The family of the first person to die of Ebola in the U.S. is upset with the patient’s medical care, and called his treatment "unfair."
Thomas Eric Duncan, who is from Liberia, died today after being infected with the Ebola virus. He had been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, since his diagnosis on Sept. 28.
Duncan’s nephew Joe Weeks told ABC News he felt Duncan had “unfair” medical treatment. Weeks suggested that Duncan did not get the same treatment being given to Ebola patient Ashoka Mukpo in a Nebraska hospital, although he did not detail that alleged difference.
He said the family questioned why Duncan was not moved to Emory University Hospital, where two American health workers were successfully treated after becoming infected with Ebola in Liberia.
“No one has died of Ebola in the U.S. before. This is the first time,” Weeks told ABC News. “We need all the help we can get.”
Weeks said hospital officials told the family they had all the experience needed to treat Duncan.
Weeks also said the family was frustrated that Duncan was not given donated blood from Ebola survivors. Weeks said hospital officials told the family "that the blood wasn’t a match."
Two other Ebola patients being treated in the U.S. were given donated blood from Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, in the hopes that Ebola antibodies can be passed on from the donor to the patient.
There is no confirmed treatment for Ebola and blood donation from Ebola survivors is one approach recommended by the World Health Organization.
Although Weeks told ABC News he was unhappy with medical treatment, other relatives thanked the local community for their support.
Louise Troh, the mother of Duncan’s teenage son and the woman referred to as his wife by family members, released a statement thanking Dallas and local community leaders for their help during this ordeal.
“Without their help, I can’t imagine how we could have endured,” wrote Troh.
But Troh also said the trusts that "a thorough examination will take place" into Duncan's care.
Troh’s son with Duncan, Karsiah Duncan, 19, had been hoping to see his father, but was unable to see him in the isolation ward before he died.
Calls and emails to the hospital were not immediately answered.
The young man standing on a Hong Kong street corner early Friday afternoon had much in common with the pro-democracy protesters who had blockaded major avenues for the past week: Cheerful and eager to help passers-by, he was a recent college graduate with friends at the barricades downtown.
But unlike the protesters, the young man wore a dark blue police uniform, and had a police officer’s cap clipped to his belt. And like many officers here, he felt mounting frustration not only with the protesters, whom he blamed for his long hours, but also with the government, which he blamed for holding the police back while taking a wait-them-out approach to the protesters.
“I have to work 15- or 16-hour shifts, with very little rest,” the young man complained, insisting on anonymity because he did not have permission to speak with a journalist. “I think we are much more lenient than other countries. What we should do is not let the demonstrators leave because they are taking shifts and going home, eating meals and sleeping; if we don’t let them leave, the protests will wither away quickly.”
Asked what he would do if he found himself in a police line facing a protester who was a friend from college, his answer was crisp and unhesitating: “If anyone I know confronts me, I’ll do my job.”
As the protests here enter their second week, the tactics of the Hong Kong police force have come under intense scrutiny. Some pro-democracy critics describe as unwarranted the use of dozens of tear gas grenades last Sunday on unarmed protesters — the first use of tear gas in Hong Kong since protests against a World Trade Organization meeting here in 2005. The critics also contend that the police did not respond fast enough to defend protesters at one location on Friday evening from an angry crowd, possibly with links to organized crime, that pushed and even hit protesters while accusing them of disrupting business.
Others say the police have not been aggressive enough in stopping protesters from illegally closing off roads to traffic for a week. And others have wondered where the sympathies of the police lie in a city that heavily favors democracy, but is deeply divided on the tactics needed to pursue that goal.
Little has been heard from the officers themselves, largely because they have been ordered not to speak to the news media.
But in separate interviews without the knowledge or consent of police officials, six current and former officers spoke of the frustration that they and many others on the force felt at bearing the brunt of the protesters’ anger, and at having their hands tied by a government policy that eschews confrontation, at least for now. With the exception of Steve Vickers, a former head of police criminal intelligence, they all spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Among the specific complaints of the police: that protesters have been allowed to shout at them and poke them with the umbrellas that have become a symbol of their protest.
Officers are also upset that protesters have been allowed to block roads with more than 1,000 barricades that belong to the police.
Officers had hurriedly abandoned the barricades, made either of steel or of red and white heavy-duty plastic, when the government abruptly ordered most police officers off the streets on Monday after the controversy that erupted over the use of tear gas. They have largely remained off the streets ever since.
“It is difficult for us when we see the law broken,” said one officer.
But tempering such anger is a wariness of being involved in a political dispute at all. “We are a law enforcement agency, it should not be us,” the officer added.
Mr. Vickers, who was the force’s head of criminal intelligence before Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 and is now the chief executive of a risk mitigation company here, said that concern is widespread. “The police view this as a political situation and are hoping for a political solution,” he said, adding that, “if they’re given solid political backing, I’m pretty sure they’ll clear the demonstrators.”
Until the disturbances of the past week, the Hong Kong police had a global reputation for effective crowd control. In 2003, a pro-democracy crowd estimated at 350,000 by police and at over 500,000 by organizers boiled through downtown streets but caused no property damage, and not a single arrest was made. Police officers stayed polite and even friendly while also making sure that protesters followed their designated route through the heart of downtown.
Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the time, remarked in an official visit here soon afterward that the Hong Kong police had set new standards for managing large crowds of protesters, and that the United States was among the countries learning from their example.
With few exceptions, the police are not usually even armed, in good part because few criminals here carry guns. Hong Kong has some of the world’s most stringent gun control laws; possession of two or more bullets is punishable by a jail sentence of 18 months.
Violent skirmishes broke out between pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong and the men who tore down their encampments on Friday in the Mong Kok neighborhood.
Video by Jonah M. Kessel on Publish DateOctober 3, 2014. Photo by Wally Santana/Associated Press.
The police were forced to take a tougher stance with protesters last Sunday for fear that the crowd was about to topple barriers and cause a stampede that could injure protesters and officers alike, a police commander said. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said he ordered his officers to lob tear gas grenades over the front of a mostly peaceful crowd of more than 20,000 people because a small group of agitators at the front had nearly succeeded in pushing over steel police barriers.
Television footage does not show the interlocked barriers giving way, although people at the front of the crowd do appear to be scuffling with police and poking umbrellas at them.
Albert Cheng, a democracy advocate who is a former member of the Independent Police Complaints Council, a statutory agency created in 2009, said that the crowd had been peaceful and that the use of tear gas was excessive. He also questioned whether the police had given an audible warning to demonstrators before using it.
The commander said they had, and while the roar of the crowd might have mostly drowned it out, he believed those at the front would have heard the warning.
He said that his officers did not even have any tear gas grenades until he became worried about the steel barriers, and that he asked for his senior commander to authorize sending them from the Police Headquarters several blocks away.
After complaining of excessive force last Sunday, protesters were upset on Friday night about inadequate force being used against pro-Beijing counterdemonstrators who accosted them, hit them and allegedly groped some women students.
A Hong Kong government official said on Friday night that the police had made an intensive effort to protect protesters in the face of a very large, hostile crowd.
“There’s a ring of blue and white around the protesters, and bedlam everywhere else,” said the official, referring to the blue uniforms worn by most police officers and the white shirts worn by more senior officers.
DALLAS — Amid widening concern about Ebola across the United States, federal health officials said on Saturday that they had assessed more than 100 possible cases of the disease in recent weeks. But they have confirmed only one, in a Liberian man in Dallas, the first Ebola case diagnosed in this country.
The Dallas hospital where the Liberian man, Thomas E. Duncan, has been recovering changed the status of his condition on Saturday from serious to critical.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters that the Dallas case, as well as the spreading outbreak in West Africa, had increased attention about the virus among both the public and health workers.
“We have already gotten well over 100 inquiries of possible patients,” Dr. Frieden said. “We’ve assessed every one of those with local health departments and hospitals. And just this one patient has tested positive. We expect that we will see more rumors, or concerns, or possibilities of cases. Until there is a positive laboratory test, that is what they are – rumors and concerns.”
In those 100 inquiries, about 15 people were tested for Ebola, officials at the disease centers. In addition to doing their own testing on suspected cases, federal officials have helped more than a dozen laboratories around the United States do their own Ebola testing.
One of those cases took place at Howard University Hospital in Washington, which issued a statement on Saturday saying that, after working with the District of Columbia Health Department and the federal, disease centers, it had “ruled out” Ebola in a patient who was admitted on Thursday. The patient, who had traveled to Nigeria, had been placed in isolation “in an abundance of caution,” a statement by the university’s president, Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, said.
The Obama administration said Saturday that it had issued an emergency permit allowing an Illinois company to transport large quantities of potentially Ebola-contaminated material from the apartment where Mr. Duncan had stayed, as well as from the hospital where he is being treated, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The permit ends days of delays in disposing of the waste.
Federal officials said on Saturday that they had narrowed the pool of people who were at a risk of exposure because they had contact with Mr. Duncan while he was infectious to nine, all of whom are being closely monitored.
Initially, officials had reached out to 114 people in the Dallas area who potentially had direct or indirect contact with Mr. Duncan since he arrived in the city on Sept. 20. They have reduced that number to about 50 people – the nine at high risk because they had definite contact with Mr. Duncan and about 40 others considered at lower risk.
“We don’t know that they had contact, but because we’re not certain that they did not have contact, we will be monitoring them as well,” said Dr. Frieden. Some of those people included patients who traveled in the ambulance that had carried Mr. Duncan to the hospital before it was taken out of service and cleaned.
The nine people who were at the highest risk include Mr. Duncan’s girlfriend and three of her relatives, who stayed with him in their Dallas apartment, as well as medical workers.
On Friday, local officials moved the four people with whom Mr. Duncan had been staying. Amid criticism that health officials had delayed cleaning the apartment and that they had failed to properly care for the four people quarantined inside, workers in yellow protective suits began cleaning the unit in the Ivy Apartments on Friday.
The delay in cleaning the apartment was due in part to confusion and conflicting guidance over state and federal permitting. “This has been a paperwork nightmare,” said Michael S. Rawlings, the mayor of Dallas.
That bottleneck was just one of several problems connected with the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the country.
Texas Health Presbyterian sent Mr. Duncan home when he first came to its emergency room on Sept. 25 after health workers failed to consider the possibility that he had Ebola. On Friday, the hospital acknowledged that both the nurses and the doctors in that initial visit had access to the fact that he had arrived from Liberia but, for reasons that remain unclear, failed to act on that information.
After his release, Mr. Duncan exposed an unknown number of people to the virus, including several schoolchildren.
"It promises to be a stunning sight, even from the most light polluted cities," said NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak in a Red Orbit report. "I encourage everyone, especially families with curious children, to go out and enjoy the event."
During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth passes between the sun and moon, turning the moon a brilliant reddish shade. Some people claim they've seen a band of turquoise around the moon during past eclipses.
The turquoise shading is ozone and is only visible during the first and last minutes of totality and is best viewed through binoculars or a telescope, atmospheric scientist Richard Keen told Red Orbit.
Totality is expected to last from 6:25 a.m. until 7:24 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, reports Space.com. This is the second in a series of four lunar eclipses that will be visible from North America between 2014 and 2015, according to Sky and Telescope.
Below is a graphic that shows when your town can expect to see each phase of the lunar eclipse. To adjust the city, click on the bottom-right module and alter the information.
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Total eclipse of the moon underway over southern California as seen from Korea town ,west of downtown Los Angeles ,early on April 15, 2014. (Desiree Martin/AFP/Getty Images)
