Montana Ebola Creep
by lizard
The American health care system is not prepared for Ebola. Is there a subtle distinction between increasing awareness and feeding panic? I don’t know. But the American health care system is not prepared for Ebola.
The second nurse infected flew on a plane with 132 other people. That’s not good. A man sent home from the ER, black and uninsured, that’s not good either. I guess this is the price of maintaining an insanely costly, inhumane and ineffective health care system made, to some degree, only a little less shitty by the ACA.
People trying to politicize the role Missoula could play in treating Ebola patients (ahem, Bob) are being, how should I put this—counterproductive. The reality is this, Rocky Mountain Laboratories:
Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) is part of the NIH Intramural Research Program and is located in Hamilton, Montana. Operated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, RML conducts research on maximum containment pathogens such as Ebola as well as research on prions and intracellular pathogens such as Coxiella burnetti and Francisella tularensis.[3][4][5] RML operates one of the few Biosafety level 4 laboratories in the United States, as well as Biosafety level 3 and ABSL3/4 laboratories.
Knowing this reality, let’s push for the support health care workers will need. If you need convincing, Chris Hayes had the fired up director for National Nurses United, Roseann Demoro, on tonight, and it’s a segment worth checking out.
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4&20 blackbirds 
October 16, 2014 at 8:26 am
Bob’s eloquent rebuttal of my assertion Missoula is a potential destination for Ebola patients because of its convenient proximity to the Rocky Mountain Laboratories:
October 16, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Unrelated? The only reason St. Pat’s has a BioSafety Level 4 treatment facility is because of its proximity to the RML in Hamilton. Every bio containment level 4 Lab in the country has to have an associated treatment facility close by.
October 16, 2014 at 8:40 am
Had these nurses been unionized, they may well have been sufficiently protected. Rick Perry is also one of those governors who turned down Medicaid expansion for ideological reasons.
October 16, 2014 at 8:45 am
My wife points out that Doctors Without Borders, which has been working at ground zero with Ebola patients for years, don’t lose anyone. They have an exhaustively protective protocol, regarding what they wear, how they wash, how they’re supervised when washing, etc. These docs, nurses, etc., have also probably been working for peon wages. I sent them some dough last month. I’m due to do so again. I hope at least one other reader here does so.
October 16, 2014 at 12:08 pm
A nationalized, not-for-profit healthcare system (public hospitals, nationalized drug producers, Medicare for everyone) would do a better job than the patchwork for-ridiculous-profit system we have now. Nothing gets done in our country unless some fat cat can profit from it.
Government bureaucracies are sometimes inefficient, too. But they don’t usually work to enrich a few people at the expense of everyone else.
As things stand now, ebola will be conquered or brought under control only when fighting it becomes profitable.
October 16, 2014 at 8:41 pm
I’d like to point out that Firestone, an evil corporation who rapes trees for rubber and profit on the backs of wage slaves, has stopped Ebola in its tracks in Liberia.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks
It’s OK to click. It’s NPR.
October 16, 2014 at 8:48 pm
Apologies to Arlo.
Coming into Los Angles
Trying not to puke or to sneeze
Don’t take my temp if you please
Mr Customs man