Remember when Obama said "Putin was isolated", despite the Russian having the explicit support of the BRIC nations, and thus at least half of the world's population? Well, as irony would always have it with this particular US president, the tables have promptly turned, and paradoxically where ISIS failed to "terrorize" Americans into a state of paralyzed daze, the West African virus has succeeded in isolating none other than America, and as a brand new Reuters poll reveals [6], nearly half of Americans are so concerned about the Ebola outbreak that they are avoiding international air travel!
In other words, global trade, commerce and simply transit, already declining thanks to the global depression rematerializing now that the Fed's latest placebo round has worn off, are about to slam into a brick wall.
The poll results come as health officials said the second nurse infected at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas had flown from Ohio to Texas with a slight fever the day before she was diagnosed.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which surveyed 1,577 Americans 18 or older online, found nearly 80 percent were concerned about the Ebola outbreak, with 41 percent saying they were "very concerned" and 36 percent "somewhat concerned."
And while the one thing that is certain to provoke an even greater popular panic at the invisible terror, is at least one more Ebola case developing on US soil, the whistleblowing admission by another nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian will hardly boost America's confidence in the way the Ebola crisis is being handled.
NBC Chicago reports [7]that a Dallas nurse who cared for a co-worker who contracted the Ebola virus at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said the facility was unprepared to fight the disease and she would “do anything” to avoid being treated there if she were ever to fall ill with the potentially deadly virus.
“I can no longer defend my hospital,” Briana Aguirre said Thursday on NBC's “Today" show.
Aguirre claims that before Thomas Eric Duncan arrived at Texas Health Presbyterian nursing staff had not been trained in how to treat an Ebola patient beyond being offered an “optional seminar.”
Aguirre did not treat Duncan, who died on Oct. 8. But she said that co-workers told her that he was put in an area with up to seven other patients and it took three hours before the hospital first contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She called the situation a "chaotic scene."
"Our infectious disease department was contacted to ask, what is our protocol. And their answer was, we don’t know. We’re going to have to call you back,” she said.
“We never talked about Ebola and we probably should have,” Aguirre said, adding that staff was “never told what to look for.”
Well, at least Obama will be kind enough to tell the thousands of reservists he just announced he will be mobiziling by executive order and sending to west Africa precisely what it is they should look for: a virus. One which they should preferably shoot on site.
