NOTE: These posts are not an attempt to be comprehensive in coverage of the Ebola story, nor of the Polio 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 Janet Napolitano (remember him, er, her?)].
-I have to start off with Iowahawk:
Source of Ebola outbreak found RT @BradThor Srsly? MT @NIH spent $592k studing chimps’ poop-throwing skills http://t.co/MjNlexsXDc …
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 14, 2014
-Stacy McCain summarizes ‘Obama’s’ remarks accurately so we don’t have to listen to them:
Obama: “We must start bullshitting about Ebola in a much more aggressive way. Because obviously, we haven’t been bullshitting hard enough.” — Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) October 15, 2014
He then offers some spot-on analysis:
Why does the Obama administration’s #Ebola response remind me so much of the Healthcare-dot-gov rollout?
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) October 15, 2014
With apologies to Aerosmith: It’s the same old story / Same old song and prance, my friend.
-History repeats like a fish taco:
…James Carafano in the National Interest writes that one reason the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic got so bad was because Woodrow Wilson tried to cover it up.
Stateside, at a military camp outside of Gettysburg, a young post commander named Dwight David Eisenhower ignored Washington’s advice to ignore the disease. Instead, he developed health protocols that broke the back of the disease’s run through the ranks. Impressed with the success of his methods, the Army ordered Eisenhower to dispatch his staff to other camps to train them on how to rein in influenza.
Likewise, many American cities got the disease under control only by ignoring the federal government and adopting responsible public-health policies.
Corruption kills. Stupidity kills. We have forgotten this. But in ancient times they knew better. In those primitive days the onset of plague, famine and war were often regarded by the population as a sign that heaven was wroth at its rulers for their iniquity; the bazaars were rife with rumor that the governing house was infest with debauchery, extravagance and indolence. And it was whispered about that the plague would not cease until the Royal House had amended its ways. The Chinese referred to the such blame assignments as “losing the Mandate of Heaven”.
Modern pundits may call such beliefs ‘superstitious nonsense’, but as is usual in history, there is a grain of truth to the accounts. Plagues and famines are true consequences of corruption which can be understood for entirely secular and rational reasons. For no governing class may lie and steal and distort with impunity without the consequences coming home to roost. One day what goes around comes around. And for much of the world, that day is now.
That snippet was taken from the Richard Fernandez column of yesterday, which is very well worth a read. Having elected ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ twice, there is no doubt that America has, indeed, lost The Mandate Of Heaven.
-From Real Clear Politics, we learn:
At a Wednesday afternoon press availability, President Obama reassured the public that the possibility of an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. remains “very, very low.” Using himself as an example, Obama said he “shook hands with, hugged, and kissed” nurses at Emory hospital — a hospital in Atlanta where several Ebola victims have been treated — and “felt perfectly safe” doing so.
Just call him ‘Typhoid Barry’…well, it fits, you know: he’s already been proven to be a plague these past seven years. -Dr. Thomas ‘The Bureaucrat’ Frieden gets caught in another lie:
CBS News reporting that nurse Amber Vinson called #CDC BEFORE boarding the plane and was told she was OK to get on the plane with 99.5 temp — CBSDFW (@CBSDFW) October 15, 2014
Ladd Ehlinger is taking bets:
Odds on @DrFriedenCDC finishing the month in his current job? https://t.co/Ldd2UaCrR1
— Film Ladd (@FilmLadd) October 15, 2014
Boston Radio talk show host Howie Carr has called the good Doctor the ‘Baghdad Bob Of Ebola’ — perfect.
-Megyn Kelly interviewed The Bureaucrat last night and it was, shall we say, very revealing — especially this part, as related by Scoop:
In the wake of the Dallas nurse contracting Ebola from the recently deceased Ebola patient from Liberia, Megyn Kelly challenged the CDC Director based on the material his organization has put out in regards to proper protection that should be used when coming in contact with an infected Ebola patient.
The CDC material requires only one pair of gloves, no head covering and no covering for the feet. Megyn Kelly asked the CDC director if he thought this was insufficient. He said no, and then when challenged by Megyn Kelly, he proceeded to say he would attend to an infected Ebola patient with no head covering and no covering for his feet and only one pair of gloves.
Megyn Kelly was pretty shocked as I think most of you are too….
I’d say, ‘Go ahead, Doc — walk right in, sit right down’, but then we’d end up paying to save his banally evil arse.
-Amidst the usual dreck there is a good amount of thoughtful analysis and insight out in The Ether [if you search the Rightosphere]…
= Newrouter: ‘the cdc is telling you to go to the superdome. run the other way.’
=Sardondi:
…The irony – and the crime – is that, for the virus that truly wasn’t a great threat to the population at large [ie: AIDS], the DHS spent decades screaming to us that it was; and the deadly virus which truly is a threat to the general population, the DHS/CDC is trying to tell us isn’t. Because of grotesque social-engineering and interest-group politics in the first case, and blatant protection of the party in power in the second.
Yeah, I’ll be looking to the government for my information.
=Unsk:
Mebbe that CDC memo on them there protocols didn’t get distributed properly or something.
As for me, I feel great shame that we Americans have not met the lofty goals set by Dear Leader again and have gravely disappointed him. Again.
It’s not his fault – particularly with something like 70 of those damn hospital workers failing Dear Leader and not following his crystal clear and extreme well thought out protocols to the absolute letter.
Dear Leader’s focus on this Ebola thing has been laser beam tight. All this carping about his meditation on the subject on the golf course, in front of the TV and at parties has been down right sacrilegious. Our comparatively puny brains just can’t comprehend the awesome god like powers and wonders worked by the Great Buraq Hussein.
I feel soooo ashamed.
It seems that with each passing day Reagan’s stark warning about the nine most frightening words looms larger. ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’
Yup.
Ah, it can’t happen here because we are so rich and educated…. Ha-ha!
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a DERP!
Heh…we’re governed by T.S. Idiot.
=Smack:
So now we have 2 nurses infected effectively wasting their experience and training for, hopefully, only the foreseeable future. We have a hospital that committed hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment resources and is now looking at the shut-down of a portion of its operational capacity. We have nearly 70 experienced and trained hospital personal on quarantine shut-down due to their exposure. All this for a person that, but for the administration’s intransigence, would have never gotten here to infect anyone if they had simply imposed reasonable travel restrictions…which they still have not done. American citizens are now literally being physically harmed due to this administration’s craven politically correct clap-trap.
What happens when one of our healthcare workers contracts this virus and has children at home? Are going to continue to roll the dice and hope that only child-less healthcare workers contract the virus? There is, or I should say there used to be, a point at which the political was subsumed by reality. Unfortunately, it appears that from the top to bottom, from inside the Whitehouse to the Executive Agencies, our political “leaders” are incapable of separating the political from the real-world obligations which accompany their station.
We live in serious times but unfortunately we are governed by fundamentally un-serious people.
That’s why it’s best to ignore President Unicorn and his Silky Pony minions and take your own precautions and urge your local governments to act.
=Three very spot-on remarks / observations by Melissa Clouthier:
‘Nancy Snyderman is why #Ebola will spread. She is a doctor and knows better and she is ignoring preventative measures. Human behavior 101.’
‘Don’t listen to fear mongers and don’t listen to those poo-pooing #Ebola, either. Just take rational, calm action and prepare.’
‘And then, hope that your preparation was unnecessary. But really, we Americans, who used to be self-reliant, should be doing this anyway.’
=Five:
If you haven’t [noticed], the way the CDC talks, the way it describes it’s control methods and the way Obama and the administration think…. people are not human beings, they’re just numbers, data points. Nothing more to them….
=RI Red:
Shit is starting to get real. I think we’ve reached the point where disaster scenarios are no longer hypothetical.
Rush just said maybe we are on the cusp of a major american reawakening. Sure hope so, because I’m tired of being one of the few staying awake at night.
Me too.
Whadday mean we’re screwed? The Top Man atop the Pros from Dover assures us that we have nothing to worry about. That Ebola is unlikely to get here, and in the unlikely event it got here, was very hard to catch, that, unlike Africa, our modern health care system was more than capabable of dealing with an unlikely Ebola patient –no special isolation wards needed, just a room with a private bathroom and a meticulously rigorous, yet easily followed, protective garbing and disgarbing proceedure.
You teatards just want to start a panic because you can’t stand to see a black man succeed as President!
You caught me.
-Some clarification on terms and a disturbing story from DiCentra:
Sounds like a clarification needs to be made and often:
AIRBORNE— Virus free-floats in the air. You inhale it and get infected.
AEROSOLIZED — Virus is contained in fluid droplets that are expelled during a sneeze or cough. If a droplet gets into a mucous membrane or you inhale/swallow it, you get infected.
Ebola is aerosolized but not airborne. The danger of it mutating to airborne form is fairly remote.
The dangerous mutation would be the virus showing up in the bodily fluids prior to the onset of symptoms.
Also, Glenn Beck just did a demo wherein he followed the robing procedures of the Dallas nurses, had his crew fling spaghetti and chocolate syrup at him (to simulate projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea) and then disrobed according to the written procedure.
The FIRST step is to remove the gloves. He touched all the fluids on the outside of the garment and stuff got into his eyes. His neck, back of head, and throat were totally exposed. There was no provision for booties or for washing shoes (that traipsed all over creation).
Absolutely appalling.
Stool samples sent through the pneumatic tube system, thereby exposing everyone in the lab who touches samples sent after that. The nurses who treated them were not put under guard by the CDC.
We are so damned screwed.
Glued and screwed.
-Related from Miles Per Galleon:
There is no panic about Ebola. The panic, if you want to call it that, is over the criminal stupidity and lying of our government officials — top to bottom.
I would classify it more as anger & disgust & mega-frustration than panic.
“Panic” is the label that dishonest downplayers like The Missourian love to slap on anyone who keeps asking reasonable questions & pointing out inconsistencies and errors in officialspeak, rather than shut up & meekly accept the government gruel.
Plus, their reciting the “only one dead; only X infected” statistic ignores the math while pretending to be oh-so-adherent to math. The math of epidemics is exponential, not linear. That’s why containment measures re: deadly contagions MUST be super-aggressive and overly cautious (within reason, and up to the limits of resources) early on.
The math of epidemics predicted this. We (the reasonably concerned) knew we would be damn lucky if Nina Pham turned out to be the only person who contracted Ebola from Duncan. Because THAT outcome would be linear, and in defiance of the math of epidemics.
But no. We did not get lucky on that. As predicted, as *could* have been predicted by anyone not (A) a DNC party flack, (B) government bureau-drone, or (C) someone with a mental block the size of the Hoover Dam and a tank full of koolaid (foolaid?), the math is winning. The vector from vector Duncan has now gone exponential.
We may have another shot at getting lucky in this particular case, *IF* the two Dallas nurses got intervention early (i.e. were isolated before they started shedding & infecting others), and *IF* they are the only ones infected by Duncan.
But that is just one case.
And Fedgov is still refusing to take even basic common-sense measures.
So I don’t think it *un*reasonable if Americans who are paying attention to this don’t feel we are going to be rolling in horseshoes & four-leaf clovers in the near future.
-In other pestilence news:
And on the lighter side of the news RT @ABC7Chicago NYC rats carry 18 new viruses, study says http://t.co/ST5RAan0rJ pic.twitter.com/68Ph5CPE2F
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 15, 2014
Imagine a drill drilling on a human face — forever.
