Patterico's Pontifications

10/12/2014

Nurse Who Treated Ebola Patient Tests Positive for Ebola; CDC Claims Unspecified “Breach of Protocol”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:27 am



A nurse who treated the late Ebola patient Thomas Duncan has tested positive for Ebola — but your friendly federal government hastens to assure you that it’s her own fault:

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a “breach of protocol” caused a health care worker at a Dallas hospital to preliminarily test positive for Ebola.

The health care worker, a female nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, had “extensive contact” on multiple occasions with Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., who died last week, Dr. Tom Frieden said in a press conference Sunday.

If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.

The particular nature of the “breach of protocol” has not yet been announced. My guess is, they haven’t even identified one yet.

Wait: what is Patterico saying here?

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I don’t believe them. By saying that, I’m not saying it’s impossible they’re wrong. I’m just saying: I believe they would say this whether it’s true or not — because as a political matter they want to avoid panic and/or blame for Ebola. And we have seen many times before that they will say any old thing that benefits them politically, and the truth of the matter be damned.

Maybe someone from the federal government gave her bad advice. It wouldn’t be the first time; Obama just got through contradicting the CDC in an address to West Africans:

“First, Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu,” Obama said in the video released by the White House Thursday. “You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus. You cannot get it from another person until they start showing symptoms of the disease, like fever.”

Yet, as CNS News noted, the CDC’s advice to people returning from Liberia includes avoiding sitting next to people on the bus:

Limit your contact with other people when you travel to the doctor; avoid public transportation.

Thanks to daleyrocks for this image:

Screen Shot 2014-10-12 at 10.09.43 AM

It may not be entirely fair, but a lot of what Obama does to us isn’t fair at all — from ObamaCare to the IRS scandal to lying about countless public issues. So in that sense, yeah. It’s perfectly fair.

Prayers for this nurse as we await specifics from your friendly federal government on what she did to deserve this.

P.S. There is no possibility that the protocol is deficient in some way, citizen. The federal government developed the protocol and it is perfect. Logically, therefore, if a nurse was infected, she failed to follow the protocol. Because the protocol is perfect.


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