The Ebola crisis continues to grow with panic in the streets and all kinds of dumb ideas adding to the ridiculous panic. A school has been closed in Mississippi because the principle had traveled to Zambia, a nation in Africa but untouched by the disease. People in places like Kentucky are staying home because a nurse who traveled to Cleveland may have been infected. You can’t fix stupid and there’s no dealing with cowardice.
Democrat Wendy Davis who is fighting a losing battle for the Texas governorship has come out for a travel ban, in a last ditch attempt to appeal to the small minds that proliferate in that state. How about a ban on travel to and from Texas, Wendy? Sure that sounds over the top but that’s the only place someone has died from the disease in this country so far.
A travel ban will, according to health officials, be counter productive because the big move has to be to control the epidemic in West Africa and such a ban will get in the way of health professionals an supplies getting back and forth. The problem here doesn’t appear, with one exception, to be anyone bringing the disease from West Africa but with health care professionals contracting the disease from a patient because of poor protocols. Now that four states including New York & New Jersey have instituted a quarantine for returning health care workers we can be sure that the number of these heroes risking their lives to go overseas and fight the plague will shrink dramatically. Thanks Christie and Cuomo for the dumbest act of the month. It may get you a few votes, it could also cost thousands of lives.
A Republican congressman Dennis Ross, from Florida, was on Morning Joe the other day with a piece of legislation that will ban all direct flights from West Africa to the US. This is a perfect example of an idiot leaping into action despite having no knowledge of the subject with which he’s dealing. There are no direct flights from West Africa to the US. This was pointed out to him by a member of the press that was also on the show; instead of retracing his steps he argued. This is a dumb guy, elected by dumb people, promoting a dumb idea at a time when we really haven’t got extra energy to deal with any of the above.
The appointment of Ron Klain as the new Ebola czar has made a lot of Republicans jump in and get a little face time by claiming that the new czar should be a medical man. There are already plenty of medical men involved in this mess. What is needed is a person who can run things, organize this stew of many competent medical professionals who can’t get on the same page. So Obama appointed a man who knows organization and how to deal with bureaucracy.
The Republicans are all mounted on their high horses, railing about how Obama hasn’t handled the epidemic that isn’t, and how no one was prepared or trained in anticipation of it. None of them seems to remember that it was the Republicans in congress that cut funding for medical research over and over in favor of building bigger and better bombs with which to kill people that haven’t done anything to us. Yes, these same loud mouths have voted again and again to cut all kinds of research, especially medical, in favor of increases in the Pentagon and Homeland security budgets. Why? Because it appeals to their real constituents, the military industrial complex for whom they really work and who pays them very well.
Former Governor and Presidential candidate Dr. Howard Dean was on the tube with what is probably the most intelligent outline put together by anyone involved in the Ebola debate so far. He points out both the idiocy and the counter productive aspects of any kind of flight ban and then he goes on to explain why, in this fluid world, it is essential to solve the problem in the three West African nations where it is thriving. He explains that if it is not stopped there, it will eventually spread not to the US so much as to countries that do not have our or European health facilities or trained personnel. If it spreads to other African nations or even places like India, Pakistan, Indonesia or any countries that do not have our sophisticated medical treatment protocols it will explode into a world health crisis. The same is true if it invades countries that are currently at war, where the chaos of that action diminishes the area’s ability to treat the disease the way it needs to be treated in order to stop it.
Even though all the experts have come down against a travel ban as being counter productive many politicians on both sides have been promoting it heavily because it suits their political purposes. This is the most viscous, most disgusting use of a social issue to promote political careers. Anyone who has participated in this kind of fear mongering for political gain needs to be in jail. Do we want these losers running our country? This is exactly the reason that congress is such a disaster now; because we have elected people to it, who will do anything, say anything, no matter how false of damaging to the country just to get a well paying job that will eventually lead to a great paying lobbyist post.
Bill Krystol and Mary Madelon were on This Week and were trying their best to prove that Obama had picked up the virus on a trip to Africa and had deliberately brought it over here to infect the citizens of Texas. Of course Krystol has also come out with the two men he thinks should be the Republican candidates for President in two years. Dick Cheney for president and Rudy Guiliani for VP. That gives you an idea of the intelligence level of this pair. But it’s not just the Republicans, it’s also the Democrats that haven’t got the guts or the talent to win their elections without abandoning the guy who continues to lead the party on a righteous course despite the tragic cowardice of many of it’s members.
Meet the Press, finally had a couple of real experts on, people who had fought the Ebola Virus in other epidemics around the world. Lori Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Anthony Banbury. Banbury speaking from Anccra, Ghana spoke to how the healthcare workers in West Africa were meeting the demand of the disease but still need more nurses and healthcare workers.
Chuck Todd pointed out the huge numbers of deaths from other causes in this country and the single death from Ebola. Lori Garrett, who has been in a number of plague outbreaks around the world, replied that any new cause of death will result in a new kind of fearfulness but Americans need to relax.
Ebola is out of control in Africa. The reality there is that way over twenty thousand cases erupted in October and the increase is exponential. But that doesn’t mean that we should worry about that happening here. Yes, we will get more cases, but because of where our health care system is, we will not have to face an epidemic.
Then we get the congressional nuts, either too stupid to understand what is really going on or greedily looking for press time no matter what is going on.
Bob Casey (D) Penn, was asked by Chuck Todd why we don’t have a Surgeon General. He should ask the GOP that question, because it is the Republicans who have blocked the President’s nomination, just like they have blocked a few hundred others.
Pat Roberts ® Kansas- says that the Ebola epidemic shows how we should be securing the border and not granting amnesty. What the hell doers the non-epidemic have to do with closing our borders? Does Roberts really think that sick people are rushing here from Africa and staggering across the Rio Grande to infect Texans? Can he possibly be that brain dead?
The question: Has the government done enough to create a vaccine? There have been many large government grants to create vaccines for any number of pathogens, including Ebola but it is almost impossible to get the big drug companies on board because they don’t see a profit in a vaccine that will go to treat people in poor countries. Yeah, I know. That sounds pretty horrible but that’s big pharma. Big drug companies are all about profit first and everything else second and they just don’t see the financial benefit of creating and storing large amounts of vaccines that may never be used, or if they are, will mostly be given away. It’s governments job to force them to do this just as it’s government’s job in the guise of Medicare or Medicaid to negotiate all drug prices down to acceptable levels, but government won’t do this because congress, is paid off by the drug companies not to. They actually pass laws that say Medicare can’t, that’s right CAN’T, negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices.
The Republicans continue to attack the President for problems in the healthcare sector when it is them in their congressional roles, especially in the House, that are the factor that is destroying our healthcare system.
We need military personnel, healthcare workers and the proper supplies in place, in West Africa. In order to get those things we must be able to assure workers that they will be able to return after their stint. We are now starting to get the supplies and personnel that we need to deal with the epidemic in West Africa but a hell of a lot more needs to be done and we, as always are the main source of help.