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“America The Whiny”: Everyone Blames Everyone For An Ebola Disaster That Has Yet To Occur

Is there absolutely nothing left in this country that we can take on as a nation without someone heading for the nearest cable TV news studio or on-line publication to lay the blame for our latest problem on the President, the government, racism or some other convenient entity?

Yes, we know there were mistakes made at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who sent Thomas Eric Duncan home upon his initial visit where he complained of symptoms that turned out to be the earliest stages of an Ebola infection.

The result for Mr. Duncan was tragic. But with just one human having passed away in the United States as a result of the Ebola virus, does the situation truly merit the whining and blaming that is now very much underway?

Sadly, the public dialogue, in this instance, began with cries of racism alleged by Mr. Duncan’s nephew—allegations quickly adopted by others despite there being no proof that racism played a role in any way whatsoever.

It is certainly true that an error was made when Mr. Duncan was sent home with a 103 fever, despite having informed the receiving desk at the ER that he had come to Dallas from Africa. It is also just as   true that hospital error is estimated to cause some 210,000 deaths per year in this country, involving victims of all races.

Still, we know that blood tests were performed on Mr. Duncan in the emergency room on the day of Duncan’s first arrival. We know that he was not simply given an aspirin and a prescription for antibiotics and sent on his way without a full exam and a blood panel in order to hold down the price tag to the hospital or in response to his not mattering because of skin color.

I’ve shown up at an ER with a high fever and feeling quite badly. I was given an exam by the attending physician who also took a blood panel. After six hours, most of which was spent waiting to see the Doc, I was sent home with an antibiotic, told to drink lots of liquid so I would not become dehydrated and told to stay down for a few days.

Never was it contemplated that I be admitted to the hospital for what appeared to be a bad case of the flu.

Unfortunately, because the receiving desk at the hospital did not communicate to the physicians that Duncan had recently arrived from Africa, despite having been given this information, his blood tests did not include an Ebola test and he was treated just as I was when presenting with similar symptoms.

Next, contrary to what many have claimed, Mr. Duncan was given the experimental anti-viral drug, brincidofovir, shortly after his ultimate admission to the hospital. Tragically, his case was, by then, too far along for the drug to have a positive impact.

Finally, in answer to the complaint that Duncan was not prescribed a blood transfusion from one of the Americans who has survived the disease, in the hopes that the antibodies in the donor’s blood would be of assistance, this allegation turns out to be untrue. Unfortunately, the donor blood type did not match Mr. Duncan’s type, taking the possibility of such a transfusion off the table.

Accordingly, for someone to assert that racism or lack of health insurance was at work here, one would have to determine that racism or health insurance played a role in the communication failure that kept the treating physician(s) from considering Ebola as a possibility.

I don’t know about you but that seems like quite a stretch to me.

Aside from the actual evidence that would argue against a racial bias in this instance when it comes to the best possible treatment, there is a strong, compelling and virtually irrefutable logic to the argument that Thomas Duncan was not treated differently because of either race or a lack of health insurance.

One can reasonably assume that most everyone who was working at Texas Health Presbyterian on the day Mr. Duncan first appeared complaining of his symptoms lives in the Dallas area—meaning that each of them, and their families, would find themselves at ground zero for the spread of Ebola due to the presence of Duncan in their area.

What’s more, as I suspect that everyone from the clerks and nurses at the receiving desk to all remaining health professionals at the hospital were quite aware that Ebola does not only spread among the same race as the initial victim, it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever to take less of an interest in one individual presenting with Ebola who might be black than it would someone who is white—unless Ebola did not cross their minds as a possible diagnosis. And if that is the case, we should all be able to agree, based on the population of West Africa, that a white person coming into the ER with the same symptoms would be even less likely to capture the medical staff’s imagination and point it towards a possible case of Ebola.

By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, October 13, 2014

October 14, 2014 - Posted by raemd95 | Ebola, Public Health, Racism | Health Care Workers, Health Insurance, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Thomas Eric Duncan