted him they knew what he likely had. We're talking about their ability to care for him properly while protecting the staff, hospital patients and visitors etc. And it was the CDC that assured them that they could and that it was no problem while paying no attention to what the hell was going on there so they could be told, no, you can't do dialysis or ventilate an Ebola patient, no, you can't put samples through the tube system, no, you can't have so many people taking care of him with their also taking care of other patients, no you can't have staff suiting up their own selves without supervision or have them take off their PPE without disinfecting it first, etc., etc., etc. That's the CDC's JOB. THEY are the ones hospitals are to go to for direction, protocols and HELP to make sure that what's being done every step of the way is done correctly.

The very fact that Frieden believed that Mr. Duncan could be handled just fine in a regular hospital with a biosafety level 4 virus and level 2 protocols is ludicrous. It's willful negligence. The CDC KNOWS that Ebola is a biosafety level 4 virus, so why on earth did they not have Mr. Duncan sent to one of the 4 hospitals that were designed to handle it just like they did all the AMERICAN patients that were infected and were sent to those hospitals?

We have these hospitals for a REASON - because regular hospitals are not set up with the appropriate experienced staff in infrastructure to handle a biosafety level 4 infected patient just like all hospitals don't have a special burn unit or special trauma unit. Our health care system is already set up such that certain people with certain severe illnesses/injuries need to receive care at certain hospitals set up to be able to handle their certain issue even if that means they need to be flown to another city or another state.

For example, none of the hospitals here in the suburbs have a burn unit. Years ago someone had an accident where their car ended up catching on fire and they had severe burns. The accident happened practically in the parking lot of one of our area hospitals, but it wasn't equipped to handle someone with such severe burns on so much of his body. The EMT's were well aware of that and medivaced him to one of the city hospitals that has an excellent burn unit. The chopper came down right in the middle of the street. The fire department cut open his car to get him out, and the EMT's whisked him into the chopper. It happened right outside my apartment building, but I wasn't home at the time and had to read all about it in the papers the next few days. Big full page spreads on the front page (this was before internet). Someone even got a good photo of the chopper just touching down in the street when it arrived with cop cars everywhere blocking off the whole street with lights whirling and flares burning. Must have been something to see - our first responders doing an excellent job of trying to save someone's life. Never found out what happened to the victim after that - nobody ever followed up to see if he lived or died or what.

And it makes sense to do it that way. Every hospital couldn't afford to have a special burn unit, a special trauma center, a special children's unit or a special biosafety level 4 unit because they don't all need them for the areas they cover. Most of the time those special units would be empty with special staff twiddling their thumbs having no patient to service and increase their experience.

So far the four biosafety level 4 hospitals the US with a total of 19 beds between them have been plenty to serve the needs of patients requiring that level of care throughout the country since this country just doesn't get much in the way of patients with that sort of infection that needs that level of care. We just don't have outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever and or other hemorrhagic fevers or the few certain encephalitis infections that are the only ones on the list of biosafety level 4 - it's a short list. Most of the time those beds are probably empty or we fly in people from other countries needing that level of care who don't have that sort of care level. Good practice for the staff anyway, and why not help someone in need from another country that doesn't have the means to care for them. It just doesn't make sense for all of our country's hospitals to have ana scant number of patients who need it while most of the time those units would be empty.

Our medical system is designed to be so excellent and modern that these special hospitals would be all that's needed to care for an outbreak should we get on and stop it in its tracks there. None of the BSL-4 viruses are airborne... it's not like flu season where thousands and thousands are affected. In this country and most any other first world country these few BSL-4 viruses are so rare we basically don't get them, period.

For cripes sake, if I know all this than surely the CDC does, too, and one hell of a lot more. So, why the HELL did they not send Mr. Duncan to one of the four hospitals with the environment, staff, equipment, etc. to not only care for him but STOP EBOLA FROM SPREADING.

Thanks to the utter willful negligence of the CDC we now have a minor outbreak that could grow far worse to a point where we CAN'T handle it because our regular hospitals with regular environment, equipment and staff CAN't handle. And they still haven't woken up to the fact that after screwing up so badly gambling with peoples' lives they need to get their heads out of their asses and send these two infected workers to one of our four BSL-4 level hospital for care and to stop more infection spread from those two. Anyone else that becomes infected by the cluster-fuck at the Dallas hospital also needs to be sent to those hospitals so they can stop the infection from spreading. The Dallas hospital caring for these two infected workers is GOING to continue to screw up with more people getting infected caring for THEM.

Has the CDC sent in a special team to care for them since they made that decision? If not, why not? Will that team have what it requires in everything they need to do? Is the makeshift ICU now set up to be able to be contained and can it be with negative airflow and separate waste containment and disposal? It STILL doesn't make any sense to not have these two other workers sent to where they need to go to ensure infection from THEIR care doesn't continue to spread.

This minor outbreak is the fault of the CDC for assuring the Dallas hospital they could successfully care for an Ebola patient when they HAD to know they couldn't. It's their JOB to know. It's their JOB to have correct protocols and correct environment and staff with the experience and training to handle a BSL-4 infected patient. It's their JOB to be on hand to monitor and supervise everything that goes on to stop any mistakes before they happen and to make sure things are done as properly as they can be because it's their JOB to be the go-to agency of the country for everything about infectious disease, preparedness and containment. And now we find out the hard way that the head of this agency is an inept bureaucratic ninny without a clue that for no reason is gambling with peoples' lives and CAUSING an outbreak with his ineptitude when everything would have been fine had he just sent Mr. Duncan to one of the four BSL-4 hospitals just as all the infected AMERICANS were. And for that he not only needs to be fired but put in jail for willfully putting lives at risk for infection of a deadly incurable disease, and OF COURSE that happened.