Ebola Creep

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Workplace-Virus

Obama, September 16, 2014

The possibility of an Ebola outbreak are extremely low.

First and foremost, I want the American people to know that our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low.

Obama, October 15, 2015:

Now the chances of a “serious” outbreak are extraordinarily low.

“I want people to understand that the dangers of you contracting Ebola, the dangers of a serious outbreak, are extraordinarily low,”

“I am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak of the disease here in the United States,”

What’s next and when? Obama’s canceling multiple fundraisers leave me wondering….

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@Nanny+G: “… Ron Klain, A political hack…. no medical training whatsoever [is] Obama’s choice as replacement for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel….”

He has a trial by fire expert sitting in Florida, Dr. Aileen Marty. Why not use her?

…The Cuban-born Marty is a contagious-diseases specialist and teaches at Miami’s Florida International University. She also works with the World Health Organization, assisting in efforts to curb epidemics around the world. This is why she spent 31 days in Nigeria….

In Nigeria, Marty helped develop a system in airports and at borders to keep anyone infected with the Ebola virus from entering or leaving the country. It was successful against the virus. “In Nigeria we managed to extinguish it,” she told me with a big smile.

On her way home, she flew from Lagos, Nigeria, to Frankfurt, Germany. Upon landing in Germany, nobody asked her any questions; no one checked her for symptoms. She then flew to Miami. Again, her health was not evaluated. Not a single question.

“I get to the [global entry] kiosk and enter the information, put my fingerprints in and mark the fact that I’ve been in Nigeria, and nobody cares,” Marty said. “Nobody stopped me.”

This explains how the first Ebola case arrived stateside…..
http://fusion.net/story/21795/how-ebola-spreads-a-lack-of-preparedness/

@George+Wells:

It may very well come down to states closing down their airports to international travelers if the dratted federal government will not do its job.

If the Congress is going to pass laws and the Supreme Court is going to call them Constitutional then the Government darn well better live up to it’s promises!

Perhaps it is time for a class action suit from the hospitals in Texas whose pursonnel are being placed at risk by the incompetence of the Federal Government. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club sue the EPA all the time so why not the rest of us?

Straight from the CDC website.

http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html
Isolation and Quarantine

Isolation and quarantine help protect the public by preventing exposure to people who have or may have a contagious disease.
Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.
Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are “police power” functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society.
Federal Law

The federal government derives its authority for isolation and quarantine from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.

The authority for carrying out these functions on a daily basis has been delegated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Federal isolation and quarantine are authorized for these communicable diseases:
Cholera
Diphtheria
Infectious tuberculosis
Plague
Smallpox
Yellow fever
Viral hemorrhagic fevers
Severe acute respiratory syndromes
Flu that can cause a pandemic

Ebola is a Viral hemorrhagic fever so is on the list.

It goes on to say:

CDC’s Role

Under 42 Code of Federal Regulations parts 70 and 71, CDC is authorized to detain, medically examine, and release persons arriving into the United States and traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases.

As part of its federal authority, CDC routinely monitors persons arriving at U.S. land border crossings and passengers and crew arriving at U.S. ports of entry for signs or symptoms of communicable diseases. [What a crock of bull…]

When alerted about an ill passenger or crew member by the pilot of a plane or captain of a ship, CDC may detain passengers and crew as necessary to investigate whether the cause of the illness on board is a communicable disease.

State, Local, and Tribal Law

States have police power functions to protect the health, safety, and welfare of persons within their borders. To control the spread of disease within their borders, states have laws to enforce the use of isolation and quarantine.

These laws can vary from state to state and can be specific or broad. In some states, local health authorities implement state law. In most states, breaking a quarantine order is a criminal misdemeanor.

Tribes also have police power authority to take actions that promote the health, safety, and welfare of their own tribal members. Tribal health authorities may enforce their own isolation and quarantine laws within tribal lands, if such laws exist.
Who Is in Charge
The federal government
Acts to prevent the entry of communicable diseases into the United States. Quarantine and isolation may be used at U.S. ports of entry.
Is authorized to take measures to prevent the spread of communicable diseases between states.
May accept state and local assistance in enforcing federal quarantine.
May assist state and local authorities in preventing the spread of communicable diseases.
State, local, and tribal authorities
Enforce isolation and quarantine within their borders.

It is possible for federal, state, local, and tribal health authorities to have and use all at the same time separate but coexisting legal quarantine power in certain events. In the event of a conflict, federal law is supreme.
Enforcement

If a quarantinable disease is suspected or identified, CDC may issue a federal isolation or quarantine order.

Public health authorities at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels may sometimes seek help from police or other law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers are authorized to help enforce federal quarantine orders.

Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Federal law allows the conditional release of persons from quarantine if they comply with medical monitoring and surveillance….

@Gail+Combs: Well you have to remember how successful the regime was in spreading the diseased minors from Central America all over the country — only resistance was a little pathetic whining!

I believe the disease the regime spread that way falls under the next to last item on your list:

Severe acute respiratory syndromes

One person has died of Ebola in the US and we freak out. Three people have been infected with Eastern Equine Encephalitis, 2 have died and nobody outside of New England hears about it.

http://www.boston.com/health/2014/10/15/new-hampshire-person-dies-from-eee/PRe6BV4ECvKxFtmJ9EEWTO/story.html

@Gail Combs #52:

I agree with what you have posted. The mandate is clear that the responsibilities you have evoked are indeed assigned to the government agencies indicated.

I would only remind you that no one is perfect. In spite of a public that expects perfection, Doctors make mistakes that don’t always rise to a level of incompetence or malpractice. Many are just simple mistakes, often caused by insufficient diagnostic clarity or misleading patient accounts of symptoms. These sort of mistakes are not exclusive to either Democrat or Republican doctors.

The same is true of the civil servants administering our public health. While political interests ALWAYS make whatever hay they can whenever a mistake is made, those mistakes are often innocent and unavoidable. You can suggest that we SHOULD have known ahead of time that Ebola was about to go epidemic, but then we COULD have also anticipated a similar outbreak of just about ANY of the dozens of virulent pathogens that we already know about, as well as many others as yet undiscovered, and there simply hasn’t been the funding to proactively go after so many boogeymen.

Similarly, we COULD have shut down the borders and the flights right away, but if Ebola had turned out to have been less threatening, there would have been a whole lot of criticism about our OVERREACTION to an minimal threat.

There are risks either way.

When Katrina hit New Orleans, Democrats wrongly blamed Bush – for reacting too slowly, for not being prepared ahead of time. It wasn’t his fault, any more than Ebola is Obama’s fault.

@George+Wells:

I would only remind you that no one is perfect. In spite of a public that expects perfection, Doctors make mistakes that don’t always rise to a level of incompetence or malpractice. Many are just simple mistakes, often caused by insufficient diagnostic clarity or misleading patient accounts of symptoms. These sort of mistakes are not exclusive to either Democrat or Republican doctors.

True. Which is why I am so pissed that this administration did not put a travel ban in place, did not (as we now know, despite their assurances) make any plans for the disease to break out here and instead relied on the perfect execution of normal protocols in response to a perception of someone possibly having the disease by tens of thousands of individuals as our first line of defense.

@George+Wells: I really appreciate your comment about gov’t and public officials not being perfect, George.
But it is more than that.
Ever since Obama took office he’s been lulling more and more Americans into dependence on gov’t for everything.
Over 50% of Americans are receiving some sort of gov’t check regularly, for example, up quite a bit from before Obama.
But the fact is, when you compare federal gov’t action with private business action you see that the feds suffer from a nearly complete inability to function well.
Meanwhile the private sector does a terrific job.
Doctors without Borders is a private system.
They are growing the numbers of medical help in the ebola fight.
OTOH, gov’t workers in the public hospitals are threatening to strike or quit.
In West Africa 322 medical workers have died from ebola.
More of them have it currently.
The gov’t-hired ones have walked away.
But there’s a private business with a rubber plantation in the ebola-hit area of Liberia.
Firestone owns it and cares about their workers.
When ebola first impacted their area they flew into action.
On the fly and without proper approved equipment they jury-rigged a ”hazmat” suit out of their chemical suit equipment.
They adjusted their chem-spill shower into a decon-shower for safely taking off their hazmat suits.
They created a safe isolation area for suspected and exposed employees and their families.
Ebola usually kills 70% of all who get it.
Firestone has a 48% survival rate in their little set-up.
The governments (ours included) could learn a thing or two from it.
But they won’t.
Why?
Because we falsely believe gov’t is the source of all wisdom and standards.
Not a private company.
Even NPR could see the truth: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks

@Nanny+G: Nan, I read that Doctors without Borders is thinning out. No borders eventually leads to no doctors. That’s my reasoning, of course.

@Nanny G #57:

OK, Nanny. You have made a perfectly good argument for NOT expecting the US Government to solve the Ebola crisis. I agree with that. So what is your point otherwise? You seem to be blaming Obama for NOT doing something that you seem perfectly willing to concede that he CAN’T do. He IS part of the government, and you point out that “the feds suffer from a nearly complete inability to function well.”

And what is the Republican solution to THIS problem? SMALLER government? LESS funding? SHOOT doctors? SHOOT Obama?

I concede that individuals working for a profit motive (the private sector) have incentives to do jobs well that government employees don’t have. That problem isn’t a Democrat problem any more than it is Republican. And the LAST thing that you want your public servants doing is putting their own financial interests above yours, considering that they hold the proverbial cookie jar. An inefficient central bureaucracy is inescapable. The only variable you can reasonably tinker with is the size of it. And the smaller you make it, the less it can accomplish, regardless of its efficiency.

Regarding the numbers of people who are receiving government support, this number is swelling because of the increasing numbers of baby boomers who are reaching 62 and electing to begin receiving their EARNED Social Security benefits. Obama can’t stroke an executive order and unilaterally entitle more people (OR less people) than are already legally entitled to receive support. If you want to change the ranks of the “entitled,” look to congress to accomplish that. (Hint: They won’t, because taking away benefits isn’t popular on election day.) But don’t blame Obama. It’s not his fault.

(What is it with this clown-parade and blaming Obama for everything?)

We are going to have to nuke Texas
We should all thank Rick Perry for keeping Tdxas the second lowest ranking state on per capita health card costs
Texas you are #49. !!!!

@John:

We are going to have to nuke Texas
We should all thank Rick Perry for keeping Tdxas the second lowest ranking state on per capita health card costs
Texas you are #49. !!!!

Typical lib crap – states a ‘fact’

keeping Tdxas the second lowest ranking state on per capita health card costs

with 3 misspellings in one sentence and without any reference, and then does NOT provide any data re the value of the health care provided vs the cost in relation to other states! On top of this BS – he leaves out all of the illegal alien invasion impact!

Folks – this stuff re liberalism being a mental disorder – just cannot be made up — actually no need to — they keep stuffing it in our faces!

@Budvarakbar: The left will be in a higher state of mental derangement than they usually are due to the fact that their claim that Saddam Hussein didn’t have WMD has been proven to be 100% wrong. Do what I and others do and don’t read or respond to their delusional comments anymore. In doing so, you’ll feel very refreshed and will have a least a little more faith in your fellow Americans.

@John: Of course Texas happens to be one of those states that gets the lion’s share of the illegal immigrants the left lure into this country. These illegal immigrants go to emergency rooms for head aches and fevers, driving costs up.

But, what’s facts to a liberal?

@another+vet:

Do what I and others do and don’t read or respond to their delusional comments anymore.

Thanks for the advice — actually that is my usual approach — have had a few exciting chances to jerk chains and rattle cages the last couple days. As you have implied – responding to the liberal trolls is basically a waste of time – but – alas – occasionally one is called to do some dirty work in the interest of the advancement of the human race!

@George+Wells:

You seem to be blaming Obama for NOT doing something that you seem perfectly willing to concede that he CAN’T do.

It’s not a matter of what he can’t do; it’s what he WON’T do which, for Obama and his addiction to his policy of open borders, makes it something he indeed can’t do.

EBOLAGHAZZI!!!!
Millions are at risk !!!

@John: 326,000,000.

All of this hysteria for nothing.
LOL.
When there are no remaining Ebola cases left here in the United States, and that number was reached WITHOUT sealing the borders, where is that going to leave us for the next time a pathogen scare erupts?
When the Ebola hysteria passes IN SPITE of what ever Obama can or cannot do about the virus, won’t all of the crazies who have been blaming Obama all along feel STUPID?