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Quickhits: Ebola fearmongering, massacre threats, GassyGoat, who gets to pick up a gun and live?

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Still not feeling up to sitting in front of the computer for too long while convalescing from my hospital admission, but here’s a few things I’ve noted filling my feeds:

* The media hyperventilation over the way over-stated risks of catching Ebola for those in the West (and the predictably awful racism on display amongst too many people who’ve swallowed the hype). Also too many people unwilling to accept that Ebola patients have privacy rights (h/t @amaditalks).

* The specific threat to enact “another Montreal massacre” at USU if they went ahead with a talk from Anita Sarkeesian, and how Sarkeesian ended up cancelling the talk (which she normally doesn’t do following threats) after learning that Utah’s concealed-carry weapon licenses mean that the university is specifically prohibited from preventing anyone with such a licence from carrying their weapon into the auditorium i.e. USU could not provide adequate security measures.

That a public university would have the ability to ban backpacks from a speech but not loaded guns strikes me as something that even many concealed-carry advocates might blanch at.

* A selection of pithy tweets re #GamerGate:

* The ongoing double standard about who gets to carry guns without the police freaking out:

11 thoughts on Quickhits: Ebola fearmongering, massacre threats, GassyGoat, who gets to pick up a gun and live?

  2. 1 – I missed your post about the hospital! That sucks, and I hope you feel better soon.

    2 – thanks for succinctly summing up my problems with the hyperventilation around Ebola. I swear, the next person who says we should just block all travel from Africa, I’m going to flip my shit on them. And the privacy shit has been irritating me since that video went up on CNN of the patients arriving in Atlanta.

    3 – I don’t know what to say about Gamergate at all. It seems cyber harassment laws and technology need to change in order to out these people. I don’t see any other real end.

    1. I think there should be a worldwide ban on nonessential travel to and from infected areas. We don’t have a cure and our infectious disease protocols clearly don’t work. I’m not saying abandon Africa. Healthcare workers count as essential. However, as the last couple days have proven healthcare workers clearly don’t know how to take reasonable precautions.

      Can you imagine the disaster if it spreads in a developing country on another connecticut?

      1. our infectious disease protocols clearly don’t work

        Rubbish. The protocols work fine so long as hospital beancounters don’t try to override the epidemiologists regarding how things need to be done.

        So one hospital in Texas never bothered to spend the money to fully train their staff years ago in the multi-layer infectious disease protocols long recommended by the CDC and required for Ebola, that same hospital ignored CDC protocols by sending Mr Duncan home from the ED in the first place, that same city health department ignored CDC protocols for adequately quarantining the other people he shared an apartment with, and at the end of all those half-arsed implementations it’s still only two of the many many inadequately resourced health professionals in that hospital/department who were infected as a result of these procedural shortcomings. That should be a very long and interesting lawsuit that the hospital is going to end up defending, but one thing it certainly does not show is that procedures CDC protocols themselves are inadequate.

        Now, legislation to force hospital administrators to actually spend the money they are supposed to be spending on making sure their hospitals are fully up to code for epidemiological containment protocols? Bring it on.

        1. Yea, Texas Presbyterian was largely incompetent. But the whole point is that your average hospital and medical staff just aren’t going to catch Ebola in a ER. I’m sure a good percentage of other hospitals also never completed the training in the needed protocols. You are never going to have perfect implementation. Protocols are fundamentally reactive. At least, with Duncan and the two nurses they knew it might be Ebola. Everyone the two nurses might have infected is going to think they have the flu. We need to be proactive and restrict the avenues of infection.

          WHO and the CDC already said the disease was going worldwide.

          And really the CDC took over Duncan’s treatment after he was admitted. They were ones dictating protocols. I don’t believe the medical staff wasn’t following orders. They had plenty of incentive to minimize their risk of infection.

          The nurses weren’t infected after his initial ER visit. They were infected after the CDC took over.

          1. And really the CDC took over Duncan’s treatment after he was admitted.

            Oh, I would really like to see a credible citation for that. As I understand it the CDC is a research and advisory body who sends out information generally and in a crisis, they send out tailored directives. I don’t believe that they have the staffing to send out teams of their own to “take over” medical care of individuals from qualified medical personnel who are already on the scene with infected persons. Indeed, it seems that the transfers of subsequent patients to a different hospital is a clear indication that the CDC felt they did not have sufficient oversight at Texas Presbyterian.

            I don’t believe the medical staff wasn’t following orders. They had plenty of incentive to minimize their risk of infection.

            They can’t use equipment that their hospital hasn’t supplied for them. Allegedly there are photos showing exposed skin in the nursing suite. It’s certainly most likely that if fully informed of the risks the nursing staff would have used all available equipment to cover their skin according to CDC protocols. That they did not suggests either that (a) that their managers did not adequately convey the details of the CDC protocols or (b) did not provide sufficiently protective equipment to meet the CDC protocols.

        2. They failed to follow protocols for 2-3 days while he was hospitalized. It wasn’t until his positive test results returned that they began Ebola protocol. The nurses for that hospital have been very vocal about lack of training and unpreparedness. In fact, nurses from around the country have been saying there is little to no training, they’re not taught protocol, and hospitals all over the country have no idea how to implement them in a way that’s needed. It’s not just one hospital dropping the ball. The whole system is ridiculously unprepared. CDC protocol means Jack shit when no one knows them.

          1. CDC protocol means Jack shit when no one knows them.

            Exactly. But Congress keeps listening to jackasses who want to defund the agency rather than give the CDC better resources and better regulations to mandate that hospitals provide full CDC-compliant training and supplies.

            The CDC has been screaming this to the legislators for years and years and years. Too many legislators have chosen to ignore them. And now the scaremongers amongst them want to override the CDC’s expert advice on containment yet again, because ignoring them has just worked out so well for everybody for so many years, right?

            Disclaimer: I e-know someone who works for the CDC and who is seething with rage at the way the agency is being blamed for things it literally has no control over because the jackasses who did actually have control over things chose to ignore the CDC’s advice.

        3. The buck stops with the legislators. I agree. They are the ones responsible for funding the CDC.

          The hospital and medical staff should not be blamed for a situation they were under-trained and under prepared for. Every little hospital is not going to have access to equipment and training to handle a disease they’ve only been hearing about on the TV.

          1. Texas Presbyterian Hospital is not a little hospital in the wilds. It is an enormous tertiary care facility with approximately 900 beds and 1200 physicians on staff.

            I don’t blame any medical staff who have to do the best they can with what their hospital management provides them. I do blame the hospital administrators for not providing adequate training and supplies for handling a major infectious disease outbreak case, which just happened this time to be Ebola. Who knows what it will be next time?

            * edited to change “outbreak” to “case”, because there is not yet any “outbreak” in the USA. There are a few contained cases.

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