Posted on 10/17/2014 12:14:17 PM PDT by Dave346
As the U.S. military rushes to combat Ebola in West Africa, soldiers are receiving on-the-fly instructions on how to protect themselves against the deadly virus.
American military operations to fight Ebola in Africa are unfolding quickly—forcing the military to come up with some procedures and protocols on the fly.
Soldiers preparing for deployment to West Africa are given just four hours of Ebola-related training before leaving to combat the epidemic. And the first 500 soldiers to arrive have been holing up in Liberian hotels and government facilities while the military builds longer-term infrastructure on the ground.
For soldiers at Fort Campbell and Fort Bragg preparing for their deployments to West Africa, Mobile Training Teams from the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), based out of Fort Detrick, have been tasked with instructing them on Ebola protocols.
A team of two can train as many as 50 personnel over that four-hour time frame, USAMRIID told The Daily Beast. The training includes hands-on instruction on how to put on, remove, and decontaminate personal protective equipment, followed by a practical test to ensure that soldiers understand the procedures.
“All training is tiered to the level of risk each person may encounter,” said USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden.
The training process sounds daunting: One USA Today report described soldiers being told that Ebola “basically causes your body to eat itself from the inside out” and that Ebola is “worse” than what soldiers encountered in Afghanistan. Others reportedly heard that the disease is “catastrophic” and “frightening… with a high fatality rate,” though the chances of contracting it are low.
“I’ll be honest with you,” one soldier told the newspaper. “I’m kind of scared.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
In my non-medical opinion, the simple instructions that the troops are getting to protect themselves against ebola are probably reasonably effective. The problem with ebola, particularly in Africa, was that people probably weren’t even getting minimum instructions to protect themselves against ebola.
As an analogy, the Constitution’s prohibitions on the federal government’s powers are relatively simple and can fit on two pages, citizens easily reading the two pages in minutes. But as a consequence of widespread ignorance of the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers, just as with the widespread ignorance of the simple rules for preventing ebola, just look at the political problems and injustice that blissful ignorance of the Constitution has caused in the states.
I’m sure this question must have been asked before, so forgive me for asking it again. But we have a national medical service, complete with uniforms. Why then are we sending soldiers to fight an epidemic disease? Maybe we should send our uniformed national medical service to fight ISIS.
We have a medical service that does large construction projects in foreign lands, and handles large logistics and supply missions?
Apparently we do now.
Not that anyone else can see, what are you talking about?
I’m not sure what I could have said differently to make it clearer to you, or the anyone else you’re speaking for. Trying again, in other words, I’m saying that we should be using our armed forces for armed forces kind of jobs, like killing people who behead our citizens and have declared war on us, and that we should be using our medical services for medical missions.
Read post 16, the military is doing what they are trained to do.
Are you under the impression that we are sending infantry over to give shots and take temperatures?
I have read post 16 again. Read post 26 again.
So far you are clueless on what our troops will be doing in Africa and why it is exactly what they do, and instead seem to think that they will be doing work that they don’t do, and you want civilian medical people to become combat troops in the Middle East.
Perhaps you are so busy being cutesy, that you aren’t making any sense whatsoever.
How could you call me clueless after I’ve read post 16 twice now?
Military has ability to build infrastructure and run hospitals why?
Now you want to know why the military can build things, and can have hospitals?
No, I want you to know why the military can build things and run hospitals.
And that's he crux of the issue.
These troops are NOT supposed to be treating the sick or coming in close contact by plan.
But Liberia is one giant, seething cauldron of Ebola puss and sh!t. You can't help but get some on you.
When US Soldiers start dying of this, and they WILL, I hope somebody is able to smuggle out pictures of their suffering for posting on the internet.
the tried and true way to not get ebola in liberia is to not go to liberia
You aren’t making any sense, but go ahead and tell us why the military can build things and has military hospitals, something that we all know, but perhaps don’t know the origins and history of
It's called "combat engineering."
Nobody can build infrastructure like roads, hospitals, dormitories, water and power utilities as fast as our military.
The military also runs 54 military hospitals, and vastly more clinics, and of course wartime field operations.
Wife just did her training...77 pages from the CDC. It was convoluted and retarded.
What "implies" that?
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