The perils of being a Good Samaritan in Liberia
This is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. It’s an account of how patient zero, Thomas Eric Duncan, contracted Ebola in Liberia. But more than that, it’s a story that’s all too typical of the tragedy of this disease so far in Africa, where it’s ravaged villages and cut a swath through families and friends who try to help sick people, sometimes without even being aware that Ebola is the disease they have.
It also makes it clear that we don’t really know whether Duncan knew what killed the 19-year-old pregnant woman he’d helped, or even that she had died at all.
Here’s the sort of thing I mean by “sad”:
Within weeks, everyone who helped Williams that day was either sick or dead, too ”” victims of Ebola, the virus that is ravaging Liberia’s capital and other parts of West Africa, with more than 3,300 deaths reported.
The disease is spread through direct contact with saliva, sweat, blood and other bodily fluids, and all those who fell ill after helping Williams had touched her. She turned out to have Ebola…
As 9-year-old Mercy Kennedy sobbed along with neighbors mourning news of her mother’s death, not a person would touch the little girl to comfort her.
Mercy’s mother had helped to wash the pregnant woman’s clothes, and had touched her body after she died at home when no hospital could find space for her, neighbors said.
On Thursday, little Mercy walked around in a daze in a torn nightgown and flip-flops, pulling up the fabric to wipe her tears as a group of workers from the neighborhood task force followed the sound of wailing through the thick grove of banana trees and corn plants.
“We love you so dearly, yeah,” one man wearing rubber gloves told her from a safe distance. “We want to take care of you. Have you been playing with your friends here?”
With Mercy’s mother dead, neighbors fear it is only a matter of time before she, too, shows signs of the virus, and they want to know which other children may have come into contact with her while she was fetching water.
Aside from the pathos, there’s interesting information there. “All those who fell ill after helping Williams had touched her.” Ebola is spread by “direct contact” and not simple touch—meaning that body fluids must come in contact not just with unbroken skin, but with mucus membranes (including nose or mouth), broken skin, or eyes. These people did not nurse Williams in an intimate manner (although some may have). Nor is it alleged she vomited in their faces or bled on them, although I suppose that’s possible. Most seem to have merely touched her, probably getting smaller bits of virus on their hands (from virus that was on her from her own body fluids, perhaps including sweat) and then almost certainly touched or rubbed their eyes, noses, or mouths.
We touch our faces, including rubbing our eyes, many times a day. Not a good habit when Ebola is rampant.
I am guessing that personal hygiene in Liberia is not at all what it is in America. We carry and use hand sanitizer, wash our hands repeatedly throughout the day, and many of us take full body showers daily. It is a safe assumption that none of that is true in Liberia. The spread of disease is all but guaranteed.
And I read the article you cited, Neo; it saddened me deeply too. I’ve been to West Africa, and can picture in my mind all too easily that child and her terrified neighbors…
RandomThoughts:
The article reminded me of things I’d read long ago about plague, leprosy, and the 1918-9 flu pandemic. People want to be compassionate, but they don’t want to die for it.
Completely understandable.
Sweat.
I happened to be watching the Today show earlier this week when the medical reporter (Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who I find very irritating and always seems to report from a lefty viewpoint) traveled to the Liberian capital to cover the crisis. Found myself wondering whether it was worth the risk to the reporting team and those they would come in contact with later.
Turns out that one of her photographers was just diagnosed with Ebola. He was traveling with Snyderman (a doctor(!) and surely they took every precaution to disinfect and avoid contact, yet he still got sick. Now the whole group is in quarantine there.
Read a bit more about the NBC Ebola case. The cameraman who tested positive for Ebola is a freelancer who has been working in Liberia for a few years, so he was likely infected prior to the reporting team’s visit.
The only thing that explains west Africa is that ebola is transmitted MUCH easier than the CDC — or Barry — wants to believe.
One could EASILY breathe ebola into ones lungs.
A struggling victim is going to be a gas cloud — an aerosol generator — of ebola on the wind.
Viruses — all of them — are ultra tiny. They can be suspended in micro droplets.
The smaller the droplet, the further it can waft on the wind… like 30 meters!
blert:
I disagree that’s “the only thing that explains” the West African epidemic. As I wrote in the comments section of a different thread:
I would add that the “something different” does not appear to be airborne aerosolized spread among humans. It that were the case, there would have been a lot more than 3,000 deaths, considering the epidemic has been going on for about 10 months in West Africa, with all the difficulties connected with that location (uninformed and sometimes uncooperative population, extreme heat making it hard to use hazmat suits, lack of resources, re-use of needles, burial practices where family is involved, overburdening of hospitals). That the number is as relatively low as it is argues against an airborne spread so far.
I agree with you neo-neocon, but the problem is the CDC has convinced a bunch of people that this spreads no more readily than AIDS or that they have to eat a bat or monkey to get it. You don’t. This is deliberately being spread to keep panic down.
Also, I am less inclined to believe the family that he ‘did not know’ she had ebola. CBS new last night was reporting the family’s claim that he thought she was just six, then I flipped to ABC where they were in Liberia tracing his route and said he took her to not one but two ebola specific clinics. Yes, the media is often wrong, but ABC seems more credible than CBS here.
sick! Not six.
I read the great influenza about the 1918 flu many years ago (followed by The Hot Zone, The Demon in the Freezer and most recently Spillover – which is very interesting) and I was struck by a story about a town that just basically put up its walls and wouldn’t let anyone in until the epidemic was over. And no one there got sick.
It doesn’t do the people in Liberia any good to import diseases here. The best thing that can happen is that everybody stays far away from the disease as possible and let’s it burn itself out. Anything else leads to more dead people. (hospital personnel are a different breed, and a more complicated question. During 1918 many of them died too).
Lea:
I think the jury is still out on whether he knew or didn’t know. I assume more facts will emerge on that over time, but we may never know the truth.
This article says Duncan rode with the woman in a cab, to the hospital. Nothing about an Ebola clinic. And he certainly doesn’t seem to have been the driver, or even necessarily aware of the type of hospital the driver took her to.
Much much information is missing here, and we don’t even know if the information we have is reliable.
I am ok with the jury being ‘out’ but he would have to have suspected it, as did most of his family.
I guess he could have been heavily in denial or possibly already delirious, like the guy from MN who died in Lagos.
Lea…
That fellow who died in Lagos urinated on the staffers.
They have subsequently all died.
He murdered them.
Based upon other evidences, he intended to infect as many Nigerians as he might.
He gave it hes best shot.
Folks, this is the kind of irrationality that must also be taken into account.
Death by ebola is a harsh one, and ‘acting out’ has to be considered when crafting protocols for individuals that might have been exposed.
Lea is right. All over the internet – blogs and forums – people truly seem to believe that you have to share needles or have nasty sex with someone to contract ebola (or, yes, possibly eat bats). There is downright smirking snark on the subject – basically, preteen-caliber speculation on whether the victim licked or rolled in ebola juice to get sick. Until people accept that ebola can be spread by merely touching an ebola victim, or some items that were in contact with one, this dangerous misconception will continue and will get people killed before this is all done. This virus doesn’t care if it’s in a first-world country – it requires only a few particles to infect. A typical dying or dead ebola victim is an ebola virus bomb with countless ebola virus particles.
Neo…
It’s apparent by final stage antics, that raving victims are more than capable of infecting those nearby — even if they are dancing to get out of line of fire.
Ebola is such a traumatic death that it’s more towards being taken over by Aliens — per the movie:
Aliens (1984)
At some point, I should think a mercy would be opiate overdosing. No-one is ever reported to come back beyond a certain point.
Indeed, irrational cross-contamination has been observed.
One homosexual in San Francisco was later determined to be the sole source node for 40% of all HIV fatalities. He was an early in victim — and took out his plaint upon every homosexual he could bed before the larger gay community realized what was up.
His antics were only discovered way, way, too late; some sort of death bed confession, IIRC.
He rationalized his acts as forcing straights into discovering a cure. Upon reflection, he must be judged insane.
In all of our protocols, we scarcely account for crazed vectors — who truly do function like high speed zombies.
The entire Jungian archetype of a zombie most likely hails out of our ancient past where clan members have to dissociate from a contagious and dying soul.
This would absolutely take on the character of ‘fleeing from zombies.’
It’s of significance that in all zombie pictures the living are to NEVER touch a zombie. Very Jungian, indeed.
Likewise, there is a natural revulsion against dead animals that we did not kill ourselves. This tick is so ancient that it’s found in most mammals.
All of the CDC happy talk is of the worst sort. For it sets up the general public for a universal panic. The CDC is impeaching its credibility — exactly when it needs it the most. ‘Tis a most dangerous practice, indeed.
No doubt, we’re been tooled by knaves and fools.
I’m amazed CDC and the medical community has been caught so flat-footed. They’ve known about ebola for a long time, long before this current outbreak in West Africa. They’ve known how virulent it is –and how deadly, and horribly deadly– for many years. That’s what the movie Outbreak (1995) was really based on, was it not? They made it a fictional virus, but it seemed to be modeled on ebola. So I’d assumed they were long-prepared and had protocols in place, and especially since this outbreak in West Africa. Apparently not.
“That fellow who died in Lagos urinated on the staffers.”
Oh yeah I am well aware. I may be charitable in this but am assuming this was a result of the disease or possibly fever, not normal behavior. That’s what I was trying to say.
Neo says the Liberian death rate of (only) 3000 dead in 10 months argues against aerosolized spread of Ebola. Yeah, sure, all good Liberians have their dog tags sent straight to Monrovia.
We do not have a clue as to what the actual mortality has been.
G Joubert,
I find it impossible to believe the cdc has been caught flat footed. The protocols for responding to epidemics have been well know for centuries. And beginning in the early 20th century they became more refined. Here in the 21st century all advanced nations have medical systems that have the knowledge and resources to respond to a panademic. Dear leader’s cdc knows what should be done. They have orders to stand down and placate the public with false assertions that all is under control. That is how we have a cdc that claims banning flights/passengers out of west Africa would help spread ebola.
Don Carlos:
Understood that of course, if the death rate is being lied about or mistaken, and it’s really much higher, it becomes more likely that there is a way to spread it that’s more efficient.
But we have no evidence of that. We have to work with the statistics available. We can speculate on anything we want, but we can’t draw conclusions from it because it’s just conjecture.
By the way, I didn’t say that 3K was the death rate in Liberia. I said it was the death rate in 10 months of the epidemic in West Africa. I am basing that on WHO’s statistics, which of course may be incorrect. But they’re all we’ve got.
Don, lest we forget: the vast bulk of the dead passed on in the last three weeks.
In the beginning it was but a trickle — in the sticks. The local population thereabouts would be so low that the mechanism of transmission figures to be kin.
It’s my understanding that burial practices — especially Muslim burial practices — are sure to pass on ebola. You can Google them up, but in a nut shell, the Muslim practice is for a family member to enrobe the deceased in a highly intimate manner. Should the dead be infected with ebola, the virus would surely pass on.
At some point, some poor infected soul reached a formal health facility — and Hell broke loose. Normal hospital/ clinic protocols are totally wrong for something as contagious as late stage ebola.
By the time the experts realized what was up, ebola was on a roll.
The rate of cross transmission has been exploding upwards as the victims skew towards towns and cities. The exponential — itself — has been ramping up!
It’s in a target rich environment so that it’s jumping off into 2.5 fresh victims in each cycle. The pandemic is not only accelerating, it’s accelerating at an accelerating pace!
One dares imagine what must transpire if ebola hits the big cities. T.E.D. may have infected more than ten souls. Yiikes!
As noted by other posters, Dallas authorities are as witless as the Three Stooges. They put the Z team on the job.
Ebola vomitous requires a haz-mat team, not a CraigsList contact.
Leaving T.E.D.’s relatives in proximity to his dirty laundry — WHAT were they thinking?
Quarantine without food. (!)
WHAT were they thinking?
&&&
One can only imagine the cluster-foul-up certain to occur when the US Army sends line troops into the Hell zone.
As Spanish flu showed, military formations — by their nature — propagate contagion like no tomorrow!
The ONLY US Army formation that has the least bit of a chance is one that is steeped in bio-warfare protocols.
(In the US Army, that normally meant that atomic weapons should be promptly launched against the Warsaw Pact. Heh.)
&&&
T.E.D. is only the first of our leakers.
Each one that gets inside America is going to drain the ‘system’ until it implodes.
This one victim is tying up an astonishing amount of talent.
In the meantime, a cure is still months away. The way this critter is morphing, it may be forever a moving target.
“We love you so dearly, yeah,” one man wearing rubber gloves told her from a safe distance. “We want to take care of you. Have you been playing with your friends here?”
What an absolutely frightening experience for that young girl – first her mother dies, then no one wants to touch her, and finally she has strangers in protective gear following her and “sweet-talking” her trying to catch her.
I don’t want to get all conspiracy theory here, but I’m finding it hard to square the official method of contraction with the fast spread of this disease.
There are too many stories of health care professionals, people who ought to know safety procedures, contracting the disease.
I’m guessing that this strain(s) isn’t like the others that the CDC have studied. Considering Ebola’s mutability, that doesn’t see too farfetched to me.