A Badge, A Gun, And Maybe 70 IQ Points

We didn't plan on this post. It just happened. We don't hate the police. We don't love them. We mostly understand they have a thankless, dirty job most days, and try to work with them. And realize that some of them are really good guys, and some of them are asswipes, and we give them the benefit of the doubt unless and until they prove to be the latter. Pretty much like we expect they do in their jobs too.

We point out for the record that the entire reason this blog has illustrations and memes homemade by your host in shop class in the first place began specifically with the douchebadge actions of a couple of overwhelmingly @$$holish cops in Salt Lake City, when they arrested an ER nurse for refusing to violate the Constitution, state law, hospital policy, written police procedure, professional medical ethics, and common sense, by refusing to violate an unconscious patient's civil rights at the demand of those same badged and sworn @$$holes, long-since fired and demoted for that particular jackassery.

We bring this up because as we had just finished our last shift for the week, and were minding our own business and driving home this morning, when we noticed someone running barefoot up the street, in (some of) their scanty clothes, and still wearing what looked like a hospital wristband, moving at a respectable rate of speed away from the hospital for early in the AM.

We pulled over up the street, and called the front desk security officer on duty from our car.

"Are we perchance missing anyone who may have run out of the hospital in some of their clothes?"

"What color clothes?"

We described them.

"Bingo! That's one of the psych patients who just ran out the door!"

So, we proceeded to follow the patient at a discreet distance, so as not to spook them, and notified 9-1-1 we had eyeballs on an escaped mental patient, on a legal hold (meaning they are either a danger to themself, others, or simply too cray-cray to manage their daily affairs), and kept them in sight to direct the local constables to apprehend them, and return them to medical care as quickly, simply, and safely as possible.

We gave the po-po dispatch a stellar description, exact location, and followed the pt. for two measured miles on foot for most of an hour, giving them a play-by-play, until said patient ducked into a residential block around a corner with multiple possible routes out, before we got to that corner. We lost our quarry at that point, but the constabulary's minions quickly found the patient walking nearby, made contact, and detained them.

Whereupon they ascertained that the person was the exact patient we had described and followed, confirmed name and birthdate with hospital staff, and confirmed that the patient was indeed on a psych eval hold before escaping our care.

And then the stupid motherfuckers, the pride of county law enforcement, for reasons known but to God and the hamsters in their otherwise empty heads, let the escaped psych patient go free. 

Absolutely. M*****f***ing. F-R-E-E.

Guys who wouldn't let you talk your way out of a ticket with your dying grandmother bleeding out her ass in the front seat, turned loose a half-dressed bona fide certified lunatic, identified to them by name.

Who knows: maybe the patient used Jedi mind tricks.

Sleep tight, America. Professionals are on the case. 

Top. Men.

It's not bad enough that these assclowns bring us every douchebag waste of skin drunk, junkie, or whackjob within 20 miles, even when they shouldn't, but that now, the one time we specifically ask the stupid bastards to bring one very specific whackjob back to the ER, and they detain that exact person, they turn them loose on society, because reasons, and a badged and sworn 70 point IQ.

So, Deputy Doofus, and Deputy Stumblefuck, this question is for you:

You had one job...

Like sounding the depths of the Marianas Trench, We're beginning to realize that the answer to that question cannot be ascertained with existing instrumentation.

And, full disclosure here, there are screw-ups aplenty to go around, starting with who was supposed to be watching the Nutjob in question when they scampered out the hospital door to become a law enforcement problem, and how said Nutjob got their grubby mitts on some of their own clothes, which should have been removed and secured far out of reach and not anywhere close to them. The upcoming struggle sessions fisking that series of cock-ups are going to leave a mark or two.

But like soccer, the person who touched it last is at fault, so if patient Screwloose kills themself, or anyone else, or some harm comes to them as a result of being now at liberty, the lion's share of liability now belongs overwhelmingly to the County's Finest Knuckleheads, who had a chance to fix that small problem, but instead created an even bigger one.

And also, we generally try to expedite law enforcement custody patients getting in and out ASAP, on the theory that the best place for law enforcement is not sitting around the ER waiting for us to get things done, but rather on patrol, doing their job.

No points for guessing who's going to make sure and drag out those visits henceforth as long as humanly possible for some good amount of time, and who may even let their brethren in blue know why they're now being assured of going dead last, until suitable obsequious mea culpas are delivered appropriately from the agency responsible for this grand slam of cock-ups.

In the meantime, dickheads, this one's for you:

And While We're Up:

These are the guys some folks are worried are coming to take away your guns??

Sheee-yit, most days some of them are lucky if they don't put their shoes and socks on, in that order.

Cliques, Classics, and Clunkers

Oldest working RN. 94 years old.
Her last name isn't Nightingale.
But no way in hell I'll be working to that age,
 if I even live that long. Not even if I could.

When I started this gig, back in the late Pliestocene, the nurses TPTB put in the trauma area were all pretty good at their jobs, but with most of them, there was a definite Mean Girls/"Our poop doesn't stink" vibe going on. I was never going to be in The Club, and they let me know it right away, which was part of why I left there after a couple of years. Loved the training, and most of the staff, but I wasn't as impressed with them as they were with themselves, and I could recognize a toxic work environment when I saw it.

It took doing five years of registry, and realizing I was good enough that hospital after hospital asked me to hire in after about two shifts to know deep in my bones that I knew my sh*t, was a badass nurse, and that I really like doing my job. I probably always knew it inside, but that made me realize it out loud, I suppose.

So now, at Last Stop hospital, after several years, I'm finally getting shoved face-first into trauma again. I've been helping out all along, which is what pissed off the Mean Girls Club here from the get-go, and a couple of them still try to power trip, and shoo me away because they think they've got more experience at this. At this phase of my career, it makes me laugh, mainly because inside I'm thinking, "Look, Cupcake, I was doing trauma and kicking ass at it five presidents ago, when you were literally in diapers, and I nailed it then, so you can take your condescension and shove it right up your tailpipe."

Can't say it to their faces, more's the pity, but just like everywhere, time weeds them out, and I'm still around. After only a few years here, I can count the number of people with more time on the shift than me on my thumbs, because the youngling fools always think "the grass is greener", and off they go, face first into the brick wall of Reality.

The unspoken truth that people who last in this profession realize is that everyplace is better, and everyplace sucks harder, than your current job. The key is finding the place that's good enough at what matters, and where the things that suck are things you can tolerate, while still functioning. Some places, that slice of the pie is so huge no one should stay. Others may be not much at all, and someplace, there's a good fit for you. For as long as it lasts.

Because when you find a great place, hospital manglement will inevitably find a way to screw the pooch until it sucks there more than you can handle, or should tolerate. That's when it's time to go. Not a better rate, or massage chairs in the break room, or 27 other dippy reasons for leaving. And the best reason for leaving is that leaving has nothing to do with work at all, but rather with life, family, and important things, realizing that this is a portable job you can do anywhere on the planet, and family and life priorities always come before work.

Nobody on their death bed ever said "If only I'd spent more time at work...".

When I was new, all I worried about was doing things right. At this phase, I'm starting to consider the day when I won't be able to do things right. You want to go out on top of your game, not fighting gravity and the inexorable march of time, so you can leave when you want to, and not because you have to. I'm nowhere close to the latter, but every trauma now reminds me that there but for the grace of God...

That never crossed my mind thirty years ago, but it does now sometimes, and it's pissing me off. 52 is the median age of RNs, and 58 is the average retirement age. And I expect to be doing this way over to the right edge of that bell curve, unless some idiot at the Powerball gets the right numbers for me to leave skidmarks in the parking lot. But I can see the last punchout at the timeclock getting closer each passing year.

Yellow Feet

 

Those pink feet tell you this photo was posed with a live person.
Ask me how I know.

Some people think fixed and dilated pupils is how you know someone's dead. Others will tell you it's flat brain waves, or asystole on the EKG monitor.

They're wrong.

I was reminded of this fact by the real actual everything-proof acme of you looking down at your own body from outside it, and knowing things are bad.

As someone observed at his own son's funeral, "Being dead is like being stupid. Everyone knows it but you."

But I've gotten pulses back from asystole. It's rare, but not unheard of. I've even seen patients recover from what everyone in the room thought was certain death. Some of them even walked out the front door some days later, to the astonishment of the doctors and staff.

But nobody - NOBODY - who comes in with feet the color of parchment, ever comes back.

I'm pretty sure while the spirit of the former person hovers around, while we all push drugs and do compressions, Death, courtesy of Terry Pratchett, shows up to put the final stamp of approval.

"Wow, I look pretty bad, I wonder if I'll..."

"NO. SORRY. YOU WON'T."

"Are you sure? I mean, I was pretty young and healthy and..."

"AS IF THAT MATTERS. BUT NO, I'M AFRAID NOT. LOOK AT YOUR FEET."

"Wow! Why are they so yellow?"

"BEGINNING TO BE RATHER OBVIOUS WHY, DON'T YOU THINK?"

"Oh. OH! Yeegads! So I'm really...?"

YES. QUITE. SHALL WE BE OFF, THEN? I'VE GOT SEVERAL MORE STOPS JUST YET THIS TRIP..."

And no matter how many more rounds of epi, and bicarb, and calcium, and whatnot, we give,  nor how hard the tech is pumping your rib cage to circulate them around, once we see the parchment yellow Feet Of Death, it's because we just can't squeeze enough blood through your corpse to turn your tootsies that lovely shade of rose pink they ought to be, and would be, if you hadn't already toddled off with Death at some point annoyingly prior.

One minute you were coming home from a party, and the next thing you know, some bony-handed gentleman is dropping you off at the reception desk at the Pearly Gates.

And all the king's horses, and all the king's men, can't undo the rude unhinging of the mechanism of life visited upon you by Fate, Physics, and Physiology.

We're all really sorry about that. Hand to God, we are. But there's just some things we can't fix, and your fate was sealed long before you got to our back door, no matter how much everyone, including people we haven't even met yet, wish it were not so.

I really fucking hate that. I thought, long ago, that one day I might have gotten over it.

But this many decades in, I'm afraid that's just never going to happen. And I suppose if it ever does, that's the signal it's time to get out of this business for good.

It was a long night. It'll be better after I finally get some sleep.

Better still, after I spend a long, quiet day in the park enjoying fresh air, warm sunshine, and a brilliant blue sky, and see the things you can no longer see, and go to the places you will never again go.

But in the pitch darkness of 3 AM, it's just cold. And the only thing making it easier for me is knowing I'll never hear the moans and wails when your parents are located, and get the call no one wants to make, nor be there when the sheet comes back, and they see it's really you there on that table.

Seeing your yellow feet is bad enough. I'm oh so glad I don't have to see the whole show in this tragedy. And I'm really hoping it doesn't cross my mind again tomorrow night.

Sufficient unto each day are the troubles thereof.

O, you can just bet they are.

The $64 Question

Bad, wicked, naughty, evil Zoot.

A month ago I was worried we might have 10-20 cases of Kung Flu. Instead, we have nearly 20 deaths. That means those people got it up to a month ago, from other people who didn't know they had it either.

So far, most of them are elderly, and/or with other co-morbid conditions.

But sooner or later, a relatively healthy 40- or 50-year old with no predisposition is going to croak. Maybe a teacher. Or a school janitor or lunch lady. Then everyone will lose their shit.

The school will be closed. But that person will have infected 40-200 kids, who won't be symptomatic, who will then be locked up at home to infect their whole families, and you'll have a blossom of 1000 cases. Some of whom will still be going to work infected and asymptomatic, and give it to co-workers, who'll give it to their kids, and so on, and so on.

That's how a pandemic marches onwards.
And it will be everywhere.

Take a pair of ordinary dice. There are only 36 possible combinations (6x6). So the raw chance for any roll is a hair under 3% (2.77% for the anal retentive math geek crowd). If coronavirus only has a 3% chance at being transmitted, every time you're out and about, you're rolling the dice. Except you touch things 1000 times a day, and your face about 500 times. (We'll forget about droplets, mucous membranes, and inhalation vectors from coughing and sneezing people for the moment). So, roll the dice every day, and see how long before snake eyes comes up. Remember those thousands of touches, and 500 times touching your face.

After rolling dice 164 times, your chance of getting snake eyes is 99% probable.

So being out and about, in a world becoming saturated with asymptomatic carriers, you're not just likely to get Kung Flu, you're going to get it .

For probably 80% of all persons, two weeks to a month of PITA. For some of them, they may not even know they have it! For 10-17%, you're going to the hospital. But unless you're dying, you aren't getting in. And about 3 people out of every 100 are going to die from it.

If everybody in CA gets it, that's up to 1.2M deaths. Leaving us with 38.8M swinging Richards afterwards. For Texas, it would be up to 870K dead, and 28M still there. Nationwide, up to 10M dead, and 320M still here.

That's if mortality holds at 3%, and everyone gets it. Juggling those numbers around on the slide rule gets you any answer you want.

Bad for the 10M dead, and the 20-50M hospitalized/laid out, but that's not the catastrophe, per se.

The real problem is, the only way to stop this is to send everyone - everyone - home, until 30 days after the last case gets well or dies. Even the idiots among TPTB will figure this out, after exhausting all other half-assed options (just like in China).

If you do nothing, you lose 10M outright, and 50M who can't work for months, and 100M more out for up to a month, but not all at once.

That's the problem. Either of those options screws the economy like a $2 hooker, which is why the stock market is in freefall, why Italy and China have thrown in the towel, and why Korea and the rest of Europe probably will too, before we figure it out.

And until you self-quarantine, and don't pop positive in the next month, you won't know you don't have it already either.

So the $64 Questions is, how long can you miss work, school etc., and how much money, water, food, medicine, and other necessities do you have, to stay home for what may become a mandatory extended quarantine? Will you have a job to go back to when it's over? Will anyone?

We'll leave the discussion of how you hold a valid general election for the President, 1/3 of the Senate, and the entire Congress amidst this sort of thing, for another time.


Local observation:

I note for informational purposes that the local bookseller, B and N, is suddenly light on disaster/survival/preparedness books, which had formerly just been gathering dust, and is now missing every volume on first aid. Because I check those aisles 2-3X/week, and probably know them better than store staff.

Some people are getting edjumicated, apparently.

-----------------

Also, over at WRSA, one of the He's-who-shall-not-be-named observed accurately that contrary to all dystopian fiction, the stores remain open and unburnt, rather than the popular "stripped to the walls in 48-72 hours".

Allow me to respond:

Food isn’t coming here from China (unlike N95 masks), the trucks are still running, and you’re still free to travel, and not under draconian quarantine.
Yet.

So there isn’t any national emergency, for the moment.
{cf. 1940: Phony War. Compare and contrast with Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain, a few months later.}

Once you can’t go out, it won’t matter what’s on the shelf. The average person and family has three days' food at home. (If you have more, by definition, you’re above average, just like the kids at Lake Wobegone. That also means somewhere there’s some jackass who has less than three days on hand.)

So, how long do store shelves stay stocked (and not gloriously aflame) when the trucks aren’t rolling, and Trayvon Diversity and his posse go emergency shopping after midnight, with a brick and a machete?

And what happens when people who depend on prescriptions, made from precursors that aren’t coming from China, and haven’t been for the last month or two, start getting shorted on their Rx meds, esp. the ones that
a) keep them alive, or
b) keep them sane and functional?

Just curious.
Feel free to extrapolate at your own leisure, as you see fit, considering those new data points.

Welcome To My World

h/t IOTW

IOTW links to a story called "Why it’s so hard to get mentally ill Californians into treatment"
(besides the obvious answer, which is because my fellow Californians keep electing them to office):

(EXCREMENTO, CA) For years, Diane Shinstock watched her adult son deteriorate on the streets.  Suffering from severe schizophrenia, he slept under stairwells and bushes, screamed at passersby and was arrested for throwing rocks at cars.Sometimes he refused the housing options he was offered. Sometimes he got kicked out of places for bad behavior.  Shinstock, who lives in Roseville and works on disability issues for the state of California, begged mental health officials to place him under conservatorship—essentially, depriving him of his personal liberty because he was so sick that he couldn’t provide for his most basic personal needs of food, clothing and shelter.
But county officials told her, she said, that under state law, her son could not be conserved; because he chose to live on the streets, he did not fit the criteria for “gravely disabled.”

RTWT.

This is my life, every day for 20 years in the ER, and every other ER, nationwide, especially so if the community is larger than 50K people, and if it doesn't snow there in the winter, multiply that by a factor of 10.

We didn't have 500,000 visits a year at the Busiest ER On The Planet™; we had 1000 regulars who came in 500 times apiece.

I've now been to...fourteen ERs in three counties in nearly twenty years doing this, and it's no different anywhere you go.

Schizophrenia is like heroin addiction: it's a social death sentence, and it's almost never getting any better. The worst part, for family, is that Suzy or John (mostly John, victims are about 1 1/2 times more likely to be male than female) is perfectly normal until late high school or early college, even honors students, and then that last bit of wiring in their heads doesn't go in right. It short-circuits, and they stop being normal, brighter-than-average kids and become, frankly, batshit crazy. I can only imagine the never-ending horror for parents of raising a child, getting them safely past all the normal hurdles of growing up, sending them to college, thinking things are okay, and then watching them completely melt down before your eyes.

Meds help, but only if someone with schizophrenia takes them.
The meds make them feel "weird" (which is what we who aren't schizo call "everyday life" 24/7/365/forever), but they seem fine. So they decide they're not sick, and don't need the meds. And become actually weird, hearing voices who aren't there, seeing people and things that aren't real, and end up in my patch, barking, frothing mad. So we re-medicate them, they get put on a psych hold, they get better, go home, and the cycle repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And repeats.

Frequently, after burning all bridges with family, friends, and everyone else, and being thrown out of every care facility in an entire time zone, for cause, they end up on the streets. Where they "self-medicate". I.e., with pot, meth, heroin, benzodiazepines, alcohol, bath salts, paint, glue, or pretty much any substance they can get into their hands, and their bodies.

In a lucid moment, a juvenile patient once confided to me, straight-up, that he got wasted because when he got The Voices In His Head drunk or stoned enough, he couldn't understand them or hear them any more. Pure medical genius, right there.

Oh, and The Voices? They never tell you "You look great!" "Everybody loves you!" "You're a wonderful human being!"

That would be too easy, right?

The Voices always say "You suck. Kill yourself. Everyone hates you. Why don't you die?"

Go watch A Beautiful Mind. Or every scene with Gollum in the LOTR movies. (No points for guessing which sections of those latter movies I will completely skip over, wholesale, in that entire trilogy, because it's too much like pulling a shift at work, except without getting paid.) There was even a great TV MOTW with James Garner as the sane brother, and James Woods as the nut, that they showed in nursing school, because the writers and actors got it so right.

The article tries to pin this mess on Reagan (color me shocked), for signing Lanterman-Petris-Short in CA in 1967. But every other state was doing the exact same thing, and in fact LPS was in the legislative pipeline and conceived under Democrat CA governor Pat Brown, Moonbeam's father, before Reagan was even thinking about politics.

The state - in fact every damned one of them - wanted to get rid of psych hospitals long before One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (which was outdated tripe from 30 years earlier when the film was made, but why let facts interfere with a good screed, right?), simply because crazy people don't pay their bills, you do. So warehousing them in Bedlam was nothing but a money hole the size of the Grand Canyon, nationwide.

And the do-gooders got together with the penny-pinchers, and decided collectively that since psych hospitals were so terrible, understaffed, under-funded, and yet still too expensive, because staff needs salary and crazy people need food and medicine, why not just turn everyone so "unjustly imprisoned for life" out onto the street?
What could possibly go wrong?
"The state budget will save millions!"

Whereas instead, as we all experience daily, they're free to run into traffic, attack people, burglarize and rob and steal to get money for drugs/alcohol/whatever, crap on the streets, and generally validate every reason that we have for why we used to throw a net over them and lock them up for life.

Which we can't do, because you have to be a "danger to self, danger to others, or gravely disabled", the definition for which last means that if you are mentally with it enough to scrounge garbage to eat out of a dumpster, drape yourself in trash bags when it rains, and construct a cardboard pallet and hovel to sleep on and in, you're not "gravely disabled."
Just...eccentric, and living an "alternative lifestyle choice".
Don't believe me, ask the district attorney, the state bar association, and the Do-Gooders League Of America. This ain't a California thing, it's a U.S. of A. thing, coast-to-coast.

So they're free, and now everyone else has to lock their doors, put up bars, keep their kids inside, and pack heat, so that these literal lunatics can run wild and free.

Brilliant.

And the article shows that TPTB haven't figured it out, even after 50 years' time.

The do-gooders just want them to be free (and to hell with their best interests, or anyone else's).
The rent-seekers want more money, and no rules for them.
The families want somebody else to solve (and most importantly, pay for, their batshit crazy uncles, cousins, brothers, and sons).
And the police, the hospitals, and the courts are simply tired of dealing with their bullshit, and that of the interest groups who want it to continue more than they want what we have now to stop.

My bent is a libertarian approach.
After three trips to hospital on a 5150 for being off your meds, we throw a net over you.
We put you in a helicopter, and we drop you off on one of the Channel Islands currently inhabited mainly by goats.
Once a week, the helicopter flies over, and they kick out food bundles.
There are no trees, and the islands are 30-40 miles away, in waters best described as sub-arctic even in July; those people aren't swimming or floating back, ever.
If the family is all broken up over this, they can pay for private care. They can visit them on Shutter Island whenever they like. They can bring them food, clothes, or anything else to make their stay more pleasant. They can even bring doctors and medicine there to address any other needs. The whackjobs are now free to chase butterflies, run around naked, or even try to fly off the cliffs; I don't care.
I don't want them euthanized, or harmed in any way. I want them free. Over there.

What they aren't free to do, is continue to run around in traffic, assault people and each other, crap on your porch, or walk around in society off their meds.
Three strikes, and you're out.
Now they're free, and so are we.

The do-gooders have tried it their way. So have the penny-pinchers.
Now it's time to solve the problem.

Clipboard Commandos

                                 Almost actual size, but it's not this new and shiny here.

New gig at Shoestring Hospital, in Teeny Weeny ER.

Small, hella-busy, still same old fun.

Except for (wait for it) all the ancillary BS hoops to jump through to start.
Wait, it gets better.

So busy and short-handed, your contract started yesterday. (What's that? You never signed one? Don't worry, we'll get around to that...in a coupla months. Maybe.)
But here's your log-in to complete the same 42 online modules (on my time and nickel, apparently) before you start.
Because the ones you just did for our sister hospital in the same system don't count, because the left hand and the right hand in this fucktarded corporate lash-up don't talk to each other.

How...special.

So, after pounding my head against the monitor for three weeks trying to follow their instructions, it turns out they assigned me no account, so couldn't log-in to the education site, which helpdesk line is so secret, no one in the entire hospital knows it or has ever heard of it, until we reach the threats-of-suspension stage, and it will suddenly leave them exactly as short-staffed as they were before I started, and suddenly shit gets real for them.

Whereupon they "suddenly" discover the secret helpdesk number, and I then find out all the courses they assigned to me in the first place three weeks ago were the wrong ones, and not the ones they've been telling me that I haven't completed, because I couldn't log in, and they never assigned the right ones in the first place.

Because they're all a bunch of chronically and blisteringly incompetent fuckups.

This is my shocked face. I didn't name this place Shoestring Hospital and Teeny Weeny ER for nothing, and Incompetence is one of the core values here.

If I did nursing like they do administration, the dead bodies would be piled up around here like firewood. (And, in all likelihood, they soon will be anyways. But that's another ten stories.)

This will be a short contract. If they ever give me one to sign before I finish it.

And they wonder why they can't find anyone besides brand new grads desperate for a job to become full-time staff? And why they all leave after 366 days?

Okay, That Was Annoying

 

Employment has resumed.
With roughly four times the amount of grief, annoyance, and general PITA fucktardery as I experienced filling out a Top Secret/SCI special background investigation back in the day.

Jeebus crispies!

My generic advice:
Keep your resume updated.
Including all your contacts and references.
Keep 7 copies of every bit of vital certification and testing information, including DNA swabs and urine samples of the personnel administering such testing and certification. It WILL be asked for. Demanded, actually.

Working 18 days straight may give me a heart attack, but at after running around like a headless chicken for a month with no income, in the feast-or-famine sweepstakes, I choose feast.
Especially when a 20% average pay raise is involved.

Oh, and a hearty FU Very Much/ESAD to my former employer, Callous Bastard Hospital.
The last three places I've worked this month are already asking me to fill out permanent status employment apps after seeing me work as temp registry for them for a couple of shifts. It's nice to be popular.

But clearly, you have to run away from home (or be booted out the door in my case) to get any respect.

Normal posting will resume in a week or two.
With extra sarcasm flavoring.

And the other shoe drops...

My vacay was lovely. As will become apparent, I should have stayed there.
(If you have the chance for two weeks on Maui, I highly recommend it. Anytime.)

Upon my return, I found out the reason they were so cheerful about letting me have time off for the holidays, was that in their ceaseless efforts to not go broke implementing ObamaCare, my facility will be "re-organizing", and wished me their best in securing another position. Just. Like. That.
The fact that I'm experienced, at the top pay tier, and recently passed the half-century milestone were all purely coincidental, they assured me. And I have a bridge for sale too, right next to some beachfront property in Kansas.

Step Two was dusting off the resume, and getting a gig with any number of nursing registry agencies hereabouts that are swamped with the need for ED nurses locally, because for some reason, there are a ton of facilities with openings for non-permanent personnel on all shifts. Everywhere.
Doubtless this is just another purely random coincidence, I'm sure.

The sweetener is that they pay on average 10-20% more than my former employer, for doing the same job, and (after a few months not there), even including my former hospital home. So they laid me off to get me a raise, and set my own days and hours forever, including no more holidays at my discretion, and all it cost them was any shred of loyalty or concern for their best interests I might have had after the last ten-plus years in their trenches.

Such a deal.
The other bummer was instantly being ripped from amongst the greatest bunch of people, doctors, nurses, and staff, I've ever worked with. $#!^ happens.

The fly in the ointment was that I needed to do all the pre-employment hoops I haven't jumped through since Clinton was president, and dig up paperwork from the late Pleistocene, as well as document my decades of competencies in everything, from scratch. (Satisfying my inner hyper-anal control freak, I have so far aced everything they've thrown at me. And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I can do this stuff online, at home, in my pajamas, whenever I feel the urge. Yay, 21st century technology.)

During which, it turns out that between eating like a teenager, no small amount of it grazing on craft service, and the very same two decades of dealing with nightshift ED work and the lovely people deposited on my gurneys, my blood pressure seems to have decided to translate into flight data from a space launch liftoff, after being textbook normal up to at least six months ago.

Oh goody. After a quarter-century in healthcare, I always wondered what it'd be like to be the patient. (Not.)

I have consequently been just a wee bit pre-occupied with securing gainful employment, and not having my head explode, while finding a regular physician for the first time since I was a teenager, managing new meds, and embarking on a new quest to burn off at least a decade of crap daily diet and not enough cross training. With my former health insurance a distant memory.

So the 20 extra pounds around my gut are my fault, and the ED is the ED, but a hearty "Fuck You" to president for-life? HopeyDopey, and his ceaseless efforts to destroy the 17% of the American economy that has been my career, by mucking up the revenue stream for all hospitals. The only silver linings are that having discovered my new health situation, I won't be stroking out from his upcoming State Of The Union, 'cuz I've got meds to fix that now, and because of totally screwing the pooch for the medical industry, there are suddenly no shortage of doctors happy to see me for cash-for-service, indefinitely.

Regular blogging will resume when the recent roller coaster comes in for a landing.

The fivefold teaching moments are thus:

The government is not here to help you. Ever.
Neither is your employer. Loyalty is for dogs. Their end of the contract comes when the paycheck clears. Anything else is icing on the cake, but don't count on it.
Keep your resume current and updated.
More veggies, less pizza.
More PT, sergeant, more PT. Because I miss the Daily Seven like BUDS candidates miss getting wet and sandy in January.

And if you thought I was a non-cheery cranky caustic SOB before all this needless personal drama,

GET OFF MY LAWN.

 

 

Back regularly as soon as I can. The medical chances of me shutting up on the internet are about 8 billion to 1, against.

Dear NYFC: Who Left The Bag Of Idiots Open?

The preparedness of New York City officials and workers to deal with Ebola has once again left much to be desired as a hazmat team sent in to decontaminate the apartment of Craig Spencer, the first person to contract the deadly virus in the city, was seen leaving his apartment with sealed barrels, but wearing no protective gear. The men were photographed exiting the apartment without gloves, face masks, or anything else to protect them as they loaded the barrels with possibly contaminated goods into the back of a truck.

Please, by all means, go to the linked DailyMailUK article for the multiple photographs of this Clowncarnucopia of Fail.

Especially moving are the shots with numerous Big Horseapple bystanders wandering through the procession, faces buried in their smartphones, tweeting to their crosstown pals, in total obliviousness to walking through a hazmat cleanup. (The one small orange cone wasn't really a lot of help there, either.)

I didn't think it was possible to make the folks in Dallas pressurewashing the vomit look brilliant by comparison, but once again NYFC takes the cake:
that city's collection of 60-IQ assclowns puts every other city's 70-IQ assclowns to absolute shame.

Walk tall, you bunch of public school dropouts. You are, beyond any doubt, the stupidest collection of morons ever assembled in one place in all of human history. It's only a wonder you don't all require iPods with a twelve-a-minute loop tape to remind you to breathe 24/7, and if you hadn't mastered the use of your elbows, your knuckles would certainly drag on the ground. Thank God you had the surgery to remove the prehensile tails, or you'd never have gotten your pants on.

Cuomo And Christie - Separated At Birth? Updated

New York and New Jersey will quarantine on arrival at the area’s airports anyone who had direct contact with Ebola patients, Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie said.
The stricter rules came shortly after a top U.S. health official said the federal government also was considering tighter measures nationwide that might put anyone returning from Ebola zones into quarantine or under strict monitoring.
“That is something that is right now under very active discussion, and you’ll be hearing shortly about what the guidelines will be,” said Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at an event in Bethesda, Maryland.
The new policy in New Jersey and New York goes beyond the guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under the changes, quarantines for high-risk travelers from any of the three West African nations most affected by the Ebola outbreak would last 21 days. Others who travel from the region and haven’t had direct contact the virus will be actively monitored and quarantined only if necessary, they said.

Let's be even-handed here:

For having the sense God gave a jackass, and ignoring the foot-dragging DC idiots:
5 points each.
But for not thinking this through for, oh, even 3 seconds:
-200 points each.

1) How do you KNOW who's had "direct contact with Ebola patients"?
2) What do you do when, EXACTLY LIKE THOMAS DUNCAN, THEY LIE ABOUT IT??

You simply quarantine all travelers from the affected countries. Problem solved.
Moral of the story: Elect assclowns; suffer the consequences.

Update: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says "Me Three!" Reaches for greasepaint, proves to be just as smart, and just as stupid.

"Life is tough. It's tougher when you're stupid!"

Travel Moratorium in three, two...?

BREAKING:

Dr.Craig Spencer, 33, a recently returned volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, was rushed to NYC's Bellevue Hospital after experiencing a fever of 100.3 and nausea, ten days after working with West African Ebola victims.

Clad in hazmat suits, FDNY hazardous materials specials sealed off his fifth-floor apartment. Cops blocked off West 147th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam after he was taken to the hospital, witness Oscar Nunez said.
“EMS HAZ TAC Units transferred to Bellevue Hospital a patient who presented a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms,” the Health Department wrote in a statement. 

Buckle up, sportsfans. Chapter Two is 12 hours and one blood test away, with additional stories arriving 150x/day at five major US airports.

It's a good thing we're keeping that door open, so aid workers from Ebolaville can rapidly get home after working over there, huh?

No word on whether HopeyDopey is still "cautiously optimistic"...

UPDATE: Touchdown for Team Ebola!
So the next question is whether they fly him to NIH, Emory, or U.NE, or if they decide to try their hand at not replicating the THP-Dalls Assclown Parade.
And how long before four networks, the NYTimes, and 435 congresspersons and 33ish senators all begin shitting kittens: because it's always funny until it lands in NYFC.

 

$#!^ Tom Frieden Says

                        

Tom Frieden, head of the CDC (and lest we forget, his sidekick Anthony Fauci at NIAID),

have been tireless throughout this crisis.

Tirelessly spinning, tirelessly lying, tirelessly stupid, and tirelessly wrong.

"Ebola is highly unlikely to come to the US"
FAIL
Ebola got here within days of those statements.

"We know how to handle Ebola"
FAIL
We mishandled it every step of the way.

"We have protocols in place"
FAIL
"Protocol" implies some standard; what we had were widely misunderstood guidelines, honored about like the Pirates' Code.

"Any hospital can handle Ebola patients safely"
FAIL
To date NO hospital, outside the four BL4 isolation wards, can handle Ebola safely.

"We're working with local officials and hospitals"
FAIL
Local officials and hospitals hadn't even heard of you nor from you, and you didn't think to even send anyone there until days and weeks after that was flagrantly and painfully obvious.

"Ebola is hard to catch"
FAIL
It's so easy to catch, the merest failure to completely protect from it transmitted it flawlessly to two nurses covered almost head-to-toe. It's only pure good fortune - LUCK - that following your B.S. didn't infect 74 other workers at THP-Dallas as well, just for starters, and luckier still that it appears you haven't managed to kill anyone.

"There was a breach in the protocol"
FAIL
The protocol itself was horribly flawed and years out of date. MSF/DWB knew years ago how to dress people in the Third World to handle this safer, but the CDC followed the "Not invented Here" bias, and needlessly exposed hundreds of health workers and got 2 nurses infected with this deadly disease before they changed their protocol, and disseminated it widely.

"We shouldn't impede air travel here"
FAIL
We've already funneled arrivals down to just five airports, possibly in the nick of time, and even that is too little too late, as they only stop the symptomatic arrivals. They will do nothing to stop asymptomatic carriers of Ebola, just like they failed to stop Thomas Duncan. The minute Duncan v2.0 gets here (when, not if, according to the latest UK medical study) that little lie will be naked in the open all by itself, and the penultimate chicken will have come home to roost.

"We know how Ebola is transmitted"
FAIL
Even our top scientists don't know that, and say so. It's even on the CDC website. If you KNEW how it was transmitted, you'd know why a small area or two of exposed skin allowed two nurses to catch it from just one patient.

But most striking in this, is what you won't hear Frieden (or Fauci) say:

We're sorry. We don't know. WE WERE WRONG.

They have yet to own up to their own mistakes, their own grand pronouncements, their own personal cavalcade of monumental blunders, bluster, and bullshit.

They haven't apologized to the two nurses who got infected following their dreadfully insufficient protocols.
They haven't apologized to the hundreds of other health care workers they exposed, by those same flawed and outdated guidelines.
They haven't apologized to THP-Dallas, for letting them take a bullet that anyone of sense knew NO hospital in this country was prepared for (nor even yet is).
They didn't apologize to the officials in Dallas and Texas, for leaving them holding the bag while CDC pondered things from afar.
They haven't apologized to hundreds to thousands of people in Dallas, Cleveland, and travelers in between, for their exposure to this disease by their own incompetence, hubris, and blatant blind stupidity.
They haven't apologized to the government of the United States, for so egregiously misleading them on our actual knowledge, preparedness, or capabilities to deal with this disease, and for continuing to mislead them about the best courses to deal with it.
And they haven't apologized to 316 million Americans, for so carelessly, thoughtlessly, stupidly, and recklessly allowing this disease to rampage so far and wide, putting so many of their friends and neighbors at fear of or in direct risk of infection, and for so blindly allowing it to ever arrive here in the first place by not only allowing, but demanding, that the door be kept wide open to its arrival, knowing how all of the preceding would inevitably follow.

You won't hear any of this, because that's what men do, and what leaders do:
They take responsibility for their actions, they acknowledge their failures, and they seek to make amends.

They don't dissemble, obfuscate, shuffle their papers, and stare stunned into the headlights of the oncoming train while innocent people are about to die.

And they don't blithely risk the lives of those innocent people, nearly killing them, nor try to blame other people for their own shortcomings, in order to bolster their own delusional conviction of their own wisdom and infallibility.

You have to get that your careers are over, and than any alleged medical credibility you might once have possessed to bring to this or any future health crisis is shot to hell as effectively as a duck hit by a minigun firing a dumptruck full of bullets, right? RIGHT?!
You two, right now, are the co-captains of the LZ Hindenburg.

If actual men and leaders were in those posts, they'd do all those things, resign immediately for having failed so monumentally, and either get on a plane to Monrovia to quietly try and atone for and clean up their mess, or retire to their private studies, set their affairs in order, and have a brief conversation with a gun loaded with a single bullet before doing the right thing.

Walk tall, you festering piles of putrescence.
Hope that the entire nation has the attention span of a fruit fly.
A more just society would see you swinging from a handy lightpole after a hasty curbside judicial proceeding.
And it may yet.

                        

Dear 70 IQ Meatpuppets: Your Ride Is Here

In any emergency involving more than zero persons, the driving force determining the duration and severity of the emergency will quickly become the IQ and common sense of the stupidest person(s) in the group. Also their level of preparedness, and the global group wisdom of whatever entity or agency may have been responsible for preparing them (or failing miserably to do so) to cope with such emergency.

This is why the castaways have spent three seasons in prime time and 45 years in syndication, on Gilligan's Island.

It's why Thomas Duncan got to the United States.

It's why Madrid currently has an ongoing Ebola problem.

And today, it's why Officer Safety, in Dallas, is at risk to be the next Texan to die a horrible and totally preventable death inside about two weeks, unless he's very, very fortunate.
(And true to form, Dallas health official fucktards continue to do what fucktards do best, insisting that the deputy can't have Ebola because he wasn't exposed to the guy who wasn't there, ignoring that the entire apartment he was in unprotected was so contaminated that it had to be decontaminated days later. Notice they didn't say "He can't have Ebola because we've tested him, and the tests are completely negative for 3 weeks". Nor that "We think the risk is low, but he was definitely exposed to the contagion, so we'll monitor him for 21 days, and hope for the best." But that because they say so, this can't be Ebola, because "smarter than basic principles of epidemiology". You can't make stuff up that's as surreal as the daily behavior of people in charge in Dallas. I have to ask: do y'all just elect people there with the lowest IQs, or is it just a lucky serendipity that that's who you have in apparently every position of importance on this case?)

If he is infected, it's also why he probably won't be the last one there to be so.

On a human level, if this turns out poorly, I'm sorry for him and his family, and I'm sure he's a nice guy and great fun at parties.

Unfortunately, Ebola didn't get that memo, and it can't read.

Ebola will not "Respect Your Authoritay!" just because you have a badge.
Ebola will not stop because you're cute, or have a banging body or a killer smile.
Ebola will not stop because you like puppies and kittens.
Ebola will not stop because of any countless number of asinine reasons you, whoever you are, think it should magically want to go and jack somebody else up, if you're one of the troglodyte halfwit continuation school mouthbreathing utterly clueless morons.

THIS

   stops Ebola.

Got PPE on? EVERY TIME? BEFORE you risk exposure??

NO?!?
No problem.

You'll get Ebola instead. And then, in +/- 12 days, you'll die in a puddle of your own bloody guts as you vomit and shit them out both ends, because you were ignorant, stupid, uninformed, lied to, gullible, lazy, careless, clueless, depravedly indifferent, and just generally a waste of skin and oxygen on the cosmic balance sheet of the Universe.
And Mother Nature has red-carded you out of the game, and out of the gene pool, forevermore.
The Universe doesn't give a damn about that, and for the most part neither do I, since I don't know you.
But you're going to take out people all around you, and eventually, you'll get to someone I do care about, and for that bout of serial killing, there isn't a circle of Hell low enough to give you what you deserve for what you're wreaking upon the rest of the population every time you come up to bat.

So to the jackasses at the State Department and the White House who think, despite your rosy good wishes, that checking asymptomatic people is helping, and that transporting bushels of potentially infectious people here 24/7 is a good idea;
to the clueless bastards in Dallas who pressure-washed infectious hazmat Ebola vomit into an entire community,
who put an entire family in a plague house for six days,
who sent a paramedic team and ambulance back onto the streets for 48 hours after transporting a known Ebola patient with no decon,
thus exposing further patients on subsequent ambulance trips for two more days, 
who sent a three man sheriff's team unprotected into that same plague house,
which team was stupid enough to walk in the door despite such silly-ass criminally negligent orders,
whose "judges" wandered in and sat with the exposed family in the contaminated quarters in their street clothes, then wore the same infected garments back to the office, and home to their family, after a nice snuggly meet-and-greet with hordes of similarly clueless reporters;
to the incredibly brain-deprived shit-for-brains Infection Control "specialists" at hundreds to thousands of hospitals who think they can handle Ebola with "Standard precautions", and keep peddling that utter bullshit to staffs who have to weigh your jackassery against the need for a paycheck to feed and shelter their families;
to the idiots in Spain who showed all the competence of the Dallas authorities;
and to the hundreds of thoroughly heads-up-your-asses-because-the-sun-shines-out-of-Obama's-bellybutton reporters, news hairdos, and editor/producers;
stop driving the Ebola Retard Bus, because you're KILLING US, Smalls.

No, not figuratively, LITERALLY, you flaming dumbshits.

And I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if this thing gets unleashed and goes hog-wild, and gets to the populace at large, before we go, we'll hunt you all down, and set you on fire,  to watch you dance and listen to your final screams, just to make us feel a little bit better in our last days on earth.

And that's the only thing you can look forward to in this entire outbreak that's going to make me smile.

Bummer for you though.

One other thing, illustrative of the point:
The new phone books are out.
The new numbers:
8,033 total cases, 3,865 dead, as of Oct. 5th. Spain has been added to the tally board, but they haven't yet updated it with their case, nor Duncan's death, nor the new Dallas case. But they will.

Sierra Leone's death toll has surged upward with their recent come-to-Jesus revelations, adding more deaths in the last 4 days than the total they've recorded in the entire previous seven weeks.
Given their laxity and mendacious prior casualty and infection reporting, it's prudent to assume they have unreported (hence un-contact-traced) cases numbering into the thousands. Nothing less would support so many new dead, so rapidly.
They had more deaths over the same period than Liberia, which has nearly double the reported cases of Sierra Leone.
Why? Reflect on the fact that this is also the period exactly 10-15 days after their vaunted "nationwide 3-day quarantine" in late September, keeping everyone locked up inside their homes uninfected alongside the infected.

Then flash forward to the fact that we did the exact same sort of quarantine in Dallas for six days, from Sept. 28th to Oct. 4th, with the other members of the Duncan family, locking the uninfected inside known contagious facilities.

Brilliant!
So the Dallas city government is demonstrably twice as smart as the government of Sierra Leone.
Walk tall, Texas.

Hopefully, Dallas hardware stores will soon experience a run on pitchforks and scythes, and residents will stage a torchlight visit to some local leading citizens. Or at least take some hot tar and chicken feathers, and a rail.

 

 

 

 

What's Coming Next

So, over a few short months, I've gone from being one of the few talking about this (even on medical-related blogs, who should have known better) and way out ahead of the crowd, to being right first, to being just one of hundreds of sites and links, all tripping over the same stories (except for medical-related blogs, who should know better). The prospect of a horrible death apparently concentrates peoples' minds wonderfully. But at least people are paying attention now, which was the object of the exercise.

So the new question is, What next?

1) Ebola isn't going away in Africa anytime soon.
When I first started posting in forums, and then blogging the posts here, Ebola was at 1000 cases, and 600 or so deaths.
As of 1 October, it's nearly 7500 cases and 3500 deaths, and those are the "official" (i.e. total horseshit) numbers coming out of W. Africa, the most backwards, illiterate, corrupt hellhole on the planet nine years out of any ten, forever. The CDC was guesstimating the reality numbers may be 2.5 times higher. Only this week, Sierra Leone, whose numbers have been hanging fairly small since Liberia started driving the bus in this outbreak, announced 120+ deaths in one day. Those people didn't get sick and die overnight; they were clearly infected 3-5 weeks prior. And that one day jump took the death toll there beyond what it is in Liberia, with has 3-4 times as many infected victims. Conclusion: things there are 3-4 times higher and worse than official numbers, and probably the same for Guinea and Liberia as well.

2)  Outside help isn't accomplishing anything fast enough, and likely never will.
As already noted, because there are 3000 more dead bodies (again, "officially"), and 4000 more sick patients, in countries that were more than 2000 beds short back in late September. And we've built exactly nothing since then. Supplies sit untouched on harbor docks, because the local kleptocrats haven't had their palms greased to let them in. And no one new has been trained to staff any imaginary new care centers even if we'd built so much as one. In fact, more doctors have been evacuated back to the countries of origin, infected with Ebola, even as the patient load doubles roughly every three weeks.

Therefore:

3) The people and governments are going to be more desperate, and closer to panic and collapse, rather than less so, over time.
Duncan took a powder, and lied his way through screenings, when Liberia had but 3000 total cases. It's past 4000 now. By the end of the month, they'll have 6000 cases, and likely 12,000 before Thanksgiving. Draw your own conclusions on how much calmer the populace will be then, and how much stronger and competent the respective governments will be.
Every day, more and more people there will realize the end position on this epidemic there, and they will rush the lifeboats: more frequently, and more desperately. And the so-called guardians at the ports of exit now are illiterate peasants baffled by the complexities of a drugstore thermometer, with a long and colorful history of taking care of those with the most cash, starting with themselves, when things get sporty. Everybody cheerfully assumes that Duncan only lied to get out; when in fact, the historical odds are, he also slipped somebody a Benjamin (or there, a sawbuck), and his "exit visa" was magically provided and approved.
That's how business is transacted at most borders at most times since forever.

4) Numbers One, Two, and Three, lead inexorably to Number Four: Duncan was merely the FIRST Ebola patient we'll be getting (as long as the jacktards in charge keep the pipeline open), rather than the LAST.
Duncan's problems are over, and even the 50 people in Dallas sweating bullets until the 20th aren't the major concern.
The problem is the next 1, or 5, or 20 Duncans who get off of planes in NYC, DC, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, etc. Not if, but when, exactly as the CDC told every hospital in the country two weeks before Duncan walked into Texas Health Presbyterian, and started the party.
Flight crews on commercial airplanes are no better trained nor equipped, the "screenings", there, here, or anywhere, will do little to catch infected people, and nothing at all to stop those like Duncan in the latent incubation stage of Ebola.
Like TSA screenings of your shoes and cavity searches for underwear bombs, it's kabuki theatre to simulate action, with no real effect.
Hospitals are mostly no better off, and will respond, each time, exactly as THP did: poorly, clumsily, and while endangering the health of everyone concerned.
Everybody has to burn their hand on the stove before they really get what "hot" means.
So our troubles aren't over on Oct. 20th, or whenever the last Duncan-related contact passes from quarantine isolation precautions. They've just begun, until the last patient anywhere in the world passes out of quarantine.
And that will be like earthquakes: Only until the next time.

5) All of this completely ignores the people who WANT to bring Ebola here.
Anybody willing to strap 40 pounds of Semtex and hardware parts to his chest, walk into a pizzeria or schoolyard, and be a not-so-smart bomb for Allah, will have no compunction whatsoever about deliberately infecting themselves with Ebola, waiting until they turn symptomatic, and then going for daily walks at malls, movie theatres, swap meets, shows, conventions, amusement parks, sports events, concerts, or just ride all day on a commuter train, and anything else they can manage, and lying about all their contacts and visits after they collapse, because 72 virgins. That's just how they roll.
The gist of the entire asinine "Ebola isn't that big a deal" mindset depends entirely on honest and accurate contact tracing from the infected. When those who bring it here don't give a damn about helping, and actually lie about their whereabouts, it's too late for some governmental jackass Inspector Clousseau to slap his forehead and exclaim "Aha! We never thought of that clever gambit!!" (But that they will anyways is a good reason to bring back the rack, thumbscrews, hot pincers, and burning at the stake as part of the government bonus negative reinforcement plan for that sort of official stupidity.)

6) One through Five inclusive lead to a high likelihood that somewhere, sometime, a city or larger locale will be stricken and overwhelmed by Ebola. Dallas could still get there if 5-10 of those contacts become symptomatic in rapid succession. The same would be true if a dozen or so cases cropped up anyplace. Imagine someone infecting 50-100 contacts, and then not conveniently calling the CDC to alert the Usual Suspects to get cracking. Like if they just sat in some little squalorous dive and quietly died, and nobody found them for a few days, by which point patients 2 through 20 all showed up with symptoms before anyone knew there was a Reference Patient. That city would be so far from screwed at that point it would be hard to see it from where they were. And it could be my town, or yours. Tracing 2000-10,000 contacts a week later is a total fantasy.
And don't even try selling me how the crack CDC/DHS/FEMA/.GOV juggernaut would leap into action to save the day.
They're the reason Duncan got here in the first place, and there's little the government ever does right, even on their best day. Anybody trying to sell you anything else is running for office, or lobbying for a government contract, either way, entirely at your expense.
If they do anything that helps, it will be secondarily, and accidentally, as a near-certainty.

7) YOYO: You're On You're Own.
You need to pay attention to the news, both to see what they're telling you, and what they're not. (The latter, as I've demonstrated on this blog lately, will always be the larger volume.) You need to make your own plan to take care of yourself, and your family/tribe/group if you have that. Ebola is not going to low-crawl up your driveway and butt-rape you in your sleep. (Somebody desperate for your belongings might, but you knew about that already, right? Right?) So you may, as a result of future outbreak(s), need to be able to come up with food, water, and other necessities of life (sanitation, power, heat, and so on) for an extended period of time. Three days gets you Jack, except a guarantee you're in a refugee camp on Day Four. Start with a month, absolute bare minimum. Work up in increments to six. (More than that still is better.) If you can't make another plan with that 6-month to Whatever cushion to do it in, you have bigger problems than Ebola. FYI, Ebola has been going on in W.Africa since last March, with no end in sight. Ponder what that could mean if you get caught inside a county or state quarantine here, next month or next year.

And for the love of anything holy, abandon any idea that you're going to stock up on hazmat suits, masks, goggles, gloves, etc. etc., as if you were going to daily venture out amidst the problem, or as if, in a quarantine, you being out on the street at all wouldn't be carte blanche for the local constables to throw a bag on you and put you in an Ebola Quarantine/Treatment Center, where if you didn't have it when you went in, circumstances would soon solve that problem for you.
Stay your ass home, period.
The only possible exception to that is if you have a relatively secluded place to go outside the big cities (As Remus says about weekly "Avoid crowds."), and you go there beforehand. Whether or when is up to you. Five days early is better than one hour too late, but it's entirely your decision. And you still have to provide yourself all the same necessities once you get there, just likelier in a much better starting position versus someone in a condo in Georgetown or Manhattan would be.

Read, think, plan, acquire. And STFU about it. You're not "hoarding", you're prudently preparing to not be part of the problem once there is one. Your fellow citizens in the EBT-card-toting Free Shit Army are the problem, and if they think you have something they want, they'll be your problem. Stay home, and keep your head down, and if there's an outbreak and local quarantine, stay in the house, read a book, and wait for it to burn itself out.

And please, sweet suffering Shiva, vote the current @$$clowns out of office. Not because of their party, but because they're idiots. We may be just exchanging @$$clowns, but no one could do a worse job than what we've got now, and there's always a chance it will help. You've got nothing to lose for trying. Government didn't create Ebola, they're just too incompetent to do the right things about it to not make it worse. Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got, so it doesn't get worse for you.
Government is all about selfishness. You be about self-preservation and self-reliance.

And I don't care if you're a rabid atheist: pray for a cure.