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this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Uhhh - so two employees were exposed to a yet unknown substance that has to be at least considered to be harmful and were even allowed to refuse medical treatment? Am I missing something here?
shit they'll probably be charged for the medical treatment. Every Americans knee-jerk reaction these days is avoid the hospital and ambulances for fear of medical debt wiping us out.
Until we know what the substance was we could be missing a lot. The letter could have been more of a threat than an attempt. Maybe it's just baby powder or maybe they just didn't breathe any of it in. The powder is probably just presued harmful until proven otherwise. Does that help clarify? In my opinion this article shouldn't have been released in this form. It's to wordy with to little information.
Yeah, the article isn't all that great. Still, the fact that the two exposed employees refused medical treatment suggests to me, that the nature of the substance at least wasn't yet known at that time, since it shouldn't be necessary to even offer that, if the substance was known to be something harmless like baby powder.
Cheers, though!
A: You think we should call the ambulance? B: Nah, I didn't even touch it, and it's probably nothing anyway.
"Refused medical treatment"
B: Nah, I cannot afford medical care. I'm only covered if my life is clearly in danger.
Putting it like that, yeah, sounds about right.
For the record, you can always call an ambulance for people.
Even without their consent. And even in the us, there won’t be a cost incurred until they accept treatment (which is why you wind up with absurdly expensive bandaids.)
So if you think somebody might need some help, it’s better to call than not- this is particularly true if you may have some liability.
Also, every state has some version of a law that requires calling for aid (that is satisfied by reporting to 911). They’re typically referred to as Good Samaritan laws.
(If they refuse treatment to professionals, that’s their business, you’re clear of further liability; if the ambulance wants to insist they can either call cops and force the matter; or wait till they go unconscious and exploit implied consent.)
You have the right to refuse treatment at any time you want.
Now, there may be other things going on, like observation and isolation. There’s not a lot that can be done anyhow; until symptoms of something start showing up, most likely the fastest way to verify what treatment is appropriate is to run tests on the powder.
That’s the kind of thing that gets put at the front of the line.
Probably just cornstarch or baby powder. But also, both those could conceivably be a carrier for something.
If I was their boss I’d go with the “and let you spread it to your family?” Guilt trip instead.
If it was actually anthrax, it has an incubation period of 1 to 3 days and a prodromal phase that can last anywhere from 1 to 6 days. Their exposure would have been inhalation which does carry the worst forms of the illness and the worst prognosis, but they'd have at least a couple days before symptoms start showing up and there are antitoxin and immunoglobulin treatments available. There's not really a post-exposure prophylaxis, per se, and giving someone the treatments unnecessarily would be incredibly expensive.
And I just wonder why these guys aren't wearing at least gloves and an n95?
Yeah, that's a really good point.