Friday Pussy - Humans are incompetant edition

                              
Asian cat always knows to wash his paws after touching humans

Having dealt with nasty things for the last 20 plus years I must put my two cents in on the Ebola situation. I've worked with everything from Asbestos to DDT and even Hanta virus so I know a thing or two about personnel protective equipment. What I've witnessed over the last few weeks has been utter incompetence. There's hastily set up medical "clinics" in western Africa. Good intention but far from what they need. At the beginning they didn't even have something as simple as a bottle of bleach for disinfecting. And it's a safe bet they were lacking in suits and masks even to protect the doctors.

But now the focus is on the West and it's supposed greatest health care in the world. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Everybody assumes that every hospital has a special ward to isolated someone with a deadly communicable disease. They do not. There are at present only a handful of hospitals that have such facilities and the total number of beds? Would you believe 9? Four of which are now being occupied. But from what I've seen there's a truly inconsistent level of personnel protection for hospital workers (a bit about that later). We've seen everything from paper dust masks and cheap nitrol gloves with no other coverings to the full level A moon suit with full face respirator. They should have gotten a clue when they saw the haz mat workers who cleaned the apartment in full attire with all potential exposure areas duct taped. But even then it's hard to doff a suit with everything taped. Worker has to be sprayed with disinfectant first.  Even the CDC protocols that the Texas hospital said they followed were inadequate in my opinion. It only takes a skin break or inhaling mist from a sneeze to be affected even though they say otherwise. One touch to the face with a contaminated glove was all it took in the first case.

How did we get to this point? It was all in the name of profit. Federal funds to hospitals were cut (by around $250 million). Hospitals looked for ways to cut spending and those units being rarely used became low hanging fruit. And why spend the time training personnel on something they may never use? It's become the perfect storm. I can attest to that last part personally. After 911 I was expecting a training program to be set up for us haz mat workers. Remember the Anthrax situation? We assumed there would be other possible attacks either chemical or biological. The training program came 4 years later and consisted of a booklet of just 19 pages. Yes we are a bit familiar with dealing with hazardous chemicals but Ebola and many of the other nasties takes a bit more training. Oh and the government would like nothing better than to have the military handle all of this because they can't complain and they can't sue.

How profits supersedes science
After 911 the 3 M people decided that they wanted to make a bit more for the bottom line. They convinced congress that it would be a great idea to turn their dust masks into respirators. This even though science says that they are only good for nuisance dust like when you sweep your garage floor. But with the stroke of a pen people are now being exposed to things they shouldn't. And if your thinking of investing because they also make tyvec moon suits, forget it the big boys beat you to it.

There's still two problems in all this great effort to contain this outbreak. Aside from the fact that there's few facilities capable of dealing with the virus, there's an issue of the waste stream. Every time a doctor or nurse goes into the isolation area they must dawn new garb and that must be disposed of in the proper manner. It was reported that the contaminated clothing was piled high to the ceiling at the Texas hospital and other hospitals have much the same problem. There's few facilities willing to take highly contagious waste that must be incinerated. So just like 911 we are not prepared in the event of a national emergency. There's even no chain of command just as there was none for the Twin Towers. They all rely on recommendations.

Bank fails later (Note there have been none since July as of last week)
One bank fail in Maryland this week.