Ebola in Dallas

By now all of my readers are aware that a case of Ebola has been diagnosed in Dallas.  The breathless details are still coming out.  How many people was he in contact with?  What airplane did he fly on? How do you go about putting 100 people in quarantine for 21 days?  Who will feed them and clean their apartments?  Who will pick up their trash?

DALLAS — More than a week after a Liberian man fell ill with Ebola and four days after he was placed in isolation at a hospital in Dallas, the apartment where he was staying with four other people had not been cleaned and the sheets and dirty towels he used while sick remained in the home, health officials acknowledged on Thursday afternoon.

Even as the authorities were reaching out to at least 80 people who may have had contact — either directly or indirectly — with the patient, Thomas E. Duncan, while he was contagious, they were scrambling to find medical workers to safely clean the apartment.

The four family members who are living there are among a handful who have been directed by the authorities to remain in isolation, following what officials said was a failure to comply with an order to stay home. Texas health officials hand-delivered orders to residents of the apartment requiring them not to leave their home and not to allow any visitors inside until their roughly three-week incubation periods have passed.

The orders – known as communicable disease control orders – are permitted under the state’s health code. Violations could result in either criminal prosecution or civil court proceedings.

But even as the orders were being issued, there were concerns about the conditions in the home where they were being ordered to stay.

The woman who was hosting Mr. Duncan told CNN that she had been with him the first time he sought treatment at the hospital and that she had twice told workers there he had been in Liberia. Still they sent him back with only some antibiotics to the apartment, where the woman was staying with one of her children and two nephews.

Over the next two days, Mr. Duncan began sweating profusely and had diarrhea. His sweaty sheets were still on the bed on Thursday morning, the woman said. She put the towels he used in a bag but said she did not know what to do with them.

The woman, whom CNN did not identify by name, said she had no symptoms of the disease.

The Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Lakey, told reporters during an afternoon news conference that health workers should have moved more swiftly to clean the apartment but that they had had trouble finding an outside medical team to do the work. They encountered “a little bit of hesitancy,” he said.

“We are arranging for that apartment to be cleaned,” he said. “The house conditions need to be improved.”

Here;  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/dallas-ebola-case-thomas-duncan-contacts.html?_r=0

You can see how difficult it would be to find workers willing to go into a dirty apartment and clean up vomit, blood and poop.  Would you be willing to risk catching a heinous, deadly disease for $12 per hour?

Probably not...

Also, please keep in mind how quickly our malls, schools and businesses would shut down if this disease starts spreading.  Already people in Dallas are keeping their kids home from the school where the Ebola patient had some contacts.

Humans like to believe that we have everything under control....but really we are in control of nothing.

Disease will be one of the four horsemen sent out to kill during the Great Tribulation which is yet to come for planet earth.  This Ebola outbreak may be a foreshadowing of that event.

"I looked and there before me was a pale horse!  Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."  Revelation 6:8

Ebola certainly could qualify as a plague.  It's being reported that stray dogs are eating the dead bodies in Liberia...