Doctors Without Borders: October 29 Statement on Regulations for Health Care Workers Returning From West Africa
Category: Health, Science & Technology
Via: broliver-thesquirrel-stagnasty • 11 years ago • 14 comments
October 29 Statement on Regulations for Health Care Workers Returning From West Africa
Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) strongly disagrees with blanket forced quarantine for health care workers returning from Ebola affected countries. Such a measure is not based upon established medical science.
I don't know how many articles have been posted on the quarantine/no quarantine issue, But really, how many scientific opinions does it take to convince people. These guys are on the front lines of this, have the mostpractical, hands-on experience with Ebola Viral Disease (EVD), and there for should be the people who's opinion matters the most.
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When an incident becomes a political football played by ignorant fools, things only get worse.
And From the New England Journal of Medicine :
This is a streaming audio of the Q&A after an online discussion (Link)
So we must strive to educate them.
Another link , this one to the NEJM's page dealing with the Ebola virus in the latest outbreak.
There really is a lot of useful, scientifically derived information on this page. If you are going to comment on this disease, you should read and listen to the information on this page.
I don't really give a shit what you or any of the other deniers of scientifically and medically validated opinions think, unless you try to reduce the freedoms that another person enjoys because something that you think about a disease overrides the validity of science. That is when I feel obligated to tell you, in the nicest and most polite way, that you are wrong.
Doctors without Borders does have to deal with a bunch of fearful, irrational individuals as well as the people for whom they are giving aid to in Africa.
Much more is the pity, because they know more about it than some guy with just an uninformed opinion and little else.
This statement is false. I urge you to listen to the links and learn something. It will help you form an informed opinion.
Disease knows no borders. The only way to be safe is to stop the disease at its source. If we want to stop it atthesource, then we need health care professionals tovolunteer. They will be lesslikely to volunteer if they are caged upon their return whether they are sick or not -- and the disease is only infectious iftheperson is sick. If they don't volunteer, then the disease will spread -- estimates are that it is growingexponentially andwill infect more than a million people in less than 6months-- and it will become a tidal wave that threatens us all. The short-term risk that healthcare workers may spread the disease here is much less than the global risk created by their reluctance to volunteer.
According to Gallup, in March of 2003, 72% of Americans supported the Iraq war. A majority of Germans voted for AdolfHitler. Many of those same people later realized they were wrong. Just because a majority favors something, doesn'tmake it right.
So you did not listen to or read anything?
I am sorry, if you do not want to educate yourself on the history and means of infection as well as current epidemiology on EVD, there is little that I can do to help you.
Actually, with the educational efforts underway in the affected nations, the occurrence of EVD is starting to abate.
Hmmmmm. Could it be that the medical professionals might actually know what they are talking About???
The reason I posted this thread was to inform people of the science and therefore make them more able to see how and why quarantine is not recommended. But, please, continue to post on here, because you are the perfect teaching foil.
No doubt. People often see no hardship in shouldering burdens they don't have to bear. Doctors without Borders is alreadycomplainingthat this quarantine threat is impactingparticipation. If this disease becomes a pandemic, those same Americans -- whose greatest burden is simply lifting their own fat asses offthecouch to get to the refrigerator -- will be the same people who later rant and rave that Obama should have contained this disease over there when he had the chance.
I'd say this is more a matter ofpsychology than science. The greatertheburden, the less likely someone is to shoulder it. But if there's something to be learned in "doctor's school", I think it would be the truth behind the statement that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Wouldn't you rather prevent a pandemic than wait and try to cure it later? If so, how do you do that if you discourage theparticipationof the very people who can prevent it?
Robert said:
This is an example of a logical fallacy know sometimes as an appeal to popularity,which is a logical fallacy because popularity does not in itself make something right or wrong.
Then We have a lot of work to do.