Emory is getting an ebola patient - if you work in a hospital

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08/01/2014 23:11

Subject: Emory is getting an ebola patient - if you work in a hospital

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact that CDC is voluntarily bringing two ebola patients into the country is insane to me.

The fact that I can do nothing to stop it, or even show my displeasure in any meaningful way, is also frightening.

Leave them where they are - I have yet to find a good explanation of the risk - benefit analysis that makes sense (other than the patriotic but not particularly rational 'they are American and deserve to be at home.' Their desserts do not trump the safety of everyone on the continent).

Your purportedly one-sided risk/benefit analysis does not take into account the realities of the risk, which is relatively small for a non-airborne hemorraghic fever that kills as quickly as Ebola does. The risk of some sort of uncontrolled and widespread outbreak based on one patient crossing the border is basically nil.

I don't think that this will turn into the Black Death Mark 2, no, but I do think there is a chance some people in Atlanta area (probably other health workers) will get infected. No protocol is perfect. I don't see the point of risking this at all for no benefit - the only rationale that would make sense to me is that they want to study this in live patients under controlled conditions ebcause arrival of Ebola in this country via some sick passenger who doesn't know he is sick is inevitable and they want to get a head start. But then I am not sure why they aren't quarantining anyone coming from that part of the world as a matter of course, in the first place.

Or they might want to study this in live patients so that they can develop life saving techniques to be used in Africa where the disease is killing people.

Do the lives of non-Americans really matter to you so little that you can't imagine that someone else would care about them?

Lives of people in other countries matter less to me than those of people in this country, just as lives of family members matter more than lives of strangers. I don’t particularly want anyone to die, but if I had to rank a hierarchy of importance, I’d have one. More importantly, I think this country (and the Western world) only really started paying attention to this when it became clear that there was a chance this could spread beyond West Africa – before, it was barely a blip in the news. So I think nobody would approve a transfer of ebola patients to this country if the only people affected were rural West Africans with no possibility of spread – countries are also ‘selfish’ that way. And that’s fine with me – I’d hope the government of this country would be more concerned with the lives and well-being of its own citizens than citizens of other countries thousands of miles away.

P.S. I am a naturalized citizen. When I lived in the country of my birth, I did not expect America to care for me or to put my well-being above its own citizens – why would I? Just as I don’t expect the Canadian or Austrian government to puts my well-being above that of its citizens now. It would just not make sense.

I won't argue your feelings on this matter, only point out that the people being brought to the US are American citizens. The act of allowing them back in the country IS the government being concerned with the lives and well being of its own citizens.