Ebola

"We are having a family meeting"

More than 5,000 health care and hospital infection control workers gathered at the Javits Center in New York City for an Ebola education session amid growing concern among hospital workers over Ebola preparedness.

“We are having a family meeting,” Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) told TIME. “The turnout is spectacular. We may not answer every question [today], but we are committed to finding the answers.”

The event, which was streamed live nationwide, featured Centers for Disease Control (CDC) experts offering live trainings on how to safely care for patients with Ebola. It was hosted by the Healthcare Education Project from GNYHA/1199SEIU and Partnership for Quality Care.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo helped kick off the event, touting New Yorkers’ resilience and ability to always “rise to the occasion” from 9/11 to Hurricane Sandy. “We have a new challenge we must meet today,” said Cuomo. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also made an appearance, thanking health care workers.

“Regardless of immigration status, we will help them all,” said de Blasio, referring to the possibility of patients with Ebola coming into a New York City emergency room.

The session included a hands-on demonstration of personal protective equipment (PPE) led by Dr. Bryan Christensen of the CDC’s domestic infection control team for the Ebola response. On Oct. 20, the CDC revised its guidelines for Ebola-related care, recommending full-coverage PPE and supervision while taking PPE on and off.

Christensen supervised registered nurse Barbara Smith of Mount Sinai Health System as she demonstrated how to put on and take off all the pieces of PPE: sanitizing her hands, putting on her first set of gloves, sitting in a chair to put on her foot covers, donning her suit—and finally doing a little jig, to audience laughter, once she was completely suited. Afterward, she took off each piece, sanitized her gloves numerous times and checked for any holes. The entire process took 15 to 20 minutes, which the CDC said cannot be rushed.

CDC officials also reviewed Ebola care protocols in detail, from what to wear and how to discard linens (they can’t be washed) to the way hands should be washed and how to use an alcohol rub to clean gloves before removing them, something that is not usually part of standard procedure. For respiratory protection, the CDC recommends either a powered air purifying respirator (PAPR) or a disposable respirator like N95. Emory University Hospital uses the former; the Nebraska Medical Center uses the latter. “When we use equipment we are not used to, it makes it difficult,” said CDC’s Dr. Arjun Srinivasan. “The way we address this is practice, practice, practice.”

Massive education sessions like this have been held before over health threats like anthrax, H1N1 and smallpox. “We had to have this in a convention center to accommodate folks,” George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East told TIME. “Back in the 80s when the AIDS epidemic first started, I was a health care worker myself, and it was the unknown that was the mystery, and the fear, and I think that’s the same here. “

The massive number of health care workers that crowded into the conference center proves that they crave more education about caring for potential Ebola patients. Even though some states, including New York, are identifying specific hospitals that will take in any Ebola patients for actual care, all health facilities have to be prepared for the possibility that a patient like Thomas Eric Duncan could walk through their doors.

The hope is that the session was helpful and positive. “I think this is another moment we can calm the public and reassure the public of health care workers’ commitment,” Gresham said.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is the latest Democrat to open up to an Ebola travel ban

Over the past several days, New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has not let up hammering his Democratic opponent about Ebola.

On Thursday, he called on President Barack Obama to institute a travel ban from West Africa. On Friday, he said Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, is “rubber-stamping the President’s policy,” by opposing his position. He also told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade that if 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had won, Ebola wouldn’t be a problem. The next day he wrote a letter urging Shaheen to accept a travel ban, saying that the position goes “beyond partisan politics.”

By Monday, Shaheen could take no more. “Senator Shaheen has contacted New Hampshire officials about local preparedness,” her spokesman Harrell Kirstein said Monday afternoon, just days after Shaheen said a travel ban did not make sense. “She strongly supports any and all effective measures to keep Americans safe including travel bans if they would work.”

Brown and other Republicans in tightly contested Senate races have put Democrats on their heels by following public polls that show a majority of the country wants to combat Ebola with a travel ban, even though health experts warn that such a move would make the crises in West Africa worse and ultimately increase the likelihood that the virus travels again to the United States.

Shaheen joins an ever-growing cohort of vulnerable Democrats running for Senate that have moved on the issue. Over the past week, Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, and Georgia candidate Michelle Nunn, have announced they are in favor of some type of travel ban. On Friday, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan even flip-flopped in favor of a ban, saying she supported it just days after saying it would not help.

Other Senate Democratic candidates may still shift under Republican and public pressure. On Tuesday, a Washington Post-ABC poll found that two-thirds of respondents support restricting entry to the United States for people who’ve been in the West African affected countries. The next Senate Democratic candidate to support a travel ban could very well be Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has advocated to expand airport screenings, but has faced pressure to commit to a ban from her opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.).

Dr. Pearson Cross, an associate political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says that Landrieu could face a “high,” short-term political cost otherwise. “If Landrieu doesn’t support a travel ban it may be spun that she is insufficiently concerned with protecting America and Louisiana’s health and interests in the name of political correctness,” says Cross. “That could be used in a campaign ad and on the trail where people are quite concerned about this fast-moving and often misunderstood issue.”

On Friday, Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan election handicapper, threw the race from leaning Shaheen to a “toss-up,” citing the unfavorable Democratic environment, voters finally tuning in with two weeks left in the race and Brown’s campaign abilities. “There’s been a lot of public attention to the threat of Ebola, so it’s definitely playing here,” says Dr. Dante Scala, an associate political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. “I’m sure there’s a lot more concern about that among voters than there is about the Senate race itself. I think it transcends politics in that way.”

With the political winds growing so strongly, even the White House has, at times, encouraged Democratic candidates to criticize the administration over Ebola. Last week, Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley, who is running for Senate against Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst and said he would consider the travel ban, admonished the Administration for not acting fast enough. Asked about the comments, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Braley was “somebody that has a reputation for being willing to speak truth to power, whether they’re in the same party as him or not.”

“I think this is another indication that he’s willing to do that,” Earnest added.

Now recommending full-coverage for health care workers

Health care workers treating Ebola patients must now wear full-body coverage suits with no skin showing and must undergo significant training prior to treating patients, U.S. health officials said Monday.

“We may never know exactly how [the Dallas infections happened], but the bottom line is the guidelines didn’t work for that hospital,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a news conference announcing the new guidelines for caring for Ebola patients and wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). Prior to the three Ebola infections in Dallas, including two health care workers, the CDC did not recommend full body coverage for Ebola, but instead recommended at least gloves, a gown, eye protection and a face mask. That has changed, in light of the two health care worker infections at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

The new guidelines have three additions:

1. Prior to working with Ebola patients, health care workers must be repeatedly trained and demonstrate competency in treating a patient with Ebola, especially putting on and taking off PPE. “Facilities need to ensure all healthcare providers practice numerous times to make sure they understand how to appropriately use the equipment,” the CDC said in a statement.

2. When wearing PPE, no skin can be exposed. The CDC is providing two options for the PPEs, since the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Emory University Hospital, which have both successfully treated Ebola patients, use different versions. Googles are no longer recommended. The recommendations for PPE are now the following:

• Double gloves
• Boot covers that are waterproof and go to at least mid-calf or leg covers
• Single use fluid resistant or imperable gown that extends to at least mid-calf or coverall without intergraded hood.
• Respirators, including either N95 respirators or powered air purifying respirator (PAPR)
• Single-use, full-face shield that is disposable
• Surgical hoods to ensure complete coverage of the head and neck
• Apron that is waterproof and covers the torso to the level of the mid-calf should be used if Ebola patients have vomiting or diarrhea

3. Every step of putting on and taking off PPE must be supervised by a trained observer. There should also be designated areas for where PPE are taken on and off.

“It’s hard to care for Ebola, so every aspect… needs to be overseen,” said Frieden in the press conference, adding that hospitals should limit personnel in health care rooms and should limit procedures to only those that are essential.

The CDC is increasing health care worker training across the country as well as sending out training videos, but Frieden argues that there is no alternative for hands-on training, especially taking on and off PPEs. “We agree with the concern of health care workers,” said Frieden citing anxiety from health care workers nationwide that they felt unprepared for treating patients with Ebola. The new recommendations will be effective immediately, though the CDC does not have the regulatory authority to make hospitals follow the guidelines, Frieden said. The recommendations should be available online later Monday evening.

Earlier on Monday, a Dallas County Judge confirmed that 43 of 48 contacts of Thomas Eric Duncan were considered no longer at risk after the 21-day incubation period passed, and Nigeria was declared Ebola-free.

Ebola-mania has a really familiar sound to me. And I don’t mean that as a compliment

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

Wanna know how to clear out a room in five minutes these days?

Stand in the middle of that room, making sure that you get as close to as many people as possible, and yell the following:

I HAVE EBOLA!

If you want the room cleared in less than five, cough. Or pour some water over your head to simulate sweat before entering. You may cause a stampede, but you’ll get your empty room.

Now I admit that the scenario I’ve just proposed is really irresponsible, kind of mean, a little bit childish and plays on the paranoia that naturally occurs in these situations.

But so is running stories insinuating that you can get Ebola from weave hair. I saw that on CNN. Wish I were kidding.

Look, I’ll be honest. I have a lot of respect for Ebola for the same reason why I have a lot of respect for firearms: I respect anything that can kill me. Although we’ll have more flu deaths in the United States this year than we will Ebola deaths, when touching someone’s sweaty arm can kill you, you have to take it seriously.

I also understand the fear of the unknown it engenders. Roughly 90 percent of the people who have it or have died from it are from places most Americans can’t find on a map. Eight people have been treated for it here and of those eight, only two of them — nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson — contracted it here. There’s only been one American death, Thomas Duncan, and he contracted it before leaving his home in Liberia.

But while I understand fear, I have no tolerance for fear mongering and the ignorance that seems to accompany it. It gives people an excuse to make scapegoats of a population that already has enough problems dealing with (a) the less than generous people who say they rule their countries and (b) the resource gouging multinational corporations that actually do.

And fear mongering has become the rule of the day when it comes to Ebola. Between the CNN hair weave story, the college in Texas that sent letters to West African students denying them admission due to the disease, and the conspiracy theorists who have crawled out of the woodwork, getting any credible information about the disease has become next to impossible.

Kind of like it was in the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

I got my start as a reporter covering HIV/AIDS for the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest continuously publishing Black newspaper. For a while, it seemed like everyone I interviewed died, which led to a lot of assignments that ended with my sitting in my car with my head in my hands.

When you cover something like that you remember how it made you feel. So finding the parallels between Ebola and HIV weren’t hard to spot for me.

Like Ebola, HIV/AIDS was hitting the Black community like a sledgehammer.

Like Ebola, you had people who believed that (a) it was manmade, (b) it was a conspiracy to get rid of politically unpopular groups and (c) the Centers for Disease Control was lying about how it was transmitted.

And like Ebola, the community most impacted by it was greeted more with fear than with compassion.

For example, some believe that Ebola is President Barack Obama’s way of getting back at White people for slavery. Just ask radio host Rush Limbaugh…

“The danger we have now is that we elected people in positions of power and authority who think this or think like this in terms of this country being responsible, this country being to blame for things and it’s that kind of thinking that leads to opposition to shutting down airports from various countries,” Limbaugh said.

Not to be outdone, the Black community, which views all fatal diseases through the prism of the Tuskegee Experiment, in which scientists watched as a group of men slowly died of syphilis as they charted the disease’s progress, has its own conspiracy theorists, like, for example, singer Chris Brown.

“I don’t know…But I think that this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control,” Brown said via Twitter. “S—t is getting crazy, bruh…”

I wish that I could say that this was the worst of it, but I’d be lying.

So let me end by saying this.

You can only get Ebola from coming in contact with the bodily fluids of someone infected, or an infected animal. It is not an airborne disease, so you can’t get it from someone breathing in your general area — which means that closing the borders won’t help.

Hopefully, we’ll remember this for the next medical crisis.

Denise Clay is a journalist living in Philadelphia.

The almost-zero probability of acquiring Ebola in the U.S. often doesn’t register at a time of mass fear. It’s human nature

In Hazlehurst, Miss., parents pulled their children out of middle school last week after learning that the principal had recently visited southern Africa.

At Syracuse University, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist who had planned to speak about public health crises was banned from campus after working in Liberia.

An office building in Brecksville, Ohio, closed where almost 1,000 people work over fears that an employee had been exposed to Ebola.

A high school in Oregon canceled a visit from nine students from Africa — even though none of them hailed from countries containing the deadly disease.

All over the U.S., fear of contracting Ebola has prompted a collective, nationwide freak-out. Schools have emptied; businesses have temporarily shuttered; Americans who have merely traveled to Africa are being blackballed.

As the federal government works to contain the deadly disease’s spread under a newly appointed “Ebola czar,” and as others remain quarantined, the actual number of confirmed cases in the U.S. can still be counted on one hand: three. And they’ve all centered on the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Oct. 8 in a Dallas hospital after traveling to Liberia; two nurses who treated him are the only other CDC-confirmed cases in the U.S.

The almost-zero probability of acquiring something like Ebola, given the virus’s very real and terrifying symptoms, often doesn’t register at a time of mass paranoia. Rationality disappears; irrational inclinations take over. It’s human nature, and we’ve been acting this way basically since we found out there were mysterious things out there that could kill us.

“There are documented cases of people misunderstanding and fearing infectious diseases going back through history,” says Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California at Irvine. “Stigmatization is an old game.”

While there was widespread stigma surrounding diseases like the Black Death in Europe in the 1300s (which killed tens of millions) and more recently tuberculosis in the U.S. (patients’ family members often couldn’t get life-insurance policies, for example), our current overreaction seems more akin to collective responses in the last half of the 20th century to two other diseases: polio and HIV/AIDS.

Concern over polio in the 1950s led to widespread bans on children swimming in lakes and pools after it was discovered that they could catch the virus in the water. Thirty years later, the scare over HIV and AIDS led to many refusing to even get near those believed to have the disease. (Think of the hostile reaction from fellow players over Magic Johnson deciding to play in the 1992 NBA All-Star Game.)

Like the first cases of polio and HIV/AIDS, Ebola is something novel in the U.S. It is uncommon, unknown, its foreign origins alone often leading to fearful reactions. The fatality rate for those who do contract it is incredibly high, and the often gruesome symptoms — including bleeding from the eyes and possible bleeding from the ears, nose and rectum — provoke incredibly strong and often instinctual responses in attempts to avoid it or contain it.

“It hits all the risk-perception hot buttons,” says University of Oregon psychology professor Paul Slovic.

Humans essentially respond to risk in two ways: either through gut feeling or longer gestating, more reflective decisionmaking based on information and analysis. Before the era of Big Data, or data at all, we had to use our gut. Does that look like it’s going to kill us? Then stay away. Is that person ill? Well, probably best to avoid them.

“We didn’t have science and analysis to guide us,” Slovic says. “We just went with our gut feelings, and we survived.”

But even though we know today that things like the flu will likely kill tens of thousands of people this year, or that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. every year, we’re more likely to spend time worrying about the infinitesimal chances that we’re going to contract a disease that has only affected a handful of people, thanks in part to its frightening outcomes.

“When the consequences are perceived as dreadful, probability goes out the window,” Slovic says. “Our feelings aren’t moderated by the fact that it’s unlikely.”

Slovic compares it to the threat from terrorism, something that is also unlikely to kill us yet its consequences lead to massive amounts of government resources and calls for continued vigilance from the American people.

“Statistics are human beings with the tears dried off,” he says. “We often tend to react much less to the big picture.”

And that overreaction is often counterproductive. Gene Beresin, a Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor, says that fear is causing unnecessary reactions, oftentimes by parents and school officials, and a social rejection of those who in no way could have caught Ebola.

“It’s totally ridiculous to close these schools,” Beresin says. “It’s very difficult to catch. People need to step back, calm down and look at the actual facts, because we do have the capacity to use our rationality to prevent hysterical reactions.”

Read next: Nigeria Is Ebola-Free: Here’s What They Did Right

An excuse for why he's not campaigning for more Democrats.

President Barack Obama has found a silver lining in months of global crises: an excuse for why he’s not out on the campaign trail for Democrats this fall.

Asked Monday if it was odd two weeks before the midterm elections that Obama was not spending more time on the road for Democrats, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz pointed to all the president’s other commitments, including the twin crises of Ebola and ISIS, which have upended Senate campaigns around the country.

“I don’t think it’s weird given everything that we are trying to manage,” he told reporters in Chicago, where Obama cast an early ballot this morning and held one of just seven pre-Election Day rallies last night. “As I think we’ve said now for some time there’s a lot of significant, complex situations going on both around the world and here at home and I think a lot of those issues have dominated the president’s time. Given that the elections are a few weeks away, obviously that is a priority as well. So I think you’ll see the president as he did yesterday campaign when he can.”

Few Democrats around the country have invited Obama out on the campaign trail, given his toxic appeal in swing states this cycle. Nationwide, Obama’s approval rating, as measured by Gallup, stands at 40%, just above his historic low of 38%. In the second week of October, 41% of the country disapproved of Obama’s performance, compared with the 37% approval rate George W. Bush had at the same point in his presidency.

Last week the White House announced that Obama would appear at only seven rallies in Democratic-leaning states, and would only appear with a single Democratic Senate candidate before Election Day. The Senate appearance will be with Gary Peters, a Democratic candidate in Michigan, who has been leading by double digits in some recent polls. One of the seven rallies, for Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, was postponed last week so Obama could attend meetings at the White House on Ebola. The White House said it would be rescheduled before the election.

Republicans need to pick up six seats to win control of the U.S. Senate next year. Current polling averages suggest the party is slightly favored to win at least that many, with fifteen days to go before polls close.