The answer is simple. THPH is not a Level 4 CDC certified biosafety unit. Sure, Frieden now claims any ol’ hospital can handle Ebola. Well, yeah, because there’s nothing to handle aside from pushing fluids. It’s those other pesky little things like proper equipment and training that Frieden ignores. I suspect he knows it close to hitting the fan and his CDC doesn’t have the beds.
Isolation Unit Beds
2? - Emory, Atlanta
3 - The Care and Isolation Unit in Missoula, Montana, opened in 2005 by the National Institutes of Health to serve lab workers at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, hasn’t yet served an infectious disease patient, only a handful with tuberculosis or contagious bacterial infections. The rooms look like everyday hospital rooms—white, sterile, a TV and window for entertainment. That’s because St. Patrick Hospital retrofitted three of its ICU rooms to make the unit.
10 – Omaha, Nebraska Medical Center run twice yearly drills with decontamination at their hospital’s 10-bed biocontainment unit. Opened in 2005. Has never had an infectious disease patient. Prior to Dr. Sacra in Sept., the unit had only briefly housed one patient with malaria five years ago. Malaria does not require quarantine.
7 - NIH opened a seven-bed Special Clinical Studies Unit at the Clinical Research Center in Bethesda to replace it. Its four patient rooms (two doubles and a single). Bethesda unit has only served a patient with a drug-resistant bacterial illness. “It can handle the highest level of respiratory virus, but Ebola isn’t even spread that way,” said Richard Davey, deputy clinical director of NIH’s Division of Clinical Research.
? - US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) – Ft. Detrick, Maryland.
Firestone has proved that you don’t need a lot of high tech equipment to contain Ebola. They made their own designed containment unit and people wore chemical spill suits when treating their sick workers and their family members and stopped the disease from spreading.
That's not why CDC takes the following position:"(Question) Are U.S. hospitals ready to care for patients with Ebola virus disease (EVD)? (Answer) Yes – any U.S. hospital that is following CDC's infection control recommendations and can isolate a patient in a private room is capable of safely managing a patient with EVD. CDC recommends that U.S. hospitals isolate the patient in a private room and implement standard, contact, and droplet precautions.
They take that position because, in the absence of travel restrictions or quarantine at POEs, Ebola will be widespread in the USA and multiple hospitals at varying levels of preparedness will be dealing with it.
If the answer to "Are U.S. hospitals ready to care for patients with Ebola virus disease (EVD)?" is "no", then the whole open borders/free movement in the interior paradigm falls apart, and nobody of any importance in DC, Republican OR Democrat, wants THAT to happen.