Ebola Plans Underway!

Even though the word out of Washington has been that there's nothing to worry about, that the chances of Ebola arriving on American soil are miniscule, that if it ever gets here, quarantine protocols will keep everyone safe!

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel sought Friday to reassure Chicagoans increasingly concerned about the Ebola epidemic that the city would learn from mistakes made in Dallas and have a coordinated response if the deadly disease surfaces here.
  
  To make certain of it, Emanuel summoned hospital officials and commissioners of several city departments (police, fire, health, aviation and emergency management and communications) to the first of what he said would be weekly meetings to discuss the city’s emergency preparedness.

Weekly meetings? Oh boy! But then there are uncomfortable things like this that pop up:

• Despite the burgeoning Ebola epidemic, the Chicago Fire Department has never “fit-tested” its 4,645 firefighters and paramedics to make certain that disposable face masks used to protect them from fluid transmissions are properly sealed.
  
  The Massachusetts manufacturer of the N95 respirator recommends — and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration demands — that first responders be tested annually to make certain the mask fits tightly enough to filter out small particles.
  
  The tighter the fit, the more resistant the mask is to bodily fluids, which is how Ebola is transmitted.
  
  But until the Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 sounded the alarm this week, the Fire Department had distributed masks without fit-testing any of its employees.

Um...masks are great for airborne particles, but Obama has been telling everyone that Ebola isn't an airborne disease (that's why he hasn't banned flights, disregarding the fact that while Ebola isn't airborne, infected passengers are). It hasn't mutated that far yet.

In any event, most Ebola patients exhibit projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea and the disease has shown surprisingly high infectiousness...1-to-10 particles can infect you, as opposed to hundreds, even thousands of particles to transmit colds, measles or other diseases. And Ebola doesn't have to be inhaled - it will get through whole skin. So a mask is great....if you don't make skin contact with any vomit or shit flying out of an infected individual.  And then you have to load someone on a stretcher, lift them into an ambulance, unload them at a hospital and have to decontaminate every surface, article of clothing and lord knows what else. No problem...no problem at all.