- Can you please post this to your message boards. I need
my patients to contact me and come forward to the news media ( even confidential
and name only to reporter for verification). Kaiser is denying they even
know that I am sick now. They are a scene!!!
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- My patients need to either contact me or Carl F. Worden,
so we can document this and get them monitored for their safety also. And
I need permission to give their names so we can unravel what this "bad
bug" is for all of our safety and health with scientists trying to
sort it all out. Astraea Kelly
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- US SARS Outbreak?
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- By Carl F. Worden Sierra Times.com
- 5-21-3
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- VALLEJO, CA -- While the
evidence is not conclusive, information pouring in gives all indications
of some type of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak has manifested
itself in the Kaiser Hospital of Vallejo, California.
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- The circumstances, patient presentations and deaths that
have occurred at that Vallejo, California hospital are more compelling
than all the evidence that has been publicly revealed to date against Scott
Peterson in the Laci Peterson murder case.
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- Astraea Kelly, a 20 years veteran of respiratory therapy,
presently working in the pulmonary unit of Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo,
California. She has been infected with what she refers to as a ìBad
Bugî. Her last day of work was May 5, 2003, and she has been recovering
at her home in Benicia, California all this time from a pattern of illness
that she reports killed twelve patients in her unit between May 2 and May
6, 2003.
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- Kelly believes that mortality rate is right off the scale,
and she is concerned enough to blow the whistle, risk her job and perhaps
even her license, to make Public Health officials take notice and start
taking preventative measures to stem the spread of an illness that appears
to be easily contagious, highly morbid and very deadly. It could indeed
be SARS.
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- Kelly also reports that three fellow staffers working
in her same unit, who are very healthy adults, were also infected and took
two to four weeks to recover. Experts agree: Thatís a bad bug. When
is the last time flu knocked you down and out more than a week or ten days,
max?
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- Be it Coronavirus SARS or some other infectious disease,
people are still getting sick. If others have been exposed at this time,
no immediate action has been taken. If we have an outbreak of presumably
viral pulmonary infections called ìAtypical Pneumoniasî that
are sickening and killing people at an alarming rate, one would think the
officials that be would sound the alarm, alert the Center For Disease Control
and begin an immediate and intense effort to isolate, identify this dangerous
bug, and if necessary, quarantine those infected and exposed.
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- Well, thatís not happening at Kaiser Hospital
in Vallejo, California so far, but apparently Astraeaís efforts
at her computer keyboard are beginning to get some movement.
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- Kelly was using the Kaiser e-mail system to discuss this
pattern with others she works with, and has been notified of a pending
disciplinary action by Kaiser Hospital for using their e-mail system for
inappropriate purposes. In effect, Kaiser cut off her ability to communicate
with co-workers, co-workers who could provide even more substantiation
and input regarding what she observed before becoming deathly ill herself.
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- Her symptoms began with 3 days of diarrhea, a temperature
running between 100 to 101 degrees, heaviness in the chest, wheezing, and
she almost had to undergo oxygen therapy. Sheís still recovering
two weeks later. What troubled her was the fact that so many patients in
her unit presented the exact same pattern of symptoms. According to Astraea,
20 patients died in a period of one month, including those 12 who died
in that period of just 4 days, and all from the same pattern of illness.
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- ìWhat is our responsibility as medical workers
if we believe a pattern harmful to others is being shown in our patients?î
Kelly asked. ìIs it to ignore it? Or is it to help others understand
and control infectious process so lives are not unduly risked?î
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- Kelly also said that current federal Center For Disease
criteria do not call for eliminating SARS in SARS-like patients unless
the patient has recently traveled abroad. Further, she states that CDC
rules call for an autopsy to determine if SARS caused a fatality, and since
a patient who died may not have traveled outside the United States, their
bodies are simply being disposed of without an autopsy being performed.
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- She stated the illness first struck the elderly and infirm,
then moved on down to the lower age groups ñ just like SARS. She
also pointed out that this kind of a pneumonia outbreak is extremely unusual
for this time of the year. Kelly has 20 years experience in her field.
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- So far, Astraea has not been given her ìconfidentialî
diagnosis. We will follow up with more information as it becomes available.
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- More to come.
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