a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by cgod
cgod  ·  3695 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thomas Eric Duncan received delayed, incompetent treatment at Dallas hospital  ·  

Almost no one in the lower classes gets paid sick days.

Almost everyone who works food service is a one paychecks loss away from not making rent.

A large number of Americans have no health insurance, especially those at the bottom of the pay scale (no Obamacare hasn't cured this ill).

Worst case. An immigrant with no health insurance gets Ebola. She can't miss a shift or her boss at her "work at will" state job will fire her. She is illegal or carries a green card and has a naturally justified fear of the authorities which add to her desire to avoid anywhere that documents her existence, like a hospital. On Saturday she starts to feel ill but goes to her job at a local fast food chain because she needs to survive and provide for her family, infects countless customers.

She feels bad on Sunday but gets up for church anyway because it's where part of her support network and she needs that right now. Hope she doesn't take the blood of christ, but yea now her church has been hit up. Her household is infected now, probably her kids maybe some other poor workers who go to their own service jobs.

By the end of the night she realizes that she can't take it and needs to get help. She goes to the emergency room where she sits and waits for hours watching dozens of people including lots of health workers walk by, more infections.

Hope they can trace everyone of those contacts. Our worst case peril is defined by the most vulnerable people in our society. Peoples inability to take a day off when they are sick and see a doctor without major financial meltdown could put us in real danger. If the hospital and health officials who get involved with a case aren't on the top of their game than we could see a great deal of misery.

Hope it's goes better than it has in Dallas. Sick of the hubris, the it can't happen here attitude I keep hearing officials repeat. These motherfuckers need to read some Greek plays, hubris is a killer. We have a system that gives little help or mercy to people at the bottom, and regardless of how great our health care is for those at the top the top isn't what will define how we handle this danger.