All I can do is scratch my head, wondering what the reporter isn't saying. Just what is it that Firestone is doing differently? It sure appears to be working, so it would be great to replicate if possible.
Marbel is a company town of 80,000 ... a city more or less owned and run by Firestone, benevolently it appears, for nearly a century.
Perhaps they're better at guarding and enforcing their border ... effectively keeping themselves mostly isolated from disease vectors coming in.
Perhaps that helps them avoid being outnumbered by the sick and, more importantly, the ignorant [1]. After all, it's easy to keep an eye on those exposed when they're comparatively few and you have reliable information ... which comes from having a literate, educated population you've been working with for decades.
Perhaps it's also easier to get honest [2], voluntary compliance when you're a close-knit community and the infected are usually coming from the outside (and, again, are few in number).
It sure is interesting that while Firestone has hazmat suits intended for dealing with chemical spills, that infected nurse in Spain [3] says the blame goes to her Level 2 biosafety suit since it wasn't the preferred Level 4. Please correct me if I'm wrong ... I get the sense Firestone's suits aren't comparable to Level 4.
Contrast this to the success (lack thereof) of the CDC, WHO, RSF, and other aid organizations. Sadly, they're either overwhelmed or incompetant. So what's needed is more Firestones, really? That's interesting.
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[1] Yes, ignorance is massively lethal. See this story from August, of a mob who decided it would be fun to ransack and rob and already-overwhelmed Ebola clinic, stealing everything and taking it home ... all while taking Ebola home with them.
[2] As opposed to the diplomat who deceived his way into continuing on to a meeting of regional leaders ... thereby effectively causing the outbreak in Nigeria. And as opposed to the CDC today handing out fliers in airports and expecting voluntary compliance, in a sense informing travelers of how to lie in order to get into the USA where the good hospitals are.
> It sure is interesting that while Firestone has hazmat suits intended for dealing with chemical spills, that infected nurse in Spain [3] says the blame goes to her Level 2 biosafety suit since it wasn't the preferred Level 4. Please correct me if I'm wrong ... I get the sense Firestone's suits aren't comparable to Level 4.
As unfortunate as it is, it's more likely that the Spanish nurse was infected while removing her PPE.
Removing contaminated PPE is a non-trivial process. It requires practice, strict attention to detail, and ideally an equally trained buddy watching you while you're doing it. From what I've read, it sounds like they were just given 10 minutes of training.
Which isn't to say that better equipment and a proper decon shower wouldn't have helped. But the training is just as important as the equipment.
>All I can do is scratch my head, wondering what the reporter isn't saying. Just what is it that Firestone is doing differently? It sure appears to be working, so it would be great to replicate if possible.
They are doing nothing different than what has worked in all the other Ebola outbreaks which is catch the outbreak early and implement effective infection control.
A better question is why did this outbreak get out of control? The sad reason is incompetence. The WHO staff in west Africa appointed to watch out for Ebola outbreaks were, to quote Peter Piot [1], “[not] the most capable people but ... political appointees”. Some genius had also decided that gutting the department for hemorrhagic fever and the one responsible for the management of epidemic emergencies at the WHO was a great idea. This meant that there was no one around to respond. The outbreak was allowed to run wild for six months until it got so big that it overwhelmed the local health authorities (this occurred around August) and the case numbers took off exponentially.
Marbel is a company town of 80,000 ... a city more or less owned and run by Firestone, benevolently it appears, for nearly a century.
Perhaps they're better at guarding and enforcing their border ... effectively keeping themselves mostly isolated from disease vectors coming in.
Perhaps that helps them avoid being outnumbered by the sick and, more importantly, the ignorant [1]. After all, it's easy to keep an eye on those exposed when they're comparatively few and you have reliable information ... which comes from having a literate, educated population you've been working with for decades.
Perhaps it's also easier to get honest [2], voluntary compliance when you're a close-knit community and the infected are usually coming from the outside (and, again, are few in number).
It sure is interesting that while Firestone has hazmat suits intended for dealing with chemical spills, that infected nurse in Spain [3] says the blame goes to her Level 2 biosafety suit since it wasn't the preferred Level 4. Please correct me if I'm wrong ... I get the sense Firestone's suits aren't comparable to Level 4.
Contrast this to the success (lack thereof) of the CDC, WHO, RSF, and other aid organizations. Sadly, they're either overwhelmed or incompetant. So what's needed is more Firestones, really? That's interesting.
-----
[1] Yes, ignorance is massively lethal. See this story from August, of a mob who decided it would be fun to ransack and rob and already-overwhelmed Ebola clinic, stealing everything and taking it home ... all while taking Ebola home with them.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/16/man-without-a...
[2] As opposed to the diplomat who deceived his way into continuing on to a meeting of regional leaders ... thereby effectively causing the outbreak in Nigeria. And as opposed to the CDC today handing out fliers in airports and expecting voluntary compliance, in a sense informing travelers of how to lie in order to get into the USA where the good hospitals are.
[3] http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/10/07/paradigm-shif...