News Columnists Steve Blow

Dallas Ebola settlement may be for the best

Tom Fox/Staff Photographer
Josephus Weeks (left), nephew of Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan, and Mai Wureh, Duncan's sister, listen to attorney Les Weisbrod speak on their behalf at a press conference Wednesday announcing a settement between the family and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.

In an ideal world, the lawyers wouldn’t have been involved.

But in an ideal world, Thomas Eric Duncan also would have gone home to his family like every other Ebola patient in the United States.

As with so many things in life, I’m cursed with seeing two sides of the settlement announced Wednesday between Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and the Duncan family.

It would be nice to feel only the delicious outrage of so many that Duncan’s family is receiving anything except a bill. It’s certainly true that whatever faults occurred in his treatment, it was ultimately a whole lot better than he would have received at home in Africa.

On the other hand, I wish I could feel only a pure sense of vindication for the family and its wounded sense of justice. It has to be a bittersweet experience for them to see all other Ebola patients leave their hospitals amid joy and celebration.

We live in a far from ideal world. And perhaps we simply have to accept this settlement as the very picture of making the best of a bad situation.

The fact that an agreement was reached so quickly is one of the most important positives.

It pained my heart to see the little protest demonstrations that Duncan supporters had staged a night or two outside Presbyterian Hospital after his death.

You could just feel their hurt and loss in such a palpable way. At the same time, something in their scrawled posters and feeble chants made clear just how utterly powerless they were.

It benefited no one for this lopsided match between a potent hospital corporation and a poor gaggle of immigrants to continue to fester and linger.

The speed of the settlement also tells me that it must have been seen as a good deal for all involved.

Yes, Texas Health is on a public relations offensive, trying to repair its image after the Duncan tragedy. But I don’t think its lawyers would give away the store.

Likewise, the family is to be commended for quickly coming to an agreement that fosters goodwill instead of stoking anger and bitterness for years to come.

As time went on, my own feelings softened about the Duncan case.

In the beginning, I was deeply perturbed that Duncan did not reveal his Ebola exposure to health care workers and equally appalled that the Presby ER team did not immediately spot the risk anyway.

We should always be cautious about early judgments. As more was revealed, I think it became clear that Duncan really was the innocent victim of a good deed.

I think he truly believed he was helping a young woman in the midst of a miscarriage, not someone in the throes of a highly contagious disease.

Otherwise, he would have protected his own health and that of his fiancée by insisting he be tested for Ebola on that first visit to the Presbyterian emergency room.

Likewise, when he told ER screeners that he was from Africa, there should have been a follow-up question about where exactly. But Ebola was not top of mind for all of us back then.

And as we have learned since, assuming everyone from Africa is an Ebola risk is a kind of ignorance, too. (It’s a big place.) Like you or I worrying about catching a cold from someone in Fairbanks.

In hindsight, so much could have been done better. But that’s the way of the world. We’re all smarter today than we were in September.

We’re certain to hear heated voices decrying this settlement as part of all that’s wrong with the world.

But if those closest to this situation — hospital and family alike — are satisfied with their pact, perhaps we should be, too.

Follow Steve Blow on Facebook at facebook.com/DMNSteveBlow.

On Twitter:
 @DMNSteveBlow

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