CDC attempting to contact all passengers on Frontier Airlines flight
The second Texas nurse diagnosed with Ebola was on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas when she was considered contagious.
The woman is now in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
The CDC is now attempting to contact all the passengers on the Frontier Airlines flight to determine if they may have been exposed to the disease.
“As of right now we do not have a case of Ebola in Ohio, but we are going to be working to identify any close contacts that the individual was in contact with in the state,” Dr. Mary DiOrio of the Ohio Department of Health told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“We would recommend that anyone who has had contact with an individual with Ebola and they have symptoms, that they be in contact with their doctor at that time,” DiOrio added.
The CDC issued the following statement:
“On the morning of Oct. 14, the second healthcare worker reported to the hospital with a low-grade fever and was isolated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that the second healthcare worker who tested positive last night for Ebola traveled by air Oct. 13, the day before she reported symptoms.
Because of the proximity in time between the evening flight and first report of illness the following morning, CDC is reaching out to passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth Oct. 13.
CDC is asking all 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth on October 13 (the flight route was Cleveland to Dallas Fort Worth and landed at 8:16 p.m. CT) to call 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). After 1 p.m. ET, public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight, answering their questions, and arranging follow up. Individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored.
The healthcare worker exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew. Frontier is working closely with CDC to identify and notify passengers who may have traveled on flight 1143 on Oct. 13. Passengers who may have traveled on flight 1143 should contact CDC at 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636).”
Frontier Airlines added this statement:
“At approximately 1:00 a.m. MT on October 15, Frontier was notified by the CDC that a customer traveling on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth on Oct. 13 has since tested positive for the Ebola virus. The flight landed in Dallas/Fort Worth at 8:16 p.m. local and remained overnight at the airport having completed its flying for the day at which point the aircraft received a thorough cleaning per our normal procedures which is consistent with CDC guidelines prior to returning to service the next day. It was also cleaned again in Cleveland last night. Previously the customer had traveled from Dallas Fort Worth to Cleveland on Frontier flight 1142 on October 10.
Customer exhibited no symptoms or sign of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew. Frontier responded immediately upon notification from the CDC by removing the aircraft from service and is working closely with CDC to identify and contact customers who may traveled on flight 1143.
Customers who may have traveled on either flight should contact CDC at 1 800 CDC-INFO.
The safety and security of our customers and employees is our primary concern. Frontier will continue to work closely with CDC and other governmental agencies to ensure proper protocols and procedures are being followed.”
Credit to Infowars
Medical staff monitor passengers’ body temperatures with a thermal camera Oct. 10, 2014, at Skopje Airport in Macedonia, where medical controls were enhanced after a British man died with Ebola-like symptoms.
Georgi Licovski / EPA
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security have rolled out new measures over the past few days to screen for Ebola among travelers arriving from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. But some public health experts say such steps have done little to stop deadly viruses from crossing borders in past outbreaks, and may be more about reassuring the public that something is being done.
A handful of airports — including New York City’s John F. Kennedy, Chicago-O’Hare, Atlanta, Newark and Washington-Dulles — receive 94 percent of the travelers from three West African countries where the most recent outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 4,000 people, according to the CDC.
At those airports, all passengers coming from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa are receiving an extra layer of screening starting this week. They will be pulled aside and observed for signs of illness, asked questions about their potential exposure to the Ebola virus and given information about symptoms. If they appear ill, medical staff will take their temperatures with a noncontact thermometer — and those who have a fever will be quarantined and tested for Ebola.
“We work to continuously increase the safety of Americans,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said. “We believe these new measures will further protect the health of Americans, understanding that nothing we can do will get us to absolute zero risk until we end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.”
However, a number of public health experts say such fever screening in recent years has not been very effective at stopping the spread of diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and swine flu. And Ebola’s long incubation period makes the situation even more difficult, as those who have it often do not show symptoms like a fever for days or weeks.
“What the studies show is that [fever screening is] not very effective, though it occasionally picks up somebody who might have the infection,” said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who coordinated the World Health Organization’s global response to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003. “The problem is that many of these people cross the border when they’re in the incubation period” and don’t yet have fevers, he said, so the thermal screening might give health officials a false sense of security.
Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola last week at a Dallas hospital, came to Texas from Liberia after receiving the same screening that thousands of other West Africans did — but he did not show signs of the disease until days after he arrived.
“We’ve learned in the past that borders cannot stop all disease,” Heymann said.
While thermal scanning technology may be good at detecting fevers — though some studies have called into question their ability to do even that — a fever obviously does not necessarily indicate the presence of the Ebola virus.
In the past two months, exit screening of the estimated 36,000 air passengers who have traveled outside of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone resulted in 77 people being barred from their flights. But none of those 77 had Ebola, according to the CDC. Many had malaria, which is only spread by mosquitoes.
Also, experiences with past epidemics have shown that efforts to contain them using thermal screening at airports were not entirely effective.
For example, in Canada — where there were 438 probable SARS cases, including 44 deaths, in 2003 — airports in Toronto and Vancouver used thermal scanners to take some 2.4 million people’s temperatures that year. While 832 were referred for further testing, none of them had SARS, Canada’s public health agency said in a paper assessing lessons learned from the epidemic.
“In other countries, the yields for airport screening measures were similarly low,” the paper said.
“Unfortunately, the experience with SARS was that it was pretty worthless,” said Arthur Reingold, professor and head of epidemiology at U.C. Berkeley’s School of public health. “Clearly, fever-screening will not pick up all the fevers. It only picks up those who aren’t taking any medications at all.”
In other words, sick people often take over-the-counter medications to lessen their symptoms when they are traveling, and people who may unknowingly have Ebola could do the same.
However, both Heymann and Reingold agree that airport screening is critically important for public health awareness purposes — it will help travelers be able to recognize whether they have Ebola symptoms, and instill the importance of seeking medical treatment and telling clinicians if they have been to West Africa.
“If it picks up one case and it keeps one case from spreading to others, it may be considered a good investment in a rich country,” Heymann said, adding that the crucial element will be what the screeners do with those who do have fevers.
“A lot of what’s done in various places you could say is overkill, or is erring on the side of caution,” Reingold said. “Decontaminating around someone’s home is almost certainly not of any benefit except in terms of public reassurance,” he said, referring to the cleanup of the area around the apartment where Duncan had been staying. “But is public reassurance important? Yes, public health reassurance is important.”
Credit to Common Sense
Is the stock market about to crash? Hopefully not, and there definitely have been quite a few "false alarms" over the past few years. But without a doubt we have been living through one of the greatest financial bubbles in U.S. history, and the markets are absolutely primed for a full-blown crash. That doesn't mean that one will happen now, but we are starting to see some ominous things happen in the financial world that we have not seen happen in a very long time. So many of the same patterns that we witnessed just prior to the bursting of the dotcom bubble and just prior to the 2008 financial crisis are repeating themselves again. Hopefully we still have at least a little bit more time before stocks completely crash, because when this market does implode it is going to be a doozy.
The following are 9 ominous signals coming from the financial markets that we have not seen in years...
#1 By the time the markets closed on Monday, we had witnessed the biggest three day decline for U.S. stocks since 2011.
#2 On Monday, the S&P 500 moved below its 200 day moving average for the first time in about two years. The last time this happened after such an extended streak of success, the S&P 500 ended up declining by a total of 22 percent.
#3 This week the put-call ratio actually moved higher than it was at any point during the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. This is an indication that there is a tremendous amount of fear on Wall Street right now.
#4 Everybody is watching the VIX at the moment. According to the Economic Policy Journal, the VIX has now risen to the highest level that it has been since the heart of the European debt crisis. This is another indicator that there is extraordinary fear on Wall Street...
US stock market volatility has jumped to the highest since the eurozone debt crisis, according to a closely watched index, the the CBOE Vix index of implied US share price volatility.
It jumped to 24.6 late on Monday and is up again this morning. On Thursday, it was as low as 15.
That's a very strong move, but things have been much worse. At height of the recent financial crisis – the Vix index peaked at 80.1 in November 2008.
Could we get there again? Yeah.
#5 The price of oil is crashing. This also happened in 2008 just before the financial crisis erupted. At this point, the price of oil is now the lowest that it has been in more than two years.
#6 As Chris Kimble has pointed out, the chart for the Dow has formed a "Doji Star topping pattern". We also saw this happen in 2007. Could this be an indication that we are on the verge of another stock market crash similar to what happened in 2008?
#7 Canadian stocks are actually doing even worse than U.S. stocks. At this point, Canadian stocks have already dropped more than 10 percent from the peak of the market.
#8 European stocks have also had a very rough month. For example, German stocks have already dropped about 10 percent since July, and there are growing concerns about the overall health of the German economy.
#9 The wealthy are hoarding cash and precious metals right now. In fact, one British news report stated that sales of gold bars to wealthy customers are up 243 percent so far this year.
So what comes next?
Some experts are saying that this is the perfect time to buy stocks at value prices. For example, USA Today published a story with the following headline on Tuesday: "Time to 'buy' the fear? One Wall Street pro says yes".
Other experts, however, believe that this could represent a major turning point for the financial markets.
Just consider what Abigail Doolittle recently told CNBC...
Technical strategist Abigail Doolittle is holding tight to her prediction of market doom ahead, asserting that a recent move in Wall Street's fear gauge is signaling the way.
Doolittle, founder of Peak Theories Research, has made headlines lately suggesting a market correction worse than anyone thinks is ahead. The long-term possibility, she has said, is a 60 percent collapse for the S&P 500.
In early August, Doolittle was warning both of a looming "super spike" in the CBOE Volatility Index as well as a "death cross" in the 10-year Treasury note. The former referenced a sharp move higher in the "VIX," while the latter used Wall Street lingo for an event that already occurred in which the fixed income benchmark saw its 50-day moving average cross below its 200-day trend line.
Both, she said, served as indicators for trouble ahead.
So what do you think?
Are we about to witness a stock market crash and another major financial crisis?
Or is this just another "false alarm" that will soon fade?
Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...
Credit to Economic Collapse
