When the Ebola scare is done the damage it will have done is likely to be far more reaching than just the individual victims themselves. Of all of the things the government is supposed to do, protecting its citizens is likely very close to the top in most people’s minds.
Indeed, government is supposed to do for citizens that which they cannot or choose not to do for themselves – limited of course to those things it has been constitutionally empowered to do. National defense being the prime example. Others include the court system, international treaties, tax policies, etc. Americans have not traditionally – at least for the country’s first 150 years – looked to government to become the provider of all things or the solver of all problems.
Today, for a large part of the population that is no longer true. Whenever something bad happens, they look for government to fix it. A sluggish economy, high unemployment, a failed automobile manufacturer, you’ve lost your job, you can’t get insurance, you can’t support your kids or you want to build a new stadium, look to government for a solution. Or, competitors are eating away at your natural monopoly, your kid can’t read, you think the CEO makes too much money, you haven’t paid your water bill in months and the water company has turned off your service… look to the government for a solution. Usually these solutions come about in the form or a check or government using its police power to force other people to do your bidding.
The result of government spread so wide, doing so many things, having its tentacles in virtually every aspect of American life is that not only does it do a bad job at practically everything, it often fails spectacularly at those limited things it’s supposed to be doing in the first place.
The Ebola situation is the perfect example, writ large. Ebola is a disease in that until recently was largely confined to Africa. While Ebola is not the continent’s largest killer, what makes it somewhat unique in that it kills 70% or more of the people who catch it, usually within a few weeks. And, we don’t really know how it’s transmitted, but we know that coming into contact with a carrier – even after they are dead – or their body fluids can transmit it. Can it be transmitted by mosquitoes? We’re told no, but viruses mutate. Can it be become airborne – thorough say, sneezing? The goalposts seem to be moving. Can it be transmitted by touching objects a carrier has touched? Don’t know for sure.
Ebola has, by everyone’s measure, the potential to become a true epidemic. As such, Ebola might be one of those things that most Americans agree is rightly a government interest, something the government should be focusing on and doing what it can to inform and protect citizens.
Unfortunately, thus far the government’s action has been an abysmal failure, beginning with Barack Obama’s inexplicable decision against imposing a travel ban from the nations where Ebola is raging, and his September 16th assurance that the chances of Ebola reaching American shores were “extremely low”. Four days later US patient zero, Thomas Eric Duncan, landed in Dallas from Liberia.
A week later Duncan was in a Dallas Hospital with Ebola. Since then, two nurses who treated Duncan have come down with the disease. When the first nurse, Nina Pham, came down with Ebola, CDC director Tom Frieden suggested it was her failure to follow protocol that caused her contraction. Later it turned out that Ms. Pham had followed all protocols from the CDC, the same agency that in August said: U.S. hospitals can safely manage patients with Ebola disease.
A month in, confusion reigns. The CDC goes from reassuring the public that Ebola requires contact with a victim and is not a repertory ailment spread like the flu, to later warning that just standing within three feet of an infected person poses a risk. At the same time news emerges that Amber Vinson, the second nurse to treat Duncan, was told she was OK to fly by the CDC after calling to report her possible symptoms. Later CDC Director Tom Frieden stated that she should not have flown.
While all of this chaos is going on, politics rears its head when the administration and Democrats suggest the GOP is to blame for having called for budget cuts. Then it emerges that not only did the GOP give both the CDC and NIH more money than requested by the president, but that the agencies had wasted tens or hundreds of millions of dollars studying things like the propensity of lesbians to be fat, the impact of TVs and gas generators on a village in Vietnam, and what bus riders thought of HIV videos. Indeed, over the course of 5 years the CDC spent more than $2.6 billion on HIV and AIDS grants that the agency itself admitted: “have no objectives” or were otherwise useless.
What the Ebola crisis is putting on full display for the American people is the malfeasance and ineptness of a government that takes $3 trillion of their money each year yet can’t seem to get the basic things right. One doesn’t need a PhD in biology to understand that making it more difficult to travel to the US from a country infected with this virus is a good thing. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist that recognize that millions allocated for health research shouldn’t be wasted replacing perfectly good furniture or buildings. It doesn’t take a 140 IQ to understand that a person recently exposed to a deadly virus shouldn’t be given the OK to fly on a commercial jet. But in modern day America, that’s how government operates – or as in the case of a travel ban… doesn’t.
If the government is making horrendously bad decisions, providing conflicting and inaccurate information and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in an area that literally involves life and death, and one that is playing out on the front pages of every newspaper in the country, just imagine how badly their mismanaging everything else they are doing from the mundane to the obscure, most of which is played out behind closed doors with the help of cronies and lobbyists and political financiers. Maybe the silver lining of the Ebola cloud will be the long overdue recognition by a majority of Americans that not only is government not the solution for everything that might go wrong, but maybe it’s meddling failures are behind many of things that go wrong in the first place.
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Hundreds of millions of dollar have been sent to the CDC and NIH to develop a vaccine against ebola, where did it go?
We were lucky. The CDC has been exposed as an incompetent bureau, with time for awarding pork to crony types, but not necessarily enough time to do its primary mission.
Bad idea of the day: quarantining US health care workers, returning from West Africa. The risk of a calamitous epidemic in the USA sourced by health care workers is remote. The existential threat is failure to eradicate the disease in West Africa, allowing it to spread to India and China and from there all over the world. It is critical to have US health care workers volunteer (typically taking vacation days). If a mandatory 3 week quarantine is imposed on returning workers, this will, I’m sure, reduce the number of volunteers by 75% or more. Simply have them self monitor themselves and tell them to avoid mass transit and otherwise use some common sense. These workers know all too well the dangers of the disease, when symptoms appear. They won’t delay at all receiving evaluations for the slightest suspicious sign.
Example: When Doctors Without Borders went into a hard hit rural area in West Africa, there were hundreds of active cases. Today, there are only 3 cases in the same region, thanks to the activities of DWB. This proves that “outside intervention” can succeed in controlling and eradicating the disease. But we can’t punish these heroic health care workers for putting their lives on the line, based on irrational misinformation concerning the risks of disease transmission. It is an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry Weisenthal:
Yeah, Larry, we saw how well that “self monitoring” worked out in New York City.
And you ignore that 16 medics from Doctors Without Borders, who should be well trained in fighting Ebola as well as how to avoid contracting it, have contracted the disease and of that 16, 9 have died.
Never mind that once the health care workers starts to experience symptom, THEY ARE CONTAGIOUS.
Hi Retire, But here’s the thing. Not a single health care worker we know of has TRANSMITTED the disease! And look at the (index) Liberian patient; he didn’t infect any family members, despite living with them for three days when he was grossly symptomatic. It’s only when the patients become super grossly symptomatic that they pose an extreme threat.
With regard to the self monitoring: it clearly worked. The health care workers immediately “turned themselves in” at the first sign of any symptoms at all — which makes sense, because they know they are at extreme danger and early fluid replacement and the like are critical. The problem was a lack of behavior guidelines, beyond self monitoring. Simply come up with a list of common sense, conservative behavior guidelines (no public transportation; no eating out in restaurants and whatever) and this will provide adequate protection to the public, while still not dealing a death blow to the flow of needed courageous health care volunteers to eradicate this existential threat at the source, before it moves to India and China, which would truly be a disaster of Biblical proportions.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
First you say:
But then you go on to say:
The doctor in New York City was obviously irresponsible, which proves one thing: you cannot trust people to act responsibility. So no, it did not “clearly work” as that man not only took a number of subways, but went to a bowling alley, exposing others to his stupidity. Take the example of the health care worker, Nurse Kaci Hickox, a nurse who handled a dying convulsing child the day before she flew back to the U.S. and who has now been isolated by the state of New Jersey; whiny liberal Ms. Hickox thinks she is being mistreated, complaining to Candy Crowley that she is being held against her will, doesn’t even have anything to read (although she has a cell phone capable of taking pictures and sending out text messages and her photos clearly show a TV in her isolation tent) and who has deleted her LinkedIn account showing she works for the CDC. What is her response to being isolated for the standard 21 days? Why she is going to sue, of course.
And let’s not even talk about the cost to New York City taxpayers as the City tries to track down every person that the most irresponsible doctor came in contact with. Hey, he was “self monitoring” after all.
Samaritan’s Purse has announced that although Dr. Brantley was experiencing symptoms on July 23, he tested NEGATIVE. THAT, is the very reason Samaritan’s Purse has a 21 day isolation period for ALL their Ebola workers and does not permit them to travel during that period.
As to your concern for India and China; I know all you bleating hearts are so ready to protect other nations, but you seem to discount the fact that OUR government is supposed to protect OUR citizens. It is up to India and China to protect their citizens. Watch China shut their nation down when the FIRST Ebola patient surfaces.
Hi Retire, Must you politicize absolutely EVERYTHING? Good grief. We are in agreement that this is an existential threat to humanity. We are in agreement that the CDC (which is not at all a political organization and which is not at all a part of the “Obama Administration,” given that absolutely ZERO CDC employees are Obama administration political appointees) required a wake up call before it got its ass in gear — which, again, has absolutely nothing at all to do with the White House.
You guys totally drive me crazy, by the way. On one hand, you excoriate Obama for not doing absolutely everything the Pentagon tells him to do — not following the advice of experts, but, at the same tme, you excoriate Obama for following the advice of his (non-political) medical experts. But I digress.
What you fail to consider, with your superficial thinking, is what good chess players consider in making their moves. You can’t simply focus on the immediate situation. You have to say this: what is the existential threat to the USA? The existential threat isn’t educated health care workers returning to the USA and starting an epidemic. To repeat, not a single infected health care worker has ever infected anyone else. And, if and when that ever happens, it would be easy to track down any contacts. That is not what is going to threaten the well being of Americans. What is going to threaten our well being is infected people entering our borders from all over the world, which is what will happen if India and China ever turn into West Africa, which they easily could turn into, unless we do everything we can to eradicate the disease NOW, at its source, while it’s still capable of being eradicated.
Can’t we, just for once, put petty politics aside and act rationally, to get rid of this existential threat to humanity, while we have the chance to do so?
I don’t believe that the NY doctor was “irresponsible,” by the way. I don’t think that he posed a risk to anyone he sat next to on the subway or in the bowling alley. He had no symptoms. He knew he had no symptoms. At the first sign of his symptoms, he “turned himself in,” as he was supposed to do. But I’m certain that, to assure freaked out people like you, the government should simply come up with a list of common sense guidelines (no public transportation, no bowling, no receiving the Blood of Christ from a common chalice, etc. etc.) and health care workers would observe these guidelines conscientiously, given the alternative of a three week quarantine and being treated during this time as a leper, etc.
The threat is not health care workers spreading the disease, upon returning from duty in West Africa — it’s people coming at us from all parts of the world. Which is what will happen if this particular genie spreads to India and China.
Why is it that you conservatives see existential threats (e.g. Saddam Hussein) where they don’t exist, which justify trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives), while you utterly fail to see the truly existential threat of ebola?
Dear conservative friends: don’t you see the following irony? Liberals like me think that the way to respond to radical Islam is NOT to send armies to fight the enemy in Asian land wars, but to toughen our border security (put hundreds of billions of dollars not into the Army and Marines, but into the Coast Guard and other border security). While you conservatives want to deploy boots on the ground everywhere in the world a delusional jihadist rattles his saber. But with ebola, it’s the opposite. We liberals think that we need boots on the ground and hundreds of billions of dollars in resources, if needed, while you conservatives think that what we should do is to establish Fortress America.
I consider the above to be very ironic. Odd, actually.
P.S. I’m sure that you recognized that I actually am in favor of enhanced border security, including the Rio Grande border. At least give me some credit for that.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
Larry, while you parrot the sentiments of the Administration, you accuse me of politicizing the issue. If it was not political, why did Obama appoint an Ebola czar that has no medical training/experience but sure is experienced in being a spin doctor. Then you wander off into the weeds, as you are wont to do on a regular basis, about Iraq, radical Islam and other things that hold no importance to the discussion of Ebola.
Yes, the New York City doctor acted irresponsibly. But I understand that as a California liberal, personal responsibility is not a required trait for you. Why does Samaritan’s Purse require a mandatory 21 day isolation period? Or they just evil Christians that want to be mean to their Ebola health care workers?
And being the arrogant liberal you are, you assume that India and China have no way to protect their own citizens, or ours. Just remember, if you like your health care insurance, if you like your doctor, you can keep them, period.
I think it is clear that the Governors of both New York and New Jersey have no faith in either the CDC or this administration. The CDC has been as totally inept in the Ebola situation as has the Administration, who appoints a political had as an Ebola czar. Well, at least the CDC has finally admitted that there has been a massive spike in EV-D68 due to the influx of illegal children.
Are you willing to admit the CDC dropped the ball when it came to Ebola protocols?
We can only read about the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918, it may have killed as many as 100 million, maybe more, the dead died so fast there was no way to record the true numbers. Science and medicine were just beginning to merge in the field of microbiology, but the world was ill-prepared to deal with the speed of this lethal viral infection. In Cleveland and in many cities of the world, the dead were piled in the streets because the grave diggers couldn’t keep up with the demand and there were not enough caskets. With technology, we have acquired the back hoe. The grave diggers of the past have faded from memory, but the back hoe can work around the clock with new operators every 8 hours. Thus, with technology, we will probably never need to pile the dead in the streets, again.
We also know infinitely more about the nature of viral infection and its ability to mutate during replication. We were able to eradicate the Smallpox virus because it uses the DNA replication of the host cells, which fortunately uses a “proof reading” ability within the host DNA and resists the much quicker mutation abilities of the RNA replication of viruses like AIDs and Ebola. Every host has the option to put up defenses to resist the attachment of proteins and the commandeering of genetic codes, the viral reactions to the host cells’ defenses will cause the viral cells to adapt or die. It is these defense and attack mechanisms that make viral diseases so willing to change and so difficult to control. In the words of one chicken loving Liberal, “She just wants to live.” Yes, viral cells are like chickens, they just want to live, and it’s this desire for life and its willingness to change to meet the defense of every host is what makes them so much more interesting than the cerebrally challenged chicken and its owner.
We have a few intrepid people of science and medicine who are willing to jump into the literal maelstrom of Hell itself to do good in the world of squalid nations, but should we share in their reckless abandonment of self, because they have adopted a temporary pious attitude toward the White Man’s Burden, an attitude like Christmas and birthdays for kids that comes all to infrequently? If this feeling is real, why not make the ultimate commitment and stay there, treat the public and train new doctors and nurses or is there an ulterior reason for putting your life at risk? Is it a method of acquiring distinction in the field of science and medicine or of being the hero of wine and cheeses parties? Maybe these altruistic individuals are more self-centered than we realize; it doesn’t really matter what their purposes are, they are still asking us, we who have no desire to work in these Third World cesspools to share in the risk of their daring adventure. The inconvenience of a quarantine is too much for their social and professional life. However, how many gay men would still be alive if we would have quarantined the carriers in the early 80’s? Oh, but they were altruistic, and they wouldn’t have inconvenienced others with this dreaded sexual disease, but they did, by the millions. This disease that is impossible to keep up with because its RNA based system of replication alters so rapidly from host to host.
I remember hearing my grandparents speak of how the Spanish Flu killed attacked and killed the strongest returning soldiers. I don’t want my grandchildren talking about the stupidity of our generation and of how we were so cavalier with deadly diseases. We made a terrible miscalculation with AIDS and we are perfectly willing to play the stupid political game with the next pandemic. In 1918, the world was just beginning to understand microbiology, we don’t have that excuse.
The neighboring nations of the affected nations closed their borders and they stopped the spread of the disease. They made up for their lack of science with simplistic solutions, and they were successful, imagine that.
Hi Skookum. As is the case with Retire, you simply don’t understand the true threat to the USA. It is NOT — repeat NOT — that professional doctors and nurses are going to start an epidemic which will lead to bodies in the streets. It is ebola escaping the confines of West Africa and spreading throughout the world — the most serious locales being India and China, where the disease could spread exponentially. Once that happens, we’ll have travelers entering the USA from all over the world. These will not be responsible professionals, with exposure histories known to Customs and Immigration and the CDC and state health care agencies; they will be every manner of irresponsible, ignorant, annonymous people. It’s a vastly greater potential threat that ISIS or home grown jihad and certainly an enormously greater threat than anything ever posed by Saddam Hussein.
You view this as a strictly African problem and you call the volunteer health care workers liberal do gooders. Well, they are putting their lives on the line — their work is vastly more hazardous than a foot patrol in Afghanistan. Doctors Without Borders has basically eradicated a major outbreak in the area in which they are working. This proves that it can be done, but it takes not only material resources but trained, professional, boots on the ground.
We need a massive response. This is an emergency every bit as important as the 2008 financial meltdown, on which we spent hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s an emergency much more important to the national security of the USA than ever posed by Saddam Hussein, on whom we are continuing to pay what will ultimately be a bill in the trillions of dollars. But it’s going to be some time before the USA and the international community commit the resources which are required. Until then, the only thing protecting the world (and ultimately the USA) from this scourge are the brave, selfless volunteers.
But there’s a limit. In 1973, my father took a vacation from his job as a Ford Motor Company heavy truck engineer to make his way to Israel at the start of the Yom Kippur War to serve in the Israeli army as a volunteer supply truck driver. It was something that he wanted to do out of a sense of what for him was altruism, but he also had a life and a mortgage and all those other things. He used up all of his vacation, as it was. Tacking on another 3 weeks for no reason at all except to give false reassurances might well have discouraged him from going in the first place. I’ll ask him the next time I speak with him (he’s currently 101 years old).
As I wrote, it’s an example of being penny wise and pound foolish.
To Retire: “Parroting the administration?” What do you mean by that? The “administration” takes its cues from the (totally non-political) CDC and NIH. The main NIH expert, who has presented the scientific information on behalf of the government is Anthony Fauci, who was appointed the Director of the NIAID during the Reagan administration (although none of the various doctors and scientists who are speaking on behalf of the government about ebola are political appointees). The only medical political appointee is the Surgeon General (a position now vacant for more than a year, because the GOP won’t confirm the administration’s appointee, whom the NRA deems to be soft on guns). And, as you know, the GOP famously cut funding for both CDC and NIH, while the rising GOP hopefuls for 2016 are taking positions of increasing Pentagon funding.
Anyway, I’m not parroting the views of the administration; I’m parroting the views of the true science and public health experts, just as many of you parrot the views of the military experts.
With regard to my paternalistic attitude toward India and China, regarding their ability to protect themselves, it is now you (Retire) who are being paralyzed by political correctness. We’ve got one chance at eradicating this disease at its source and the time is now. It makes no sense at all to send in armies of soldiers to fight land wars in Asia with the intent of protecting the American homeland (as opposed to simply putting the money into securing our ports and borders), while taking the position that the USA should simply let ebola fester and explode in Africa, while taking a Fortress America approach in the USA.
With regard to Samaritan’s Purse — they had an enormous Public Relations problem. They depend entirely on donors and the first two cases arriving on US soil were their own workers.
The CDC (again, not run by political appointees) was behind the curve in considering that, for example, ostensibly reputable hospitals in Dallas, under regulation by the Texas Department of Health, were capable of delivering competent health care. This was unfounded optimism, unfortunately, requiring the intervention of Big Brother. It seems that we need socialized medicine, when the private sector fails so spectacularly. Anyone who thinks that Thomas Eric Duncan would have been simply sent home from the ER with a 103 temperature and history of travel from Liberia had he had a good private health insurance plan is naive.
What this ebola crisis needs is an army of health care workers, with adequate material support, to eradicate the disease at its source, while this is still possible. What the crisis doesn’t need are feel good measures which provide false reassurance — while erecting fatal barriers to recruiting the health care soldiers required to destroy this existential threat.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
You mean like the totally non-political IRS, the totally non-polical DEA, the totally non-political EPA? Like those agencies? Who the hell are you trying to kid?
Whoa there, Bubba. Don’t we have soldiers in Africa to specifically aid the Ebola crisis? And didn’t the joint Chiefs of Staff just recommend that those soldiers, upon their return, be quarantined for 21 days? So your “let ebola fester and explode in Africa” meme is just so much hyperbole.
Really? See the highlighted sentence above. And you accuse others of making the Ebola debate “politically?” You’re not only bent toward hypobole, you’re a hypocrite.
Yes, and they were handled with much more caution than the two quarantined health care workers than think they are so “special.”
Nice try at spin, Larry. You might be able to push that on some of your liberal friends, but not me since I am fully aware that all hospitals, and even private practice doctors, have a requirement to contact the CDC when they encounter ANY communicable disease. And hospitals, and doctors, are required to operate by CDC guidelines and document each step they take. It was your “Big Brother” that dropped the ball when the guidelines for an Ebola case was painfully inadequate.
What a jerk you are. You’re accusing the doctors and other medical staff at the Dallas hospital of failure to treat a patient due to the lack of insurance, in spite of the SCOTUS ruling. How crass can you get? You seem to have little respect for your fellow physicians. And of course you support socialized medicine. You have been pushing to that end ever since you showed up here in every one of your comments on Obamacare.
But what we DON’T need is irresponsible health care workers returning from an Ebola area, and who should know better, to not self isolate but bounce around on a number of different subways exposing others to the disease. We don’t need radical do-good nurses, who admitted she had handled a Ebola stricken dying child the day before she flew back to the U.S., threatening to sue. Maybe you would like to explain to me how a CDC nurse can afford one of the highest paid civil rights attorneys in the nation? And considering she is still within the incubation period, she obviously cares more about her “rights” than the safety of the citizens of this nation. So much for your qualified CDC workers.
And please, drop the false “I’m not being political” crap.
We should be grateful, Ebola isn’t the same aggressive contagion of the Spanish Flu and other viruses, we are learning as we go along, but is that a result of our superior monitoring or just blind and dumb luck?
We are setting the protocols for future diseases, and many of the protocols in place are based on the failed protocols of the AIDS epidemic and this concept of self-monitoring by altruistic individuals who don’t want to be inconvenienced with the practical but plebeian concept of an old proven method of disease prevention, quarantine.
Larry are you denying that the nature of the disease can change very quickly?
Do you think that once the outbreak is “eradicated,” in the human population, that tribal members will forego eating “bush meat” and the disease will disappear?
We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Duncan, he outlined the total lack of preparation endemic within the medical system to respond to a potential deadly contagion. We should be able to realize through this stroke of phenomenal luck, that securing out borders and quarantining visitors from affected countries will work. It worked surprisingly well for the neighboring countries in Africa.
When the CDC tells the nation that the protocols are in place, but professional nursing groups are asking about these protocols, there is a serious disconnect in the system. The American population hears the bravado of the CDC, but it trusts the nurses, they just want to survive the treatment of patients and they are not politically involved in reassuring the public of the infallibility of the government.
It could have been much worse, we were lucky, but the virus mutates and we are still bringing in 1,500 potential cases a day and each new host offers the chance of the disease becoming more prolific.
Wow. So Larry thinks(?) that implementing a mandatory quarantine for healthcare workers returning from outbreak areas in Africa would reduce the number of volunteers by 75%. So, according to this nonsense, these volunteers are willing to risk contracting Ebola while working in unbelievably bad living conditions within a continent torn with deadly strife and wars, and yet they’d be “turned away” from all of this by a 21 day quarantine in this country. Not the deadly and contagious disease itself, not the living conditions, and not war and strife African, but a 21 day quarantine here in the United States!
This is not to mention that no healthcare worker that’s worth a damn would be willing to risk infecting innocent people with an often deadly contagious disease just because they don’t feel like being quarantined.
Seriously people, nobody in their right mind would subscribe to what “Larry” has said. And this is especially true of any competent healthcare worker/expert. Larry’s ignorant and dangerous “thinking” is nothing but a pathetic copy of the Obama/CDC propaganda in regard to Ebola.
Hi FMB: Doctors Without Borders has been, by far, the most effective organization fighting the Ebola War. They have essentially eradicated the disease in the rural region in which they’ve focused their efforts. They (not me) state that mandatory (and unnecessary) quarantines would restrict their ability to recruit needed volunteers. This is not me talking. It’s not the Obama administration talking, It’s not even the CDC (a totally non-political organization) talking. It’s the actual boots on the ground soldiers talking.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/ebola-quarantine-can-undermine-efforts-curb-epidemic
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-ambassador-to-un-heads-to-ebola-stricken-west-africa/2496854.html
http://news.mpbn.net/post/american-volunteers-liberia-are-anti-quarantine
For all you guys/gals who are wanting to give Obama the blame for everything bad which happens in the world and deny him credit for anything good which happens, are you aware that (under the US Constitution, no less) it is the STATES which are responsible for public health (including public health laws and enforcement thereof) within their states and NOT the federal government? The CDC has no powers at all. It can merely advise.
The buck stops after the last man passes it.
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/22/texas-issued-few-control-orders-ebola-crisis/
But, I’ll repeat; the danger is NOT US health care workers returning from West Africa. The danger is the disease escaping from West Africa to India, China, and parts unknown. Then we’ll have it coming at us from all directions, and we won’t have any way of identifying who to quarantine. We’ve got to eradicate it now, and the only way this will be done is with the free flow of medical professionals into and back from West Africa.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal: Health care workers and Doctors Without Borders are “radical do-gooders.” That pretty much sums it up for me.
Take a run or at least a warm shower to wash off the filth.
@Rich+Wheeler:
The filth only appears when you show you show up to spout your left wing blather and Larry Weisenthal shows up to parrot the left wing talking points. No coincidence that you are both California Democrats.
@Larry+Weisenthal:
FYI, the Trib, as it is called here in Texas, is NOT a conservative, or even a centrist, website. It was started by an Austin Democrat operative and given seed money by George Soros. How appropriate you would link it.
I sure hope the CDC has its $#!+ together as regards ebola policy for various hospitals.
The State Dept memo has leaked out that Obama INTENDS to import West Africans into the USA for treatment for ebola here.
Odd since we supposedly only have fewer than 20 ebola-ready beds in this whole country!
Now Italy said no US soldiers could come in from West Africa and walk about free unless they stayed for a 21-day mandatory quarantine.
Obama was A-OK with that.
Will the US military suffer a 75% drop in VOLUNTEERS because of this?
I doubt it.
And, BTW, all those ”volunteers” who go to ebolaland and work in healthcare are PAID by various NGOs.
Doctors without Borders, for instance, pays over $2000/month (tax-free) PLUS pensions and health insurance contributions and all expenses including board and lodging. On top of this they get cooks, maids, drivers, and even security guards for free.
So, I think there will always be some who will pick that road.
And IF there is a 75% drop in foreign service of doctors, there are PLENTY of areas inside the USA with too few doctors.
They want to serve where there’s a dire need?
How about into one of those places?
Larry has insinuated that the Dallas hospital was the one that dropped the ball. Seems the nurses that cared for Patient Zero Duncan disagree and say that the CDC guidelines were what was faulty.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-inside-the-first-united-states-diagnosis-thomas-eric-duncan/
@retire05:
Yeah, it was the CDC.
They didn’t even recommend a buddy system for getting out of those ebola-exposed outfits.
Nor did they require covering all of the body…..at first.
@Nanny:
I know. But Larry, who supports not only Obamacare, but single payer health insurance as well, is towing the Democrat line by trying to blame anyone but this Administration and it’s CDC lackies. But he’ll quickly tell you his interest is not political.
Larry, hi.
A question, not from me, but from a person I overheard at a store today:
Are the Ebola survivors who got blood transfusions and/or plasma now completely immune so that they could safely travel to Africa to help?
I have no idea if this is possible.
But if it is they could be very useful if they are indeed altruistic enough to do this.
Hi Nan (#22), Good question! I thought it would be easy to find the answer, but 10 minutes of PubMed searching leads me to believe that the answer to this isn’t currently known. In thinking about it, it would be very difficult to get a clean answer to this; you’d need to have large numbers of recovered patients re-introduced into areas of active disease and do case control studies. It would take a whole lot of people and a whole lot of time. Of course, if you had a single example of someone who’d been infected and recovered and then re-exposed and this person got an active infection again, this would at least show that infection/recovery didn’t grant complete protection.
There have been a number of patients treated with serum obtained from ebola survivors, but I’m sure that the numbers are so low that there is still no convincing evidence that the serum transplants actually do anything.
I’ll look some more, but I’m pretty sure that the answer will be “it is still not known.”
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
We don’t know whether survivors are immune to future infection. Nor do we know whether survivors are asymptomatic carriers of the disease, similar to Typhoid Mary and her legacy of death. Yes, we know too little about the disease and its consequences over a long period of time. Every mistake, and there have been many, is a possible disaster for America. The doctor, who insisted on riding the subway and bowling for Ebola soon after his return may have infected others, time will tell, but his indifference and cavalier attitude is an example of how the disease can be introduced to the general population, and now the nurse from Maine refuses to accept her quarantine, with the same indifference as Typhoid Mary: her inconvenience is of greater concern to her than the danger she poses to the rest of America. How many more unselfish health-care workers can we expect to challenge mandatory quarantines and common sense.
@Larry+Weisenthal:
Really? Now Nurse Kaci [I’m So Special] Hickox is saying she may not honor Maine’s orders that she self-isolate. Maine says it is ready to go to court to make sure she does. And the NYC police have reported that Dr. Craig Spencer lied to them when he told them he had self-isolated in his apartment, until the PD pulled his credit card records and his Metro records which showed he “went here, there and everywhere.” And we know, from the 60 Minutes interview with the nurses that treated Duncan, he also lied about his previous whereabouts and who he was in contact with.
So for you to claim that self monitoring works is beyond your normal spin.
Who pays for Obama and State Dept bringing ebola patients here?
Mr. Duncan’s failed case still cost $500,000 not counting the cleaning of his apartment.
The 33-year-old freelance cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia told Bloomberg that care can cost $1,000 per hour.
At least he survived.
$8,000 per day figure is the bare minimum but patients rarely pay bottom dollar for health care.
The true cost will be much closer to $24,000 to $25,000 per day.
The final cost for some of these patients could be in the millions.
In hospital quarantine can cost upwards of $15,000 per day.
More than 50 people were involved with Mr. Duncan’s care, either directly or indirectly.
Ebola patients are also kept in intensive care units, or ICUs, which are costly to operate.
Our own ObamaCare certainly will not cover an ebola infection.
As a matter of fact, many people might be written off and simply shunted aside to die if they are too old, disabled or already suffering from one or more other medical conditions.
So, I have to ask, WHY import cases of ebola into the US makes any sense at all.
@Nanny:
It has been reported that just to bring foreign Ebola cases to the U.S. is at a cost of $200,000.00 Their care then costs an additional $300,000.00. That’s a total of 1/2 million dollars per patient. Nevermind that our national debt is now over $18 trillion. (of course, in spite of all the whining the left did over the Bush debt, they are now mute on the Obama debt)
@Larry+Weisenthal: Just curious Larry, suppose you went to Walmart and there was a lady in the checkout line that coughs. You don’t know her. After you get home, you hear on the news that a Nurse that had just returned from Africa treating Ebola patients had been to Walmart at the same time as you had, and her picture in the paper looked very much like the lady that was coughing on you in the check out line. All this OK with you?
A doctor that returns from Africa that immediately goes to New York and sets out to ride several Subways and visit bowling alleys, etc. can not be trusted to have the best interests of his neighbors in mind.
My opinion is that any Person, health care worker or otherwise, returning from Africa should be confined to home for a minimum of 21 days. All of the persons on the plane with that person should also be confined for 21 days.
If my next door neighbor goes to Africa, I’m not gonna see him for the first 21 days after he gets back.
@Larry+Weisenthal: 10
Larry you seem to be having a problem keeping up with your own argument. First you say the returning health care workers are no threat then you say their work is more hazardous than someone walking down the street that is likely to be shot. Which is it? Are health care workers working in a vastly more hazardous situation or not?
@Larry+Weisenthal:No. 14.
Why wouldn’t/shouldn’t he get the blame? He’s in charge, isn’t he? I can’t think of many ‘good’ things happening that he would want credit for. Give us an example.
Is that a dream or a nightmare you’re having Larry? Do you know how many thousand people have died from Ebola this year alone? And you think it’s ‘essentially eradicated’ Wow. Do you know that projections show up to 1.4 million cases by January, 2015? Eradicated?
You’ve said several times that people with Ebola coming at us from China or India is worse than people coming at us from Africa with Ebola. If you contact ebola, does it matter to you if you got it from a guy from China, or Africa? Wouldn’t your symptoms be similar and wouldn’t your death be similar. That’s akin to saying that a nuclear attack from China would be worse than one from Russia. Once you have the symptoms of Ebola, I doubt you’re gonna care if it came from China or Africa.
Hi guys. What I’d like to do is to simply discuss this from a medical science viewpoint. We’ve all made our respective political points. As always, the conservatives get the last word here; so I’ll leave it at that.
The medical science, however, is extremely important. Ebola is a bigger threat to the USA and the world than Al Qaeda and ISIS and Saddam Hussein put together. If it was worth trillions of dollars to deal with the former threats, then it’s certainly worth tens of billions of dollars to eradicate ebola (this addresses Nan’s point about the cost of treating infected volunteer health care workers). Actually, Nan’s point illustrates why it’s so important to eradicate this outbreak, while it is still possible to do so (and the window is closing rapidly). The cost of treating our wounded health care “soldiers” is part of the price which must be paid. It’s an incredibly cost effective investment however, as the cost of treating a relative handful of infected health care workers is trivial, compared to the cost of treating an epidemic, triggered by an Ebola Ebeneezer who comes in undetected from Madrid or London or Bejing or Calcutta or Seoul or Bangkok or Istanbul.
I believe that I earlier posted a link to a (peer review publication) review paper about the transmission of ebola following the last major outbreak. Everything we thought we knew, as described in that paper, still holds. Patients aren’t infectious until they are symptomatic. In the earliest stage of the infection (fever alone) the risk of transmission, absent something like a needle stick, is vanishingly low. But the virus multiplies exponentially, and a couple of days later, the patients develop diarrhea and very high fevers and their body fluids become very hazardous.
The biggest mistake made by anyone to date was telling the second Dallas nurse that she was good to go, unless her temperature was 100.2 or above. A temperature of 99.5 in the morning deserved a red flag caution. Fortunately, she immediately reported for evaluation when her temperature clearly increased above that, which was still well before she posed a serious threat to anyone else.
I think it’s remarkable the all the health care workers treated in the USA have survived. Treatment consists of aggressive, full court press support. Keeping the patient alive with whatever it takes until they build up their antibodies and clear the infection with their own immune system. This fact will continue to ensure that medical professionals will immediately report for evaluation at the very first sign of any symptom at all.
I’m in full agreement with the revised CDC guidelines. These guidelines will protect the public from the remote risk of infection by an infected health care worker, while not fatally reducing the needed flow of health care workers into West Africa to eradicate this existential threat.
Someone challenged the view that Doctors Without Borders successfully eradicated ebola in the rural region on which they focused their limited resources. You can easily Google this. It happened. The problem is that the scope of the outbreak is too big for Doctors Without Borders to contain by itself. Which is why we desperately need all hands on deck, and why we can’t afford penny wise/pound foolish feel good measures which do vastly more long term harm than good.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
Larry, what do you think American (you know, infidels) medical or even military can do to prevent the spread of ebola through traditional Islamic burial and bathing practices?
The immediate family MUST wash (with plain water, no alcohol) the dead person, even pressing all fluids out by pushing down on both his abdomen and and chest.
They bind the person in swaddling and bury them.
After that the entire family shares a common bowl (of plain water, no alcohol) to wash face, hands and feet to become clean.
Only after all of that has been done is the dead person able to get to Paradise.
Cremation demands have been met with mobs killing such health workers, so that workers refuse to insist on cremation.
Guinea is over 90% Muslim.
Sierra Lione is over 80% Muslim.
Even Liberia, created by freed American slaves who returned to Africa, is over 10% Muslim.
@Larry+Weisenthal:
So now you’re complaining that conservatives, on what is basically a conservative blog, get the last word? And that’s not continuing to make a political point?
Again, you are making a political point. But to your “eradicating Ebola” meme, how do you get people who are still just barely removed from the dark ages to stop eating meat of disease carrying bats, or what ever it is they eat? How do you get them to put aside their Islamic burial practices, as mentioned by Nan, in order to protect themselves when their religion keeps them in the 7th century?
Yet, according to the nurse, she was told she was safe to go by the CDC, the very agency you have defended.
Guidelines that did not exist when Duncan entered the Dallas hospital.
Would those also be the nations that sealed their borders to prevent any new patients from entering their nations?
OOT, Larry; you spoke of your father who left home and hearth to join the Israeli army. I can tell you now, I’m a big supporter of Israel. But my question to you is how can you continue to support an Administration, and a party, that continues to try to totally destroy our relationship with Israel? How can you support an Administration that is calling Netanyahu, who fought for his nation, and who lost his brother at Entebbe, a chickenshit? How in your mind can you square that?
@retire05:
He won’t because he knows he can’t. The Dims will bury the Israeli’s if they get the chance.
Now here’s a sensible and responsible action by state government (and, again, it’s state government and NOT federal government which is responsible under the US Constitution for enacting public health laws, administering public health laws and safeguarding public health):
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/30/us-health-ebola-usa-idUSKBN0II1SP20141030
Again, the issue of paramount importance is eradicating the West African ebola outbreak before it spreads out of West Africa. The United States will never experience an ebola epidemic transmitted by returning health care workers. It may experience an ebola epidemic transmitted by unsuspected carriers arriving from any and all parts of the globe.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
And you are going to get a backward people to stop eating Ebola tainted meat how?
And you are going to get a backward people to end their Muslim practices of burial that spreads Ebola how?
Just saying “We need to eradicate Ebola in Africa” is NOT a solution.
Hi Retire (#36). This is an acute outbreak, as have been all prior ebola outbreaks. Ebola is not a chronic, endemic disease, like malaria. There are lots of other places in Africa with similar dietary and burial practices, but these areas have no ebola. Past outbreaks have been successfully eradicated, fortunately. The present (larger) outbreak can be eradicated, but it will take an enormous effort. But the alternative is the certain spread of ebola beyond Africa. It’s relatively easy to prevent West African ebola from posing more than a minimal public health threat to the USA, because we can readily identify and monitor travelers arriving from the infected regions. But if it spreads outside of the confines of a geographically restricted area, all bets are off, because we can’t identify and monitor millions of random travelers from all over the globe.
ADDENDUM: Here’s a short article, written by a medical professional, which is worth reading:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/10/30/ebola-fear-transmission-flu-disease-column/18126443/
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal: The CDC projection now is that there are projected to be 1.4 million infected by Jan 2015 (about 2 months from now) There are only about 10,000 cases reported right now with about 5,000 deaths, that’s about a 50% rate which projects to be about 700,000 dead by end of 1st quarter of next year.
This seems like a serious situation to me, but maybe I’m just pessimistic.
@Larry+Weisenthal:
You said:
Now you are saying:
There is a major difference between “eradicating the disease” and “eradicating the outbreak.” But I guess you thought no one would catch that. But that’s why you didn’t answer my questions:
And you are going to get a backward people to stop eating Ebola tainted meat how?
And you are going to get a backward people to end their Muslim practices of burial that spreads Ebola how?
Until you can a) get backward people to change their ways or b) find a vaccine that eradicates the disease and people of those nations are inoculated against it, Ebola, will continue to raise its ugly head.
As to your “medical professional”; does being a “medical professional” make her right when other “medical professionals” are not in line with her? I suspect you linked to her article because it fits with your opinion. Being a medical “professional” doesn’t mean that you are immune from making mistakes or having a wrong opinion. You have already bashed the medical “professionals” of the Dallas hospital, although since then, the CDC has changed its protocol from the protocol the CDC provided the Dallas hospital care givers.
Ebola is serious enough that our military will be quarantined for 21 days, but a east coast liberal, who thinks she is smarter than the rest of the medical “professionals” who recommend her quarantine, is in agreement with you on her ability to move about freely. What a selfish b!tch. She, like you, was so willing to help those of another nation but not willing to do what it takes to make the people of her own state secure.
Liberalism is definitely a mental disorder.
Please, Retire. I never thought or implied that ebola could be eradicated forever more. It can be eradicated from human beings; it’s been eradicated from human beings, previously. The problem is that it resides in animal vectors; so that it can be reintroduced into humans. Each time it has appeared in humans, it’s been eradicated from humans. This is what now needs to be done.
Regarding:
Every medical professional I know or have read about IS “in line with her.” The CDC is in line with her. The NIH is in line with her. Doctors Without Borders (who have more hands on experience with ebola than any doctors on the planet) are in line with her.
“East Coast Liberal” ??? This is starting to remind me of the climate change debate. On one hand, you’ve got doctors or scientists discussing the science of the issue, and then you’ve got people who want to make something political about it. Count me out of this. You goaded me into making a couple of political comments (concerning the ineptitude of the Texas Department of Health, which is, in Texas, Constitutionally responsible for public health policy, laws, enforcement of Public Health measures, and so forth), but that’s as far as it goes. What we are now talking about is the transmission of a viral disease and this is not at all a political consideration.
With regard to Red Team’s sobering observation: If 1.4 million Africans are ever infected with ebola within the same relatively short time frame, we’ve got the beginnings of a global disaster of Biblical proportions.
Famine, War, Pestilence. These have always been the great genocides. We’ve come to forget about famine and pestilence. We may now find ourselves engaging in biological warfare: not one group of humans against another but rather all of humanity against a virus.
With 1.4 million infected people, our only hope would be vaccines and drugs. We need a Manhattan project to work on those.
One final snarky political remark (can’t help myself): All of the usual anti-Obama suspects were quick to give him blame for the perceived failings of the CDC and NIH. What if CDC and NIH supported and targeted research results in a vaccine and/or drug which saves humanity. Will you then give Obama credit for this? I’m guessing no.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
I didn’t “goad” you into anything. You made those comments freely, without encouragement from me. Stop blaming me for you putting your foot in your own mouth.
Of course you can’t. You do snark quite well, and without goading..
I don’t blame Obama for the missteps of the CDC. I blame him for not making sure there were NO missteps. Why are we paying these clowns if they can’t even set up proper Ebola protocol with it running across many nations and they seem to be constantly changing the protocol? They need to be fired, and competent people hired in their place. Why would Obama deserve credit for a vaccine for Ebola? Did the credit for the Salk vaccine go to the person who was then president? Hell, according to certain people, Obama can’t even play a good game of golf, much less contribute to a cure for a major disease.
Retire:
Let’s back up here. The Obama administration and the CDC has absolutely zero authority with regard to the management of ebola patients in Texas hospitals or public health policy and enforcement in Texas. According to the United States Constitution, this is 100% the responsibility 0f the Texas state government. So what happens? A patient with a fever of not 99.5 but rather 103.2, with GI symptoms, arrives in a premier Dallas hospital, sweating profusely. He tells the triage nurse that he’s just arrived from Liberia. The hospital determines that he is a foreign national, without insurance, meaning that they won’t even collect Medicaid, and they send him home. He comes back in several days later, literally deathly ill.
Let’s say that you are Rick Perry. It’s not the eyes of Texas on you, it’s the eyes of the world. And what do you do? Do you leave the TRUE “clowns” alone, to handle the problem on their own? Every informed person in the world by this time has seen what sort of containment suits are worn by ebola health care providers. Total protection. Like Neil Armstrong on the moon. So what do the clowns do? They give their nurses gowns and gloves and surgical masks and surgical caps. Where is the Texas Department of Health? Are they actively monitoring what’s going on? Are there no true isolation suits in the entire State of Texas? How about consulting with the infectious disease experts at a top 20 US medical center, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, right there in Dallas. Maybe their infections disease department has proper isolation equipment. If you are Rick Perry, wouldn’t you get on the phone and personally talk to the head of the Texas Department of Health and and ask your in house health experts to talk to both the CDC and UT Southwestern? Considering that the eyes of the world are on you, after that monumental cluster f***? You really think that the CDC gave its OK to using protective gear that left the entire neck exposed? You really think that the UT Southwestern infectious disease specialists told their counterparts at Presbyterian that it was OK to use standard surgical gowns and gloves and masks, rather than proper protective gear?
And somehow, this is not the fault of Presbyterian’s doctors and administrators and the Texas Dept of Public Health and Rick Perry, but is personally Obama’s fault? When the US Constitution places responsibility squarely with the State of Texas?
And you think that people who come into contact with ebola should be forcibly quarantined for 21 days. Why wasn’t this done with the Texas health care workers, if this was so darn obvious? Why was the nurse allowed to leave her home and get on a plane at the Dallas airport (not under the supervision of US customs) and fly to Cleveland? Because this is Obama’s fault? Even though the US government had absolutely no authority to do anything and the State of Texas, under Governor Rick Perry, had the clear Constitutional authority to do everything?
I would love it if all the readers on this blog would simply read everything you’ve written on this particular thread. They are smart people, and I think they are fair enough to realize that not every political conservative is always correct and not every political moderate is always wrong. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day, and I have just had my two seconds of being on time.
What’s important is not politics but protecting America and the world from an existential threat. What is now required is a massive mobilization of health care workers to West Africa and anything which unnecessarily interferes with this, based on medical misinformation, must be opposed.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry Weisenthal:
Did you even watch the 60 Minutes segment? Duncan lied to the hospital when he first arrived. Just like Mr. Special New York Ebolo Doctor lied to the NYPD when they first questioned him and it was only after his Metro pass was tracked did they know he had been flitting all around New York.
You are making unfounded accusations that you cannot back up. Of course, the race baiters are spinning that meme, but they have no concrete proof of your claim any more than you do.
The nurses that treated Duncan said they accessed the CDC protocols and suited up as recommended. The CDC has now changed those protocols. And as to your slam against Governor Perry; I think you are confusing him with Governor Moonbeam.
Do you live in a freaking cave? The nurse said that she contacted the CDC, ITSELF, to tell them of her low grade fever and she was told, BY THE CDC, that she was safe to take the flight.
“Dallas Ebola patient Amber Vinson contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before boarding a commercial flight Monday because she had a slight fever and was cleared to fly, CDC spokesman David Daigle told The Associated Press.
“Vinson was not told that she could not fly,” a government spokesperson also told NBC News.”
My God, you are such a typical liberal. Now you want to drag others into the debate as backup. How pathetic. And who would be the political moderate? It damn sure ain’t you, Bubba.
@Larry Weisenthal: Have you heard about the two day nursing strike in California? They are striking because they have received zero training for Ebola. I wonder if Obama is planning on bringing in the foreign national Ebola patients, before the nurses receive their training. The strike is set for November 11 & 12. You can link to KFI John and Ken Show, today.
@Skookum: Would you reference a source –other than Fox—confirming Admins. intent to bring foreign nationals with Ebola to U.S. Thanks
Not the John and Ken show.lol
Hi Retire, The CDC made a mistake regarding the temperature. That’s because typically infectious disease doctors don’t consider temperatures below 100.2 to be indicative of an infectious process. But, in this particular situation, an abundance of caution was indicated, and it was a clear mistake. On what I believe was the first ebola thread on this blog (the one criticizing the choice of “ebola czar”), I, myself, was scathingly critical of this decision.
But when it comes to POLITICAL blame, which seems to be your number one issue, it was the Constitutional responsibility of the Texas Department of Health (which has legal authority and responsibility) and not the CDC (which has only advisory capabilities) to formulate and enforce policies and protect the citizenry. And when you personally blame Obama for the fact that a highly qualified and respected medical specialist, who was not even a political appointee, gave the advice about the 100.2 degree threshold, you are revealing more about yourself than I think you understand.
The CDC and NIH (NIAID) are to infectious disease as the National Cancer Institute is to cancer. There are infectious disease experts all over the country and there are cancer experts all over the country. Neither the CDC, NIH/NIAID, or NCI are considered to be the ultimate authorities regarding knowledge in their respective disciplines. It was the clear responsibility of the Texas Department of Health to consult with all of the readily available experts (e.g. those at UT Southwestern, Baylor, and the like, as well as the CDC and NIH) and formulate and enforce policies regarding this particular public health emergency. The Texas Department of Health was clearly derelict in its duty and, if you think that the top dog in the government with jurisdiction in the case at hand is where the buck stops, then you must, in all intellectual honesty, blame Rick Perry and not Barack Obama.
Regarding bringing in foreign nationals with ebola, as you must know by now, this was merely a memo from a single individual in the Department of State, which was simply (and appropriately) composed and circulated for discussion and consideration. I’m sure that this sort of thing goes on all the time in all government agencies, including defense. It certainly is the way things work in private sector business. An individual in an organization thinks he/she has a good idea; he/she circulates a memo; the idea(s) proposed are then considered, along with all of the other ideas. This particular idea was not accepted; end of story.
Regarding California nurses not receiving ebola training, this is the fault of the California Department of Health. Again, it is the states which are Constitutionally tasked with protecting the health and safety of the people within that state, not the Federal government.
By the way, here’s an update on the Maine nurse. An enormous victory for both “The War on Ebola” and common sense, if this very wise decision serves as a template for the future way in which the issue of health workers returning from West Africa is handled.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/31/maine-nurse-ebola/18232749/
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Larry+Weisenthal:
You seem to want to bash my state and my governor. So be it. I’ll take Texas over failing California any damn day of the week. I also noticed that when you mentioned the failure in California, you uttered not a word about Governor Moonbeam. I will also point out that Texas has also had the only two patients to contract Ebola from another U.S. based patient and they are doing well, no thanks to anybody but the medical treatment they received in Texas and our Texas medical teams.
BTW, how does it feel to know that you live in the state with the highest rate of poverty in the nation? Guess all those wealth creators fleeing from the Socialist Republic of California wasn’t such a good thing, after all.
@Larry+Weisenthal: Thanks for clarifying that this Admin does not intend to bring foreign nationals with ebola into the U.S.
Simply more Fox/far right hyperbole—–Which btw Redteam and I are strongly against.
@Larry+Weisenthal:
Larry, you linked to a medical “professional” that I should listen to what she had to say about Ebola. You have also mentioned the University of Texas Southwest medical branch.
Well, I’ll take your medical “professional” and raise you one:
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/10/christies_quarantine_policy_attacked_by_aclu_cdc_and_even_the_un_is_embraced_by_2011_nobel_prize_win.html
But I’m sure you will find some problem with this Nobel Prize winner.
Hi Retire, Unlike you, I don’t assign personal blame to either the President or to state governors for the daily actions of large federal and state agencies, except in cases of true and obvious emergencies. The situation in Texas was an acute emergency (when the infected Liberian was first sent home and then returned, deathly ill, and when two nurses were subsequently infected). The eyes of the world were on Texas, and Texas frankly screwed up. The two nurses should never have gotten infected from the patient. The Texas Health Department should have stepped in to provide guidance to the hospital and ensure that appropriate protective gear was available. They didn’t. This wasn’t Obama’s fault. It wasn’t the CDC’s fault. It was the fault of the Texas Department of Health, and therefore, by your method of reckoning, Rick Perry.
With regard to California, to the extent that California hospitals may or may not be prepared, and to the extent that Jerry Brown is ultimately responsible for the performance of the California Department of Health in ensuring this preparedness, then, of course, I’d hold both CA D of H and Brown responsible, in the event of a screw up, along the lines of that which occurred in Texas.
With regard to Texas and economics and citizen well being, the so-called “Texas miracle” is a bunch of over-hyped steer manure.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/oops_the_texas_miracle_that_is049289.php?page=all
And the idea that Texas is a low tax state, is hooey, also. The average Californian pays a lower total tax rate than the average Texan. It’s only the very top of the Texas food chain which makes out like bandits, presumably because they control the Texas state politicians.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA