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Sick traveler who worked with Ebola patients at Hackensack University Medical Center

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Sick traveler who worked with Ebola patients at Hackensack University Medical Center

January 19, 2015, 4:33 PM    Last updated: Monday, January 19, 2015, 6:03 PM
By ABBOTT KOLOFF
staff writer | The Record

A woman who had been working in Sierra Leone with Ebola patients was taken off a United Airlines flight at Newark Liberty Airport in a hazmat suit Monday afternoon and transported to Hackensack University Medical Center after she exhibited a high fever and vomited on the flight, government officials and law enforcement sources said.

The woman was identified only as a health care practitioner by authorities. They did not detail whether she is a doctor, a nurse or an aide and did not specify where she lives. Newark is one of five airports in the United States designated as a point of entry for people coming from parts of West Africa where there was an Ebola outbreak last year, and Hackensack is one of three hospitals in New Jersey authorized to isolate and assess potential Ebola patients.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/sick-traveler-who-worked-with-ebola-patients-at-hackensack-university-medical-center-1.1227223

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Number of People Under “Active Monitoring” for Ebola in NYC Triples, City Officials Say

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Number of People Under “Active Monitoring” for Ebola in NYC Triples, City Officials Say

The number of people under “active monitoring” for Ebola symptoms has increased from 117 on Monday to 357 people Wednesday, health officials said.

The vast majority of those being monitored arrived in New York City within the past 21 days from the three Ebola-affected countries, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said in a statement.

Others being monitored are the staff caring for Dr. Craig Spencer, the physician being treated for Ebola at Bellevue Hospital, the lab workers who conducted his blood tests and the FDNY EMTs who transported the doctor.  

All of those being monitored showed no symptoms but are being checked on out of “an abundance of caution,” the statement said.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/active-monitoring-ebola-doctor-Craig-Spencer-bellevue-hospital-281671121.html

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Scientific studies show that airport Ebola screenings are largely ineffective

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Scientific studies show that airport Ebola screenings are largely ineffective

The debate over whether the Obama administration should ban flights from Ebola-stricken nations has been raging for weeks, fueled by fears of an outbreak in the United States and a lot of election-inspired finger pointing.

The Department of Homeland Security last week imposed new travel restrictions for anyone arriving from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, requiring those passengers to come through one of five major U.S. airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

Those travelers now have to submit to temperature checks and questioning. But scientific studies published by the National Institutes of Health have shown that similar protocols were largely ineffective during an outbreak of Swine Flu in 2009, as Government Executive pointed out in an article last week.

A study of screenings at Australia’s Sydney Airport during the Swine Flu pandemic found that fever was detected in 5,845 passengers during the roughly two-month period covered by the analysis. Only three of those individuals ended up having the virus, which is known in the scientific community as H1N1.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/10/31/these-scientific-studies-show-that-airport-ebola-screenings-are-largely-ineffective/

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Obama Could Replace Aides Bruised by a Cascade of Crises

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Obama Could Replace Aides Bruised by a Cascade of Crises

By MARK LANDLEROCT. 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — One day this month, as the nation shuddered with fears of an Ebola outbreak and American warplanes pounded Sunni militants in Syria, President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, invited a group of foreign policy experts to the White House to hear their views of how the administration was performing.

She was peppered with critiques of the president’s Syria and China policies, as well as the White House’s delays in releasing a national security strategy, a congressionally mandated document that sets out foreign policy goals. On that last point, Ms. Rice had a sardonic reply.

“If we had put it out in February or April or July,” she said, according to two people who were in the room, “it would have been overtaken by events two weeks later, in any one of those months.”

At a time when the Obama administration is lurching from crisis to crisis — a looming Cold War in Europe, a brutal Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and a deadly epidemic in West Africa — it is not surprising that long-term strategy would take a back seat. But it raises inevitable questions about the ability of the president and his hard-pressed national security team to manage and somehow get ahead of the daily onslaught of events.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/mounting-crises-raise-questions-on-capacity-of-obamas-team.html?_r=0

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Rep. Garrett: Feds’ Resistance to Quarantines ‘Unbelievable’

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Rep. Scott Garrett in Ridgewood at Irene Habernickel Family Park

Rep. Garrett: Feds’ Resistance to Quarantines ‘Unbelievable’

Tuesday, 28 Oct 2014 07:01 PM

According to CBS poll, conducted Oct. 23-27, 80 percent of Americans support mandatory quarantines for U.S. citizens and legal residents arriving from West Africa. Just 17 percent said they believe those without symptoms should be allowed to move freely.

The federal government’s resistance to quarantining people who have returned to the United States after being in contact with Ebola patients is “unbelievable,” says Rep. Scott Garrett, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

“It’s all just amazing and unbelievable. Talk to anybody, to a proverbial man on the street, and they will say that it’s as simple as talking to a child. If you have somebody outside of your house that’s a threat to you, what do you do? You lock the front door,” Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, said Tuesday on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com https://www.Newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/Scott-Garrett-resistance-quarantining-government/2014/10/28/id/603695/#ixzz3HYhsJBXP

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Meanwhile, as Gov. Christie tries to protect New Jerseyans from Ebola…

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Meanwhile, as Gov. Christie tries to protect New Jerseyans from Ebola…

Ebola Czar: “Overpopulation” is #1 Concern

Oct. 26 Disease, National, National Security no comments

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

And I suppose Ebola is the result of global warming?

I’m losing my patience with these morons, Save Jerseyans! While Gov. Chris Christie is trying to keep us all alive, we’re learning that Obama-appointed Ebola Czar Ron Klain has different priorities (from 2008):

https://savejersey.com/2014/10/ebola-czar-overpopulation-ron-klain/

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Christie stands by mandatory quarantine for health care workers treating Ebola

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Christie stands by mandatory quarantine for health care workers treating Ebola

OCTOBER 26, 2014, 8:50 AM    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2014, 4:48 PM
BY MELISSA HAYES AND CHRISTOPHER MAAG
STAFF WRITERS | 
THE RECORD

Governor Christie on Sunday defended the 21-day quarantine for health care workers returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, as the nurse who became the first target of the policy continued to criticize her treatment from an isolated tent by University Hospital in Newark.

RUSS DESANTIS/SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Christie speaking in Toms River Thursday.

“We’ve taken this action and I have absolutely no second thoughts about it,” Christie said on “Fox News Sunday” in response to a question about concerns raised by Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined upon landing at Newark Liberty Airport on Friday, having returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.

Hickox, who lives in Maine and worked for Doctors Without Borders, complained that the new state protocols were disorganized, and said she had no symptoms and should not be held and treated like a criminal in a first-person account published in the Dallas Morning News on Saturday.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/christie-stands-by-mandatory-quarantine-for-health-care-workers-treating-ebola-video-1.1118340#sthash.71vHtZ6B.dpuf

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N.J.’s designated Ebola hospitals gain little in short term

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N.J.’s designated Ebola hospitals gain little in short term

OCTOBER 25, 2014, 11:36 PM    LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2014, 11:42 PM
BY MARY JO LAYTON AND LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITERS | 
THE RECORD

Medical centers strive to be the region’s cancer expert, leading pediatric institution or renowned cardiac center.

But the state’s Ebola hospital?

Last week, Governor Christie designated Hackensack University Medical Center and two other New Jersey hospitals as the primary treatment centers for potential cases in New Jersey, a move to calm an increasingly anxious public after a few false alarms in the state and a confirmed case in New York City.

The hospitals, which include Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and University Hospital in Newark, volunteered for the mission, state officials said.

The designation has the potential of burnishing the reputations of the three institutions, earning them medical accolades and research grants. But it also could create fear among other patients who might not want to be in the same facility as Ebola patients and result in declining traffic in emergency rooms and elective surgeries, experts say. And if there is a misstep with an Ebola patient, the hospital might not recover.

“In the short run, some people are going to think twice while the hysteria is still running,” said Donald Malafronte, a longtime New Jersey health consultant and president of the non-profit Urban Health Institute.

“But that hysteria will abate, and it will leave three hospitals with reputations for highly specialized infectious disease treatment,” Malafronte said. “When Ebola is a distant memory, the reputation of those three hospitals is enhanced.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/n-j-s-designated-ebola-hospitals-gain-little-in-short-term-1.1118141#sthash.FGN0louU.dpuf

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UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital as part of Ebola quarantine

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UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital as part of Ebola quarantine
By KACI HICKOX
Special Contributor
Published: 25 October 2014 12:00 PM
Updated: 25 October 2014 08:56 PM


(Editor’s note: Kaci Hickox, a nurse with degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and the Johns Hopkins University, has been caring for Ebola patients while on assignment with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. Upon her return to the U.S. on Friday, she was placed in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital. She has tested negative in a preliminary test for Ebola, but the hospital says she will remain under mandatory quarantine for 21 days and will be monitored by public health officials. Dr. Seema Yasmin, a Dallas Morning News staff writer, worked with Hickox as a disease detective with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With Yasmin’s help, Hickox wrote this first-person piece exclusively for the News.)

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone – an Ebola-affected country. I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.

I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.

I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.”

I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.”

He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away. I was told to sit down. Everyone that came out of the offices was hurrying from room to room in white protective coveralls, gloves, masks, and a disposable face shield.

One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.

Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They scribbled notes in the margins of their form, a form that appeared to be inadequate for the many details they are collecting.

https://www.dallasnews.com/ebola/headlines/20141025-uta-grad-isolated-at-new-jersey-hospital-as-part-of-ebola-quarantine.ece

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NJ, NY announce new Ebola quarantine policy

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NJ, NY announce new Ebola quarantine policy

October 24, 2014, 4:02 PM    Last updated: Friday, October 24, 2014, 11:21 PM
By LINDY WASHBURN and MELISSA HAYES
Staff Writers |
The Record

The governors of New Jersey and New York on Friday imposed a mandatory 21-day quarantine on travelers arriving from West Africa who have had contact with Ebola patients, and they immediately detained a health care worker at Newark Airport who flew in from Sierra Leone. She was placed in isolation at Newark’s University Hospital in the evening after developing a fever, authorities said.

“There is no more voluntary quarantine in New Jersey because you can’t count on people to do it.” – Governor Christie

The governors, dissatisfied with current U.S. guidelines, said their actions were necessary to protect their residents after a New York City doctor who had volunteered to treat Ebola patients in Guinea, at the epicenter of the epidemic, was diagnosed with the deadly virus on Thursday night.

Craig Spencer, 33, was being treated in an isolation unit at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan as public health officials worked Friday to trace his contacts back to Tuesday, a period in which he had gone bowling with friends, ridden the city subway and taken a cab.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/nj-ny-announce-new-ebola-quarantine-policy-1.1117698#sthash.KhoyT7eT.dpuf

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Hackensack among 3 NJ hospitals to be trained to receive Ebola patients

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Hackensack among 3 NJ hospitals to be trained to receive Ebola patients

OCTOBER 22, 2014, 6:03 PM    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2014, 6:50 AM
BY LINDY WASHBURN AND MELISSA HAYES
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD

Governor Christie named three hospitals Wednesday – including Hackensack University Medical Center – to receive intensive training and support so they are prepared to treat any Ebola patients in New Jersey.

The three volunteered to be designated as the state’s treatment centers for patients with the highly contagious disease, the state Health Department said. Officials at the hospitals say they’ll learn from both the good and bad experiences of medical centers around the country that have treated Ebola patients.

Naming three hospitals out of the 72 in the state allows officials to concentrate resources, as nurses’ groups and a state lawmaker have recommended. The three — Hackensack, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and Newark’s University Hospital – will have help from a group of experts from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scheduled to visit this week.

Ebola is most likely to enter New Jersey via a passenger arriving at the airport or at the port, officials believe, so hospitals located relatively nearby with the resources to handle the disease were chosen. University Hospital already has served as the receiving hospital for any passengers from Newark Liberty International Airport considered to have potential cases of Ebola or other communicable diseases, under an agreement with the CDC.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/hackensack-among-3-nj-hospitals-to-be-trained-to-receive-ebola-patients-1.1115108#sthash.nfbEnLOv.dpuf

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Apocalypse Now: Preppers Are Gearing Up for Ebola

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Apocalypse Now: Preppers Are Gearing Up for Ebola

Prepping goes mainstream

It’s showtime for the Doomsday set. As the lethal virus crosses America’s doorstep, prep kits and gas masks are flying off shelves and fringe survivalists are going mainstream.

Jason Charles knows the exact moment he will lead his wife and five kids out of their Harlem home, pile into a car, and take off for the wilderness. It will be not long after Ebola reaches the population of New York City, hospitals overflow, and looting begins—when the first riots break out on the streets of Manhattan.

“Right now it isn’t bad, but if the first case happens in New York, you start hearing about hundreds or thousands of people getting sick and it shotguns through the city, then you want to start getting your plan together to leave,” says the 37-year-old fireman and dedicated prepper. When that happens, he says, “it’s a free fall, that’s the system breaking down.”

But the moment of evacuation is delicate. Skipping work, pulling the kids out of school—all of these decisions have lasting consequences. “If you leave too early, you look like an idiot; if you leave too late, you could be dead,” Charles says.

Nationally, the number of Americans concerned that Ebola will shoot through the population is skyrocketing. According to a Wednesday poll by the Harvard School of Public Health, 52 percent of Americans surveyed said they believe the country will experience a large outbreak in the coming year, while 38 percent said they believed they or a family member would be infected. To be sure, there have been just three cases diagnosed in the U.S.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/17/apocalypse-now-preppers-are-gearing-up-for-ebola.html

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Ebola is ‘disaster of our generation’ says aid agency

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Ebola is ‘disaster of our generation’ says aid agency

London (AFP) – Aid agency Oxfam on Saturday said Ebola could become the “definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation”, as US President Barack Obama urged against “hysteria” in the face of the growing crisis.

Oxfam, which works in the two worst-hit countries — Liberia and Sierra Leone — called for more troops, funding and medical staff to be sent to tackle the west African epicentre of the epidemic.

Chief executive Mark Goldring warned that the world was “in the eye of a storm”.

https://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-end-ebola-hysteria-110006011.html

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Why it’s OK to wear an Ebola costume for Halloween

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CChurch Street Studio biohazard shoothurch Street Studio biohazard shoot 

Are people preparing to wear Ebola-themed costumes being insensitive to the deaths of thousands of West Africans?

Actually, no, writes Kyle Smith, the West Africans have nothing to do with it… When we make fun of Ebola, we’re just mocking our own fears of death.

Why it’s OK to wear an Ebola costume for Halloween

By Kyle Smith

October 16, 2014 | 5:17pm

It’s unfortunate that so many deceased methamphetamine addicts had to have their condition belittled last year when “Breaking Bad” hazmat suits were a hot Halloween outfit. Three years ago, the October death of Steve Jobs was an occasion for national mourning, yet a mere three weeks later it inspired a turtleneck-wearing zombie Steveto trot around holding an iPad with a coffin labeled iDied. Wife-beaters and pedophiles aren’t funny, and yet people dress up as them for Halloween.

Today, people are dying of Ebola even as your fellow citizens try to think of ways to turn unimaginable suffering into cute costume ideas. You get the sense that people don’t have the proper serious attitude about a potentially nightmarish epidemic.

Medical professionals are objecting: the idea “definitely rubs me the wrong way,” Philadelphia physician’s assistant Maria McKenna told Associated Press. “This thing with the costumes, is it really that funny?”

https://nypost.com/2014/10/16/why-its-ok-to-wear-an-ebola-costume-for-halloween/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow

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Rep. Scott Garrett and Senator David Vitter to Demand that Congress Reconvene to Address Ebola

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Rep. Scott Garrett and Senator David Vitter to Demand that Congress Reconvene to Address Ebola
Oct 17, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) today sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding that congress is immediately reconvened to address the threat raised by the Ebola virus.

“The Obama administration has failed to recognize this public health threat,” said Garrett and Vitter in the letter.  “Thus far, the administration has refused to implement flight restrictions from affected countries, and provide effective screening process for travelers after they arrive on shores.  The House and Senate must reconvene to direct the administration on what steps must be taken to protect the American people.”

Mr. Garrett has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s slow response to this epidemic. He joined his colleagues in calling on the president to institute immediate travel restrictions, enhance airport screenings, and develop quarantine measures for individuals who have traveled to, or from, the West African countries that have been impacted by Ebola.

Garrett’s opponent Roy Cho and NJ Sen Cory Booker are lock step with the presidents so far failed policies and are offering no new ideas .

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