More Ebola

Cajun is speculating that health care professionals may decide to stay home if ebola patients are brought to their hospital and they may have to be coerced into treating patients. I'm not sure.

I once attended a presentation about a subsea wellhead that was enclosed in a pressure vessel. The idea was that the wellhead would stay at atmospheric pressure and workers would lock into it via a submarine. I asked who he thought he could get who was willing to do that. His response was that people would do anything if the money was right. I didn't believe him until I spent some time in Houston a few years ago and saw how many people were signing up to drive trucks in Iraq during the First Gulf War. Halliburton was holding indoctrination sessions in the same hotel I was in and there were hundreds of people going through the training. All you need to do is offer enough money to get them on the right side of the risk/reward equation. Sorta like hazard pay.

In other news, a NY, NJ and IL have imposed a quarantine on incoming people from ebola countries. It is giving Obama fits and NY is now waffling by saying they can stay at home. A nurse that was quarantined in NJ is complaining about the violation of her personal freedoms but she is doing it only days after a doctor came down with the disease after he walked around NYC for several days. I don't think she will get much sympathy, especially if she also gets sick. (And I predicted there would be legal issues over personal freedoms and the requirements of a health emergency)

I am gobsmacked that a medical professional, who knows the risks better than anyone else, would have the arrogance to walk around in public until he was positive he was free of the virus. All medical workers who return to this country after working with ebola patients should expect to undergo quarantine upon arrival.