Outside the Beltway

Outside the Beltway

Dallas Nurse Nina Pham Is Ebola Free

Doug Mataconis
17

Nina Pham, the first of two nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan to be diagnosed with Ebola has been declared virus free:

Nina Pham, the first nurse diagnosed with Ebola in the United States after caring for an infected patient in Dallas, has been declared “virus free,” officials at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said Friday morning.

Pham, 26, was treated at the facility, which has a special unit for patients who need advanced isolation and extended stays. Officials scheduled a news conference for 11:30 a.m. Friday and she is expected to be discharged.

Pham, the first person to contract the disease on U.S. soil, had been part of the team that treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who flew to Dallas last month before being diagnosed with Ebola. Duncan died days before it was announced that Pham had contracted the disease.

NIH director Francis S. Collins and Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were among those set to attend the news briefing.

Yesterday, the family of Amber Ray Vinson had reported that she too was free of the Ebola virus, but this has not been confirmed by medical authorities as of yet. However, outside of Mr. Duncan’s case, this is yet another in the line of successes that American doctors have had in treating this disease. Hopefully, that record will continue.

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17 responses to “Dallas Nurse Nina Pham Is Ebola Free”

  1. stonetools Avatar
    stonetools

    Thanks, NIH and CDC. And thanks, Obama.

  2. Ron Beasley Avatar
    Ron Beasley

    Emory University announced this morning Amber Ray Vinson is virus free but will remain in the hospital because of medical issues that resulted from her infection.

  3. stonetools Avatar
    stonetools

    Doug will never say it. But I’m betting that he is glad that the Obama Administration is in charge instead of a Republican Adminstration. This Administration, after a slow start, has been comnptent, professional, cool, and science-based, and has refused to sign on to the panic fomented by right wing media. Thanks once again, Obama.

  4. gVOR08 Avatar
    gVOR08

    @stonetools: I though better of the flippant reply I wrote about McCain and bombing. I’ll just say I also appreciate that we still have “No drama” Obama.

  5. C. Clavin Avatar
    C. Clavin

    I’m sure the Obama administration is lying about this…just as they are hiding dozens of other cases from us.

  6. Moosebreath Avatar
    Moosebreath

    @stonetools:

    While I think Matt Yglesias is overrated, here he nails it:

    “Journalists have systematic professional incentives to overreact. You don’t get ahead by writing boring stories, so you develop a nose for the provocative and start dealing in superlatives. Yet few people can make it through life acting purely out of cynicism. It helps enormously in this profession to be a genuine temperamental over-reactor. Certainly it’s helped me.

    The hot temperament consequently tends to dominate in the ranks of the media. And the media love nothing quite so much as a politician who shares their disposition. It’s not a coincidence that McCain is, on a durable basis, the media’s favorite senator.

    He approaches his job as if you gave a Senate vote to a cantankerous but sharp newspaper columnist. But that path was never available to a young African-American liberal from Chicago. The alternative to cool and cerebral was “angry” and radical, a non-starter with white America.

    But more than a political pose, an aversion to purely symbolic action has genuinely served Obama well at critical moments. Less cool heads would have abandoned Obamacare in January 2010. Obama persevered and it’s worked. Obama’s approach to the economy has been far from flawless, but it’s not a coincidence that the USA has performed better since 2008 than Europe or the United Kingdom and weathered its financial crisis far better than Japan did in the 1990s.”

  7. Stonetools Avatar
    Stonetools

    @Moosebreath:

    Sigh- so is the public going to reward quiet competence by returning a Democratic Senate majority? Well, let’s hope.

  8. Jenos Idanian #13 Avatar
    Jenos Idanian #13

    Nurse Pham seems like quite a lady. “I believe in the power of prayer because I know so many people all over the world have been praying for me… I join you in prayer now for the recovery of others.”

    I am also irritated that President Obama chose to make a photo op out of her recovery by giving her a big hug for the cameras. Cheap political theater…

  9. Tony W Avatar
    Tony W

    @Jenos Idanian #13: I believe the hug is a direct thumb-nose to Fox News viewers who think you can catch Ebola from a butterfly that was sneezed upon 50 miles away.

  10. Stonetools Avatar
    Stonetools

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Actually, I believe he is trying to show that Pham is fully recovered and can be hugged like any normal person, contrary to right wing propoganda that treats Ebola victims like plague carriers. So no, think of it as less a photo opp than as a PSA, needed to combat right wing lies.

  11. Tony W Avatar
    Tony W

    @Stonetools: I believe that too – just being snarky 🙂

  12. Jenos Idanian #13 Avatar
    Jenos Idanian #13

    @Stonetools: Actually, I believe he is trying to show that Pham is fully recovered and can be hugged like any normal person, contrary to right wing propoganda that treats Ebola victims like plague carriers.

    The CDC’s recommendation is for 21 days of quarantine.

    Ms. Pham was diagnosed on October 11.

    Even counting from the day she was diagnosed, that would be November 1 at the earliest.

    And… “like plague carriers?” Isn’t that pretty much correct?

  13. stonetools Avatar
    stonetools

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Dude, she was been tested by doctors and found ebola free. Give it up. Only right wing media sources think ebola can spread by hugging. Stop rotting your brain by reading those sources and crack a science book. Better still, check out the CDC ebola website. Your tax dollars at work. You’re welcome.

  14. lounsbury Avatar
    lounsbury

    @Jenos Idanian #13: it is 21 days of maximum time for the disease to develop, you sad git. You utterly misunderstood the information.

  15. PJ Avatar
    PJ

    @Stonetools:

    Actually, I believe he is trying to show that Pham is fully recovered and can be hugged like any normal person, contrary to right wing propoganda that treats Ebola victims like plague carriers. So no, think of it as less a photo opp than as a PSA, needed to combat right wing lies.

    Those idiots will for the next 21 days pray that Obama gets Ebola, after that they will start argue that Obama surviving the hug is proof that he has a secret Ebola vaccine that he’ll only give to Democrats and that the White House is planning to release the virus on the entire population in order to steal the 2016 election.

    The stupid is strong with Fox News viewers.

  16. Jenos Idanian #13 Avatar
    Jenos Idanian #13

    I can already see the bumper stickers now.

    “Have you hugged an Ebola patient today?”

    “Fight Ebola — hugs, not drugs!”

    They’ve recently announced that the Ebola virus can persist in certain bodily fluids for up to three months. The particular fluid cited was semen, so I don’t think that’s a concern with Ms. Pham, but it underscores that we don’t know everything about this disease. I thought the CDC would be inclined to err on the side of caution.

  17. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    @Jenos Idanian #13: This has been known for some time. I have no idea who you’re talking about having only recently announced it.

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