Sunday, October 19, 2014

Charles Krauthammer: The Sooner We Take Ebola Seriously The Safer We'll Be

Unnervingly, the U.S. public health services remain steps behind the Ebola virus. Contact tracing is what we do, Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden assured the nation. It will stop the epidemic "in its tracks."
And yet nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, who developed Ebola, were not even among the 48 contacts that the CDC was initially following.
Nor were any of the doctors and nurses who treated the "index patient," Thomas Duncan. No one even had a full list of caregivers.
The other reassurance was: No worry. We know what we're doing. We have protocols. But when the U.S. got its first Ebola transmission case, a "breach in protocol" was blamed.
Translation: "Don't blame us. The nurse screwed up." The nurses' union was not amused. Frieden had to walk that back the next day, saying he didn't mean to blame anyone.
Frieden had said "the care of Ebola can be done safely, but it is hard to do it safely." Meaning: In theory, it's easy; in practice, dangerous. Unfortunately, that's not what he said on Day One.
These missteps raise questions of competence, candor and false confidence. But the problem is deeper. And it rests not in our doctors but in ourselves.
In the face of a uniquely dangerous threat, we Americans have trouble recalibrating our traditional (and laudable) devotion to individual rights and civil liberties. That is the fundamental reason we've been so slow in getting serious about Ebola. Consider:
1. Privacy
Pham's identity was initially withheld. In normal circumstances, privacy deserves absolute respect. But these are not normal circumstances. We're talking about a possible epidemic by an unseen pathogen that kills 70% of its victims. Contact tracing is the key to stopping it, we've been told.
What faster way to alert anyone who might have had contact with Pham than releasing her name? Why lose 24 hours during which people have to guess if they'd had contact with someone carrying the virus?
Read the rest of the op-ed HERE.

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