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 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:

To be fair there is none of that in the military. There is no doctor consultant nor will there ever be on. You get handed a bottle of pills and are to take until you are out of them. An if you have side effects your told to be quiet or lose rank. So you could see why some of us don't just take the experts at face value.

That's something I would have expected in WWI, not today. Institutionally the US military doesn't seem to treat its guys well at all though, or anyone for that matter.

I had nastyish side effects from Proguanil/Paludrine after 3-4 weeks in Afghan. I went to the med centre and a nurse instantly changed my prescription to doxy which I can tolerate. Professional and effective treatment with no issues with non compliance, exactly what should happen.

Indeed. Seems very unusual for a modern military from a first world country to not have access to healthcare for its own soldiers in the field.

Could maybe be due to differing cultures? Maybe we in the UK have less of that "suck it up" attitude?

 daedalus wrote:
Hey d, I think you misquoted me on that one.

Not a big deal, but in case the quote chain continues...

Fixed...I think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:

To be fair there is none of that in the military. There is no doctor consultant nor will there ever be on. You get handed a bottle of pills and are to take until you are out of them. An if you have side effects your told to be quiet or lose rank. So you could see why some of us don't just take the experts at face value.

That's something I would have expected in WWI, not today. Institutionally the US military doesn't seem to treat its guys well at all though, or anyone for that matter.

I had nastyish side effects from Proguanil/Paludrine after 3-4 weeks in Afghan. I went to the med centre and a nurse instantly changed my prescription to doxy which I can tolerate. Professional and effective treatment with no issues with non compliance, exactly what should happen.

Indeed. Seems very unusual for a modern military from a first world country to not have access to healthcare for its own soldiers in the field.

From everything I have heard every unit has a highly trained Motrin dispenser.

From everything I have heard every unit has a highly trained Motrin dispenser.

Pathetically that is about the most intelligence thing I have ever heard you say regarding the US Military.

However your still wrong. He/She is a highly trained Motrin dispenser that is able to fix pneumonia, broken legs, cancer and sucking chest wounds with nothing more then a pair of clean socks, water and some motrin.


Ohh sorry and important to note, off brand, because motrin is still to expensive.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:

To be fair there is none of that in the military. There is no doctor consultant nor will there ever be on. You get handed a bottle of pills and are to take until you are out of them. An if you have side effects your told to be quiet or lose rank. So you could see why some of us don't just take the experts at face value.

That's something I would have expected in WWI, not today. Institutionally the US military doesn't seem to treat its guys well at all though, or anyone for that matter.

I had nastyish side effects from Proguanil/Paludrine after 3-4 weeks in Afghan. I went to the med centre and a nurse instantly changed my prescription to doxy which I can tolerate. Professional and effective treatment with no issues with non compliance, exactly what should happen.

Indeed. Seems very unusual for a modern military from a first world country to not have access to healthcare for its own soldiers in the field.

Could maybe be due to differing cultures? Maybe we in the UK have less of that "suck it up" attitude?

At least with the US Army it can be weird. We often say there is a Big Army and Little Army. Big Army is the Pentagon and Division command, generally speaking they often care a lot about us but they do it in awkward ways sometimes. Little Army is like brigade and below level. That is where I often saw the bad stuff. Usually it was a brigade commander trying to be tough on their boys that stupid harmful things became policy. An it would infect those below them that also wanted to impress their bosses. Lucky for me, my deployment saw my company seperated from all other levels of command. So when doxy started to cause bad side effects they just told us to stop taking it.

 d-usa wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:

In November, the Army dropped the anti-malarial drug mefloquine. Users had complained the pill caused psychiatric symptoms ranging from nightmares, depression and paranoia to auditory hallucinations and mental breakdowns.

Which is better, 250 Marines having those above listed symptoms or possibly losing 1 guy to malaria for a bit?

It's almost like the process worked and the health branch of the military uses evidence based practice to continuously evaluate and alter their practice based on the latest evidence and risks.

But hey, keep on posting and you will get something right:

- claims there is no malaria in Afghanistan (false)
- claims there is zero malaria in these particular provinces (false)
- claims there are 150 cases of malaria in Florida (false, and the cases that did happen all came from foreign countries, including military members in foreign countries)
- claims there is no malaria in the desert (false)
- claims that no military members got malaria (false)

This is like a textbook case of why you leave public health to public health experts and epidemiology to epidemiologists.

Did you email the commandant with your concerns about the pills?

I think we have found our new rock for this thread.

In all fairness, doctors are not infallible:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/13/husband-declared-dead-twice-wife-sues/73909434/

There are enough horror stories about army medical care to give some level, however small to the chance Ghaz is right about where he was at.

I think the problem here is one of perception. D-and the like (whose position I agree with here, generally) perceives a troubling position from the opposite corner that seems to disregard scientific evidence. The other side, Gazz, and the like, are using their own experiences in the matter. I'm guessing (just a shot in n the dark here) is D is assuming that the Gazz's folks are anti science (no evolution, Big Bang, quantum mechanics, etc. and without a solid understanding of science) and Gazz's folks are a bit more nuanced in their beliefs.

See here's the thing: science doesn't care gak bull about what anybody thinks. It just is. What matters is who can communicate their positions the most effectively at any point in time to make others understand it. So, my liberal arts degree is needed after all.

(Ehh, D already did this better)

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
I think the problem here is one of perception. D-and the like (whose position I agree with here, generally) perceives a troubling position from the opposite corner that seems to disregard scientific evidence. The other side, Gazz, and the like, are using their own experiences in the matter. I'm guessing (just a shot in n the dark here) is D is assuming that the Gazz's folks are anti science (no evolution, Big Bang, quantum mechanics, etc. and without a solid understanding of science) and Gazz's folks are a bit more nuanced in their beliefs.

See here's the thing: science doesn't care gak bull about what anybody thinks. It just is. What matters is who can communicate their positions the most effectively at any point in time to make others understand it. So, my liberal arts degree is needed after all.

no, actually. My position is one that the CDC maps agrees with, if there isn't malaria in an area why were we forced to take pills that had terrible side effects?

I am well aware of the wonders of science, I am not some right wing nut job that thinks the world is a couple thousand years old, I am not a follower of the divine creations BS and I fully believe in evolution and Darwinism.

However, every single time I disagree with something that a doctor or scientist says is fact, you have people like D-USA coming on and trying to label me as that nut job who refuses to send his kids to school because they might teach them about evolution.

Just because a doctor says something is true does not make it true. The number of times I was told by doctors that I had a sprained ankle and needed to stop complaining about it would be astounding if it weren't for the number of other horror stories about healthcare in the military. (Btw my ankle was broken and im about to go in for my 2nd surgery to repair it, roughly 6 years after it was injured). So when I am told to take Anti-Malaria pills because im deploying to a part of Afghanistan that has zero reported cases of Malaria...because its a desert, I tend to take it with a grain of salt so to speak.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
However, every single time I disagree with something that a doctor or scientist says is fact, you have people like D-USA coming on and trying to label me as that nut job who refuses to send his kids to school because they might teach them about evolution.

D and myself aren't making you out to be a right wing nutjob, you're just wrong. Despite your attempt a few pages ago to drag politics in to this debate (which by the way, I'm still waiting for you find where I have professed support for either Clinton or Sanders), it really has feth all to do with it.

I mean, let's be honest here... you make this statement:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
Good for you, it was also a bunch of board certified retards....I mean doctors, including epidemiologists, who told the military it is a great idea to force feed troops anti malaria pills while they are deployed to afghanistan, even though the pills themselves caused significant health concerns.

Which when you were called out about it on another thread, you said this:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
Please continue to take my comments out of context

So what, exactly, is the context here that everyone is missing? Did you really expect people not to react to something as asinine as what you said?

It should also be noted that no one gives a gak about the fact that you took an anti-malaria pill because you were sent to country that is known to have malaria. Just because the place you were in has few, if any, confirmed cases of malaria, doesn't change the fact that you were sent to a country that has malaria. Of course, none of this has anything to do with this nurse suing because of the idiotic way she was handled after returning to the US.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
I think the problem here is one of perception. D-and the like (whose position I agree with here, generally) perceives a troubling position from the opposite corner that seems to disregard scientific evidence. The other side, Gazz, and the like, are using their own experiences in the matter. I'm guessing (just a shot in n the dark here) is D is assuming that the Gazz's folks are anti science (no evolution, Big Bang, quantum mechanics, etc. and without a solid understanding of science) and Gazz's folks are a bit more nuanced in their beliefs.

See here's the thing: science doesn't care gak bull about what anybody thinks. It just is. What matters is who can communicate their positions the most effectively at any point in time to make others understand it. So, my liberal arts degree is needed after all.

no, actually. My position is one that the CDC maps agrees with, if there isn't malaria in an area why were we forced to take pills that had terrible side effects?

I am well aware of the wonders of science, I am not some right wing nut job that thinks the world is a couple thousand years old, I am not a follower of the divine creations BS and I fully believe in evolution and Darwinism.

However, every single time I disagree with something that a doctor or scientist says is fact, you have people like D-USA coming on and trying to label me as that nut job who refuses to send his kids to school because they might teach them about evolution.

Just because a doctor says something is true does not make it true. The number of times I was told by doctors that I had a sprained ankle and needed to stop complaining about it would be astounding if it weren't for the number of other horror stories about healthcare in the military. (Btw my ankle was broken and im about to go in for my 2nd surgery to repair it, roughly 6 years after it was injured). So when I am told to take Anti-Malaria pills because im deploying to a part of Afghanistan that has zero reported cases of Malaria...because its a desert, I tend to take it with a grain of salt so to speak.

So basically, exactly what I said. D perceives you as anti-science and your position is a bit more nuanced.

I don't perceive him as anti-science.

I perceive him as a guy who thinks he knows what he is talking about despite multiple sources of data showing him that he was send to a country with malaria.

He's not anti-science, he's just wrong.

It really is as simple as that.

I generally don't bother fact checking Ghaz anymore - he's just going to shrug and move the goalposts or pretend he didn't say what he said - but you had a better chance of catching malaria in Afghanistan than Haiti.

However, this malaria digression does tie nicely into ebola.

 Ouze wrote:
I generally don't bother fact checking Ghaz anymore - he's just going to shrug and move the goalposts or pretend he didn't say what he said - but you had a better chance of catching malaria in Afghanistan than Haiti.

However, this malaria digression does tie nicely into ebola.

Just to play devil's advocate, there are these two articles about military anti malaria treatment:


http://www.army-technology.com/features/featuremefloquine-the-militarys-deadly-malaria-treatment-4402886/

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/09/19/elite-army-units-to-stop-taking-anti-malarial-drug.html

According to your article, it seems less than 100 cases of malaria cropped up in Afghanastan. Compare that to a potential of 10 percent of doses of anti malaria drug causing nasty side effects.
,

Yes, but now we're having a different argument as opposed to the original one ("not a single Marine in my unit got Malaria", and 2 pages of arguing about how rare it is).

In any event, this whole Malaria thing is totally off topic.

 Ouze wrote:
Yes, but now we're having a different argument.

You dang young uns make it hard to keep up. I shall find a shady tree without giant pine cones and rest under it. Carry on.

The thing the malaria discussion did illustrate, though, going by the linked articles in our posts is that medical knowledge is not cut and dried, even for something being worked on as long as Malaria, so a bit of caution without going into outright panic over Ebola is not necessarily a bad thing.

Relapse wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I generally don't bother fact checking Ghaz anymore - he's just going to shrug and move the goalposts or pretend he didn't say what he said - but you had a better chance of catching malaria in Afghanistan than Haiti.

However, this malaria digression does tie nicely into ebola.

Just to play devil's advocate, there are these two articles about military anti malaria treatment:


http://www.army-technology.com/features/featuremefloquine-the-militarys-deadly-malaria-treatment-4402886/

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/09/19/elite-army-units-to-stop-taking-anti-malarial-drug.html

According to your article, it seems less than 100 cases of malaria cropped up in Afghanastan. Compare that to a potential of 10 percent of doses of anti malaria drug causing nasty side effects.
,

The problem with the "malaria chemoprophylaxis is stupid because mefloquine has the potential for nasty side effects" argument is that mefloquine is not the drug everybody is taking.

Per DoD guidelines the frontline drug for chemoprophylaxis in areas with non-resistant malaria is chloroquine. In areas with resistant malaria the drugs of choice are either doxycycline (which I think is the drug most of our members on here are familiar with) or atovaquone-proguanil. Mefloquine is restricted to folks with an intolerance to the other first line drugs.

But looking at the whole thread so far the "the military is stupid for giving people doxy because mefloquine has bad side effects" argument is probably as reasonable as the "the military is stupid for making me take malaria chemoprohylaxis in a country with malaria" argument.

And to bring it back full circle to the topic of ebola:

At the beginning of this thread I thought that it was pretty silly for the military to pretty much put deployed units on a 21 day lockdown after returning from areas with ebola when either self monitoring or active surveillance has been proven to be an effective post-exposure surveillance method. But if there are more military folks that are convinced that they know more than...

 Ghazkuul wrote:
a bunch of board certified retards

...then the decision to keep them under quarantine starts to make more sense.

Relapse wrote:
so a bit of caution without going into outright panic over Ebola is not necessarily a bad thing.

And that ties us nicely right back to the first post, actually. The crux is whether not not a bit of caution went too far. I think the Ebola panic was clearly overblown, and I think the forced quarantine - after passing tests with no fever - was dumb.

While I'd greatly prefer to avoid "out of an abundance of caution" to become out next "for national security reasons" - i.e. spackling over reason and sense with a buzzword - I reiterate that I think she should lose her suit; as I think the state does and should have very wide latitude for quarantines, and that politically motivated stupidity is better resolved by the voters than by having the courts possibly tie the state's hands. I don't think she should have been quarantined just as strongly as I feel New Jersey had the right to, ultimately (which I know is sort of a fine distinction and probably puts me at odds with D and Scooty).

 Ouze wrote:

While I'd greatly prefer to avoid "out of an abundance of caution" to become out next "for national security reasons" - i.e. spackling over reason and sense with a buzzword - I reiterate that I think she should lose her suit; as I think the state does and should have very wide latitude for quarantines, and that politically motivated stupidity is better resolved by the voters than by having the courts possibly tie the state's hands. I don't think she should have been quarantined just as strongly as I feel New Jersey had the right to, ultimately (which I know is sort of a fine distinction and probably puts me at odds with D and Scooty).

Based on what we know today it was a dumb decision, but I also agree that we shouldn't punish people for decisions that were made in the past when their knowledge may have been different.

I think it should come down to specifically "why" the decision was made as well as determining if the implementation could have been better.

To find out "why" we will need to figure out what the communication and reasoning was between Christ Christie and the officials in his administration. If they can show that they made the decision because they thought that they were following what they thought were sound medical guidelines then they should have more leeway in implementing it. If they made the decision because they wanted to be seen as tough on Ebola and were playing a political game, then there should be consequences. I honestly think that the decision was based more on the later, but I also admit that it will likely be very hard to prove.

She could probably have better luck if she could push back about the implementation and I would imagine that even in New Jersey there was a hospital with a single isolation room somewhere in the state instead of having her sit in a tent somewhere, but I don't know if that will go anywhere either.

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I generally don't bother fact checking Ghaz anymore - he's just going to shrug and move the goalposts or pretend he didn't say what he said - but you had a better chance of catching malaria in Afghanistan than Haiti.

However, this malaria digression does tie nicely into ebola.

Just to play devil's advocate, there are these two articles about military anti malaria treatment:


http://www.army-technology.com/features/featuremefloquine-the-militarys-deadly-malaria-treatment-4402886/

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/09/19/elite-army-units-to-stop-taking-anti-malarial-drug.html

According to your article, it seems less than 100 cases of malaria cropped up in Afghanastan. Compare that to a potential of 10 percent of doses of anti malaria drug causing nasty side effects.
,

The problem with the "malaria chemoprophylaxis is stupid because mefloquine has the potential for nasty side effects" argument is that mefloquine is not the drug everybody is taking.

Per DoD guidelines the frontline drug for chemoprophylaxis in areas with non-resistant malaria is chloroquine. In areas with resistant malaria the drugs of choice are either doxycycline (which I think is the drug most of our members on here are familiar with) or atovaquone-proguanil. Mefloquine is restricted to folks with an intolerance to the other first line drugs.

But looking at the whole thread so far the "the military is stupid for giving people doxy because mefloquine has bad side effects" argument is probably as reasonable as the "the military is stupid for making me take malaria chemoprohylaxis in a country with malaria" argument.

And to bring it back full circle to the topic of ebola:

At the beginning of this thread I thought that it was pretty silly for the military to pretty much put deployed units on a 21 day lockdown after returning from areas with ebola when either self monitoring or active surveillance has been proven to be an effective post-exposure surveillance method. But if there are more military folks that are convinced that they know more than...

 Ghazkuul wrote:
a bunch of board certified retards

...then the decision to keep them under quarantine starts to make more sense.

Not stupid at all, since it was the drug of choice for a while before the side effects were finally recognized and accepted really not that long ago. You of all people on these boards realize we don't have complete knowledge of medicine. Was the Ebola coming back on that person a surprise? From what I understand it was. I don't think we should lock people down, but finding what constitutes reasonable caution with an illness can be tricky ground.
You do amazing things in your job and I am not going to get into an extended disagreement with you since you know much about medicine I will never learn. I do know enough, though to realize there are several schools of thought on treatments and preventative procedures for various infections.

Medicine is changing every day, and it is very true that we need to be able to be flexible and change with new knowledge. It is also true that the government is slower with those changes that they should be, no denying that from me.

My problem was more with the blanket statements that started popping up, that's all.

 d-usa wrote:
Medicine is changing every day, and it is very true that we need to be able to be flexible and change with new knowledge. It is also true that the government is slower with those changes that they should be, no denying that from me.

My problem was more with the blanket statements that started popping up, that's all.

One thing being part of the conversations on these boards is that blanket statements are in fact, not good. Many times in the past I had was what I took to be an infallible outlook, only to see it poked full of holes. The biggest one I remember having with you were the conversations on capital punishment and the food for thought you gave me. For those times, even though it doesn't't seem like it, I thank you.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think she should have been quarantined just as strongly as I feel New Jersey had the right to, ultimately (which I know is sort of a fine distinction and probably puts me at odds with D and Scooty).

Here's the thing, I most definitely believe that the State has the authority to force quarantine, when needed, for the sake of public health. However, given what we know then and what we know now, it was a gross overreaction on Christie's part that did nothing to drive more fear into people that were already afraid (albeit irrationally). I agree with D, he was trying to be Tough on Ebola because that's what people wanted. Of course, anyone that has actually taken the time to learn about ebolavirus outside of the talking heads on television knows that the way Americans reacted to ebola was fething moronic.

I do agree 100% that in this case, she was unconstitutionally held against her will and was deprived due process in New Jersey (as was anyone who has ever been forced to stay in New Jersey).