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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

That's an odd thing to say. We have one of the top healthcare systems in the world, and it's not perfect. If Nigeria can contain Ebola, the US certainly can.

There is no indication that it's changed to be more transmissible. Have you read the report that the Dallas nurses gave to the nurses union? Here it is, if you haven't:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-dallas-20141014-st...

It's a private hospital and is self-policing when it comes to preparing for and implementing CDC protocols. Based on the allegations, they clearly had not made the necessary preparations, so the nurses were very poorly protected and almost certainly came into contact with excretions from the patient. The fact that the nurses had to release this information via a union that didn't represent them because of fear of whistleblowing probably has a lot to do with how this situation came about.

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The U.S. is great in certain areas of Healthcare, but we have to look at our system with open eyes? What's surprised me for a long time is our hospitals are hotspots for the MRSA bacteria. Physicians, and nurses are still allowed to wear jewelry, and street clothes in most hospitals? I have seen doctors examining patients in three piece suits, with tie clips, wedding rings, watches, and that filthy iphone? I don't care how prestigious the Doctor is--change clothes. Personally, I think all hospital workers should be required to wear light weight disposable coveralls that are incinerated daily, or sooner? Plus, they should not wear their scrubs outside of the hospital. I have worn those disposable coveralls(like Painters, and Asbestos workers wear), and they are not as uncomfortable as they look. They are light weight and you forget you have it on. As to mucosal membrane protection, I wear a surgical mask while raking leafs--allergies. I wouldn't be offended if everyone entering a hospital was required to wear a surgical mask--including doctors, administration, janitors, and all visitors--Everyone--until they leave property grounds.

You're the second commenter I've seen today that seems to manually insert line breaks, resulting in what looks on my screen like a poem.

I don't mean this as a criticism about the content of you're message, but I'm just wondering why this happens. Are you commenting from an unusual type of browser, or are you manually adding hard returns, not realizing that simply writing and adding hard returns at logical points (rather than screen positions) is the best approach?

Either way, I strongly recommend you start avoiding the 'return' key except when you want to start a new line of thought (e.g. a paragraph). It would really make it easier for me and perhaps others to read your comment.

>top healthcare systems in the world

Americans actually believe this.

Purely anecdotal. It is not bad. It could be better sure. The times that a family member has been sick and taken to an emergency room everybody has done their part to nurse them back to health.

Unfortunately there are always incompetent nurses, staff, and probably even doctors that hide among the competent. You always find a couple of them in the hospital. Thankfully I've only ever encountered incompetent nurses, or nurse aids. Especially nurse aids. Doctors have been OK.

They are really hard to get rid off because they do just enough to not get fired. They also work really hard to mask their mediocrity.

Of course, I have not been able to experience the health care of other countries so there is a chance that USA's health care is worse than I think. I'll be extremely happy once we are able to automate health care.

Systems, maybe not, but we definitely have the best researchers and minds in the field.

Duncan's lab samples were sent through the usual hospital tube system “without being specifically sealed and hand-delivered. The result is that the entire tube system … was potentially contaminated,” they said.

/Facepalm

Indeed. When Emory, one of the 4 specialist hospitals with 3 beds set up for pathogens like this, received their first Ebola patient, they quickly realized sending samples to their main lab was a non-stater. One "oops" and you'd have to shut it down for decontamination, while your other patients are left hanging. This Dallas hospital is rather large at 900 beds, so that would be ... bad.

Great link, though it contradicts the assertion that we have one of the top healthcare systems in the world.

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