U.S. Troops Assisting In Ebola Mission May Be Quarantined -- Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
Washington (CNN) -- In an unprecedented move to protect U.S. troops that might be exposed to Ebola, U.S. military commanders are being given the authority to quarantine troops for 21 days at a Defense Department facility where they will be monitored for signs of the disease and treated if they do contract the virus, a Defense Department memo explained.
The memo, which was obtained by CNN, spells out the details of the military's plan for the first time.
It does not reveal the location of the facility, but one U.S. official said it may be a site in the Washington, D.C. area. The quarantine will apply to troops evacuated from West Africa, if it is determined they have an elevated risk of exposure to Ebola.
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My Comment: This mission gives the perception of changing with each passing day. Here is an easy prediction .... we will soon be reading reports of U.S. soldiers being quarantined over Ebola fears .... and it would not surprise me if some of them will eventually become infected.
9 comments:
If only one troop comes down with symptoms it would effectively neutralize an entire unit of significant size. This not to mention the military diverting extra medical resources in this event. In essence if thought out the damage has been done even though there has been no overt problems. Even if the entire group was brought back right now there would be lingering worries, at least for 21 days.
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YOUR STATING THE OBVIOUS WAR NEWS IHEY WILL BE INFECTED COZ US GOV WANTS THEM INFECTED WHY DO YOU THINK THEY WERE BROUGHT BACK TO COUNTRY THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN THIS IS ALL A SET UP AFTER SWINE FLU NEVER TOOK OFF THEY TAUGHT EBOLA DISEASE BE BEST WAY TO MAKE BILLIONS FROM PHARMA IVE NEVER SEEN US GOV SO BAD IN ALL MY ENTIRE LIFE DISATER AFTER DISATER AND ALOT OF IT ON PURPOSE
James
If a sergeant gets infected, someone will step up.
If the Ops officer gets infected a JO will step up.
In some cases the person stepping up will not be as good or will fail to measure up, but I think on most cases a unit will be able to adjust.
If you get beyond or much beyond 5 or 10 casualties, I think morale will break down.
Recruiting will certainly be difficult in such an eventuality and rightfully so.
Aizino,
That's not really what I meant by neutralizing. If one troop turned up positive, the entire unit would have to be cleared before it could be used anywhere else. No county would let that unit deploy into it otherwise, nor would it be allowed back in the US without an all clear. So you would have a unit out of action a minimum of 21 to a 100 days. I know they are building iso areas back in the States for this eventuality, but can you imagine the logistics of say 6 people getting positive but in sequence not at once. First they would be in iso in country with the large staff and all the things to decon on a constant basis. Then the flight again with a large staff. The plane and everything associated with it would have to be deconned.
As for morale and casualties, that is a tricky subject. Generally speaking a veteran unit can take very high casualties in a short time and still retain good morale (as long as a forced retreat is not involved). Where as the same unit could take a low level stream of casualties over an extended time and lose alot of morale. Of course the state of morale and ability of the unit to start with is important. Aizino you strike me as possibly prior service. If so you know the close quarters of work and living in a military unit, imagine trying to stop Ebola in that type of environment.
I've ready where nearly all units will break once they reach 50% casualties even elite units. I do not believe I saved the source.
Of course I a unit has no opportunity to retreat (death ground) they might take 100% casualties and never break.
But I understand completely what you are saying and it makes total sense.
The 50% number is about unit cohesion, not really morale. At that number the unit loses it's internal structure.
Okay,
Got that. Either my source was wrong or my reading comprehension left something to be desired.
Wonder how you can train people or design things so the number is higher. Not that I would like to see such casualties mind you.
"Either my source was wrong or my reading comprehension left something to be desired."
Not necessarily Aizino, considering I'm usually in a hurry when commenting and tend to blather. The subject is tricky and not really understood that well, even among professionals. Unit morale and unit cohesion are very closely related, some people claim they are the same, I'm not of that school of thought. Not to belabor the subject, but morale is the willingness to do something and cohesion is the ability to do something together in an efficient manner. It's possible for a unit to have one but not the other. An example would be the Iraqi divisions that ran. When the leadership ran the division lost all cohesion (no one to give orders and see that they were carried out). When the lower ranks later learned this they panicked and ran, that's loss of morale. I hope that's confusing enough.
A lot of the studies on this were done on WWII units and action, some on Korea, some on Nam, and I think some on the first Gulf War.Here it is important to point out that what kind of unit, what kind of conflict, what's the unit's peculiar circumstances in that action etc have a huge bearing on the two factors we're discussing.
As far as training, they do a lot of that, but there are truisms hard to get around. The smaller the unit cohesion by nature is easier, but is also degraded quicker by casualties. The larger the unit the harder cohesion is to implant and maintain, but it takes more casualties to degrade it. Well enough of this, I've bored myself.
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