Friday, October 17, 2014

It's "Grassy Knoll" Time!

     Tam just reported from her post in front of the TV, "...A third nurse who dealt with the Texas ebola patient has reported feeling ooky and quarantined herself...while on a cruise ship."

     Did they just tell those healthcare workers to get out there in the world and enjoy themselves as closely to as many other people as they could get?

     It is precisely preposterously coincidental bad news like this, the kind of thing that might be hilarious in a dark comedy but is tragic and deadly in real life, that fuels conspiracy theories.

     Dammit.

14 comments:

Bob said...

Hanlon's Razor.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

"And have LOTS of anonymous unprotected sex, too!" -CDC official.

Knucklehead said...

Bob,

That is a rule to live by but the stupidity just keeps coming until one starts to wonder if there is not deceit and purpose behind what appears to be mere stupidity.

Douglas2 said...

Not a nurse, a lab supervisor. Someone who had no contact with the patient. Someone who had no contact with the samples and whose contact with the sample containers consisted of maybe being in the same room as the sample bottle.
Not feeling ooky, just someone who was continuing scheduled activities, and who has been under "active monitoring" by the ships doctor ever since the CDC decided to start caring.
At this rate, I'm expecting people to start talking about barring flights from Dallas and Houston.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

In fairness to this particular health care worker:

a) She was not one of the nurses actually working with the patient.

b) The most we're getting right now is that she "may have" handled his fluid samples - they can't even say for sure that she did (a scathing condemnation of the hospital's procedures all by itself - they should have a list of every person who came in contact with anything from that patient). She may not have known.

c) The CDC is lying through their teeth, probably out of some misguided attempt to prevent a panic. At the time she boarded the cruise, they still looked like they were being honest, and she didn't fall into any of the groups of people they were saying needed to be monitored.

She had no reason to believe she was dangerous, and the people with much more knowledge on the subject than her were telling her she was fine, and travel was perfectly safe. The government's handling of this whole has been nothing short of criminal.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

John Ringo, call your office.

Paul said...

This just get more hilarious by the minute.

Mean while I'm carrying surgical gloves and N95 masks...

I did see a lady in Target the other day and she had CHEMO printed on her mask.

Not a bad idea all in all.

Overload in Colorado said...

I heard that one of the nurses has tickets to the World Series. An another is going to the Big House for a Mich football game Saturday. A third is going to the NASCAR race, and a forth is going to see how many NFL games can be attended this week.

Goober said...

Well said, Roberta.

It IS stuff like this that has people tipping the balance between perceptions of malice or stupidity.

But I've lived by the rule "never attribute to malice, that which is more easily explained by stupidity" and it has't done me wrong yet.

Stupid is dangerous as hell.

Anonymous said...

We should quarantine the TX Health Care workers from being in public for 21 days. Especially after two did get infected. It is a reasonable precaution.

But for some reason we won't restrict flights and quarantine people from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea?

The Jack said...

I'm reminded of JayG's read on things:

"When both sides start coming out with batshit insane conspiracy theories, that's rather worrisome. I fear it's because the truth is almost scarier: This administration is in WAY over its head, has no f**king clue what it's doing, and hasn't the faintest idea how to deal with any of this. It appears their plan is nothing more than "hide under a pile of blankets and hope this all goes away." "

Hammerbach said...

Hope is not a strategy.

NAVIGATOR said...

PATHOGENS ARE NO RESPECTER OF POLITICAL PERSUASION CLASS TITLE ECONOMIC STATUS INTENTIONS OR THOUGHTS NO MATTER HOW "GOOD"

PUBLIC RELATIONS SPIN DOCTORS AND POLITICAL HACKS SHOULD HAVE NO SAY OVER PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY OR SECURITY

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE CADAVERS

Douglas2 said...

As I predicted -- a Maine school has forced a teacher to take 21 day's leave because she attended an education conference in Dallas.