The Country Simply Can't Go On Like This

By Charles P. Pierce on October 3, 2014

There is someone with Ebola in quarantine down in Texas. It seems as though hospital personnel down there screwed the pooch fairly thoroughly when the man first showed up at the ER with a fever. It also seems as though the response of the officials in Dallas has been less than adequate, at least so far.

In the latest indication, state and local authorities confirmed Thursday that a week after a Liberian man fell ill with Ebola in Dallas, and four days after he was placed in isolation at a hospital here, the apartment where he was staying with four other people had not been sanitized and the sheets and dirty towels he used while sick remained in the home. County officials visited the apartment without protection Wednesday night. The officials said it had been difficult to find a contractor willing to enter the apartment to clean it and remove bedding and clothes, which they said had been bagged in plastic. They said they now had hired a firm that would do the work soon. The Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Lakey, told reporters during an afternoon news conference that officials had encountered "a little bit of hesitancy" in seeking a firm to clean the apartment.

This reminds me of the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when undertakers refused to bury the dead, and emergency workers were afraid to treat people after automobile accidents and commonplace domestic catastrophes. Which is to say this isn't surprising at all.