MEGAN MCARDLE: Ebola And Politics Don’t Mix.

The CDC issued guidance on dealing with Ebola 2.5 months ago, and the hospital seems to have received it, because its staff were asking about African travel; Duncan appears to have lied about his contact with an infected woman. Perhaps the hospital should have assumed that anyone who had been to West Africa had Ebola, but first, I’d like to know whether that is a feasible use of hospital resources; and second, I have no evidence that this is what hospitals in other countries were doing in late September.

There seem to have been clear errors here: The initial intake worker failed to make clear to the team that the patient had been in Africa, and the nurse who caught Ebola likely failed to follow the protective gear protocol. But why assume this wouldn’t happen in a more centralized health care system? “A critical piece of information failed to be communicated effectively” is probably the single most common organizational failure, and no organization, no matter how dedicated or well organized, can say they never experience this problem. (Well, they can say it. But it will be a lie.)

I’m not saying that Texas Presbyterian didn’t make a mistake. In hindsight, the hospital probably should have immediately isolated a patient with a high fever who had just come from Africa, and it, and other hospitals, should learn from that. (In fact, I’d argue that they have). But this is not a problem that a more centralized system would have fixed, because the CDC guidelines do not call for it; they emphasize the danger of contact with the bodily fluids of an Ebola patient, which Duncan denied ever having.

There also appears to have been a failure with the protective gear, though I’m a little less sure of this; CDC seems to be inferring this from the fact that the nurse caught Ebola. But assuming that this is the case, how does a more centralized, egalitarian, government-financed health-care system prevent this?

Even talking about government-run healthcare makes all healthcare discussions political — that’s what government involvement in healthcare is. And, of course, Republicans must be called callous killers-of-children at all times, and under all circumstances.