These posts are not an attempt to be comprehensive in coverage of the Ebola story. They just contain some items that have caught my eye [which is still not hemorrhaging blood, I'm happy to report — that only happens when I look at Hillary or Lady Michbeth].
-Please see my previous posts on the subject: On Ebola, Dis Ease, Ebola: Beware The Modern Witch Doctors.
-From Breitbart, Bob Price reporting, we learn:
A Dallas paramedic claimed he drove the ambulance that the US Ebola patient was transported in and that he was not contacted by anyone about the potential exposure. He claims he drove the ambulance sometime after the patient was transported. The Dallas Fire Department left the ambulance that transported Ebola patient Thomas Duncan to the hospital in service for at least 48 hours before putting it in quarantine on Wednesday. The ambulance was exposed to the Ebola virus when Duncan was transported on September 28th.
“All the people in the back of the ambulance 48 hours later before they finally took the ambulance out of service,” said Dallas Paramedic Geoffrey Aklinski in a discussion on Facebook, “none of them have been contacted. None of the paramedics that were on that shift and went in the ambulance were contacted. I’ve been off three days now. No one contacted me and I was in and drove that ambulance after it was infected.”
…
“Three days after the fact,” an exasperated Aklinski stated, “I had to demand exposure testing and they are reporting following up with all the people in the ambulance??? Bull crap!!! They haven’t even followed up with the ten firefighters that were on duty Sunday.”
Aklinski went further in explaining the frustration he and most likely, other firefighters, are feeling. “How do you not test and contact the firefighters at the station on Sunday!!! Only the two medics and the intern on the ambulance? I was freaking in that ambulance hours later driving it!!! No one bothered to contact me about it?!!!”
He went on to say he has contacted other news outlets and they won’t report his side of the story. “They just go with the official reports,” Aklinski stated.
‘They just go with the official Party line’ — there, fixed that for you.
-Ladd Ehlinger:
Golly this Ebola stuff is so hard, so impossible to get it apparently infects doctors who are trained in all the safety procedures.
— Film Ladd (@FilmLadd) October 3, 2014
-From The Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper reporting, we learn:
NBC News chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, and her crew will be flown back to America from Africa to be quarantined, an NBC memo states. The drastic action comes after a freelance member of the NBC crew reporting on Ebola was in fact diagnosed with Ebola.
-From Bretbart, again, John Nolte reporting, we learn [tip of the fedora to Jeff Goldstein]:
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden either refused or is incapable of giving CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta a straightforward answer to a very simple question: Can Ebola be transmitted through a cough, sneeze, or handshake. The CNN clip, first snagged by Twitchy, is equal parts staggering and terrifying — like something you see from an arrogant government official in a zombie movie before the plague explodes.
There are many times during the course of the day these days where you feel like you’ve woken up in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movie.
And I don’t feel fine.
-Some very insightful remarks from Subotai Bahadur, frequent commentator over at The Belmont Club:
1) Responding to epidemics/pandemics is NOT something that has never come up before. The very fact that we are here, with our pre-Ebola life expectancies, is based on the ability of medical science to respond to disease outbreaks.
2) The standard first response, backed by millennia of successful experience, is isolation of the infected community/individuals with quarantine for those who are suspected and at risk.
3) The deliberate, considered, and premeditated response of Federal agencies across the board has been to bring as many disease vectors into this country as they possibly can, to forcibly prevent them from being medically screened, to scatter them throughout the country, and to actively impede state and local health authorities from responding to any disease outbreaks triggered.
We now have Ebola being spread by government actions within our borders. We now have previously eradicated TB being spread by government action within our borders, except now drug resistant. We now have an epidemic enterovirus all over the country attacking children, now killing them, and mutating into a form of polio which we had eradicated within our borders. We now have Dengue Fever spreading within this country, which has not been here in any volume for a century.
And all of it spread in the last couple of years with the help of all agencies of the Federal government.
This is a level of “incompetence” that cannot be blamed on one or two individuals. It crosses several Cabinet level departments with them working together for a common result. Which we are seeing now. That level of “incompetence” is in fact planning and premeditation. The odds of multiple departments committing reinforcing acts to bring this result by pure chance are beyond credibility. Especially, since not one of them are responding to the breaking reality with changed behavior.
The proper domestic response to the initial outbreak would have been stopping all direct flights between the US and the affected countries, blocking entry of anyone who has been in those countries until they can prove that they have been outside those countries for 30 days, the cancellation of student and tourist visas for people from those countries, and [oh, yes] securing our borders so that anyone who comes in is screened for health and legal status. Noting that 15% of the illegal invaders who cross our deliberately-erased-by-the-Federal-government are NOT from Mexico, Central, or South America. And that from January-August this year 71 nationals from the Ebola infected countries were caught at the former border. And that we only catch a small percentage of those crossing.
I would also note that we have done the travel restrictions relatively recently for H1N1 flu. This is not breaking new ground. It is deliberate avoidance of proper epidemiological procedure.
Prediction: sometime soon, the Federal government will institute movement and quarantine controls inside the country for US citizens only. The national borders will remain wide open. Foreigners, legal or invaders, will be allowed to move as they please. And all anti-discrimination laws will be firmly enforced.
I have expressed doubts about a real election in November. This reinforces those doubts.
You are not alone.
-That this whole situation is turning into a Clusterfuck is no surprise. The Bureaucracy has never been more powerful in this country [thanks to the support it receives from Leftist and Quisling politicians] and, concurrently, it has never been harder to build new bridges, highways, power plants — any of those things that symbolize a healthy and vibrant Society. We are drowning in an ocean of regulations that are putting our safety at risk.
Be worried. Be very worried.
