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October 6, 2014
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Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins leads a young man from the Dallas apartment where a Liberian national had been sick with Ebola. Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
All last week CDC officials reiterated their conclusion—based on nearly 40 years worth of successfully containing past outbreaks—that you cannot catch the Ebola virus from people who are infected unless they have already begun suffering a fever or started showing other signs of illnesses. Two Dallas County officials took them at their word and wore regular clothes—not Hazmat suits—when visiting the Liberian family that had been quarantined in their northeast Dallas apartment after caring for a family member there who, it later turned out, had been sick with Ebola.
Because no one in the family was running a high temperature—which is measured twice a day—Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, were at no risk of contracting the disease simply by being in their presence.
Indeed, Jenkins drove the family from the apartment to a more private location—made available by a member of the Dallas faith community—where they will stay for the rest their quarantine, which is due to lift on October 19.
The family is under quarantine precisely because we do not know whether they are infected. The quarantine serves to protect the community at large, but it also protects the family itself. With twice-daily monitoring and regular visits, they are sure to receive intensive care the minute they fall ill, if in fact any of them are infected.
Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services (left), and another health official leave the apartment where an Ebola patient stayed. Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
When asked why he didn’t don a protective space suit when interacting with the family, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he was not taking any special chances. He also drove them on Friday to their new temporary home in his own vehicle.
“I am a married man with an 8-year-old daughter who’s having her 9th birthday soon, and I would not be getting into a car with the people that are being monitored,” Jenkins said in a CDC press conference on Saturday. “I would not be around in their homes assuring them if it were not safe to do so.”
Jenkins and Thompson (and others like them whose names I don’t know) are heroes to me because they took compassionate action based on facts and not unfounded fears. Ebola is scary enough without trying to make things worse than they are.
More Ebola coverage:
Blood Transfusions from Survivors Best Way to Fight Ebola
Ebola Doctor Reveals How Infected Americans Were Cured
Patient Zero Believed to Be Sole Source of Ebola Outbreak
In-Depth Report: Ebola: What You Need to Know
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Link to thisI am not so sure I think Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins was wise to use his own personal vehicle to transport those folks – there was NO Dallas County or City of Dallas vehicle to transport these people JUST IN CASE they might be infectious? Also, Judge Jenkins PERSONAL involvement (shown on local & national TV) with the Duncan contacts in the apartment complex was strictly because he was the QUALIFIED person to be involved… or because he is running for RE-ELECTION this November?
Link to thisThere are two aspects to risk. 1. What are the chances that something will happen? 2. What are the consequences if it happens? This glib treatment of two supposedly/hopefully “uninfected” individuals with no special infection control procedures is betting the whole shootin’ match on the “fact” that those with no temperature are non-infectious. If we were 100% certain, there would be zero need for the quarantine would there. Clearly we aren’t 100% certain. If he/they are wrong, the risk to everyone who has been subsequently exposed, including his own children, and all of their classmates, not to mention the media-fanned panic that would most certainly follow such an officially-discounted outbreak would be unprecedented. I have no faith whatsoever in “the system” containing this as assuredly as we are so confidently promised by officials, all the way up to the president of the United States, based on the long litany of screw-ups at almost every step of this single case, from the dishonesty and ignorance of the victim himself in lying on his exit questionnaire, to the so-called “screeners” in a notably corrupt and uneducated part of the world, through the cash-strapped airline that transported him here, to the most uncaring and/or least responsible member of the emergency department in just one of the tens of thousands of hospitals of varying abilities in the US who stupidly sent him home with a prescription, to the taxi cab that brought him back to the hospital after he vomited on the sidewalk and the landlord who “cleaned it up” with a garden hose in street clothes, to the homeless man reportedly being sought, with whom he may have had contact, and now this. Multiply this by all of the other people who will be likely be let in under marginally better circumstances, plus the admitted ability of viruses to mutate, and considering that every patient will have at least one weak link in his or her “care chain” (this guy had a dozen), and look me in the eye, and tell me I have nothing to worry about. I am not “scared”, but I am most certainly concerned that such a serious, highly-lethal disease is being treated in such a cavalier fashion at every level in an over-the-top effort to attempt to convince us all that this is nothing to worry about. Sorry. I am not buying it. This single case, and all of these screw-ups in the “smartest country on earth” has shown me that we have quite a lot to potentially worry about. If you are correct, and it is 100% contained, we will all be thankful. If you are wrong, in this day of the internet and smart phones, you will have a situation like you have never seen in history. I think you need to take this disease a *lot* more seriously, and take much more stringent measures to isolate every individual completely, until we are 100% certain they are not contagious. The Atlantic Ocean is a great barrier to the primary source of this disease. It is a shame all of “the smart people” are willingly allowing that barrier to be breached. You may not be as smart, or as capable as you think you are. What is the chance? What are the consequences? Think about it seriously.
Link to thisYes, a “Hero”. I wonder if his deputy that may have contracted ebola thinks the same right now as he is in the hospital.
http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2014/10/08/patient-frisco-ebola-suspect/16922477/
Link to thisIamWilliamMurray: Yes, Jenkins is a hero–as is deputy sheriff Michael Monnig, who it turns out does not have the disease. He did the right thing by get his fever checked out.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hospital-signs-ebola-dallas-area-officer-26078313
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