Can the US handle an epidemic?

[blackribbon]

A person with ebola isn't going to feel well enough to go out anywhere in public...they will die at home if they continue to believe that they don't want to use traditional medicine....the death would then have to be reported and investigated and the family and home quarantined until they get through the incubation periods. Most people do go to the hospital when they realize their homemade treatments aren't working.... (plus remember, only 2 people in the whole US caught it here...and they were both nurses caring for patients with it)

As for those "measles outbreaks" .... 2017 involved 61 people ... 2016 involved 70 people...and the bad year was 2014 where 667 people in the entire US had measles (to put this in perspective, there are many high schools that have more than 700 students in a single building and the US has a population of 340 million) 383 of those 667 cases were in a single Amish community that was unvaccinated. Unless you spend a whole lot of time hanging around in Amish communities, you were probably very safe as you are today...especially if you are vaccinated yourself. Exposure to an unvaccinated person will not cause someone to suddenly lose their immune status, even if they are sick.

I think that both the ebola "outbreak" in the US and these few measles "outbreaks" actually prove we can handle outbreaks and contain them very quickly.

Oh...in those horrible outbreaks listed, only one person died of measles in 2014. None since that and prior to that one death in 2014, no deaths since 2003.

Now 610,000 people die a year of heart disease in the US....76,000 die of diabetes a year ... and 45,000 people die of suicide. These are mostly all preventable deaths. Which epidemic should really worry us more?

 

[MorkandMindy]

... sorry had to shorten it a bit...The difference is long waits, plain waiting rooms, and no pretty perks in the room (you prepay for your tv use if you want it). However, I watched the neighbor get the same quality cancer treatments as those with private insurance and the county even sent her to the specialized cancer hospital as my husband went to. Her payment plan was $25/month....most likely for the rest of her life but she lived and $25/month is affordable and reasonable for her limited income. The best trauma center is actually one of the county hospitals and I made it clear that if I ever needed it, I wanted to go to the county hospital for trauma care...just transfer me to a private hospital as soon as I was stable.

That's pretty much as it is in Britain, the private sector doesn't take emergency / trauma at all, and the TVs in the private sector are free, and hospital was a thing of beauty and the rooms are private though having stayed the night in one I have to say it was pretty impossible to sleep in.

The NHS 'ward' I saw where my friend was, was arranged around the outside edge of the hospital, around the windows, it had four beds all separated by storage areas, it didn't look as fancy but I suspect it was pretty similar to sleep in especially if one was feeling 'under the weather'.