Posted on 10/27/2014 10:21:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the West African Ebola epidemic still raging out of control, killing 20 people a day in Sierra Leone alone, Americans, confronted with their first few cases, are taking on the tough questions: Can Ebola be transmitted by a bowling ball? What about co-location in a hipster coffee bar near the High Line? AndOMGwhat about Uber-based transmission?
Right on cue, as if in an attempt to push the discussion ever further toward irrelevancy, the twin towers of presidential posturing, Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo, agreed to hog the spotlight together in order to get presidentially tough over an issue that needed no decisiveness at all: What to do about the small trickle of health-care volunteers who return to the States from West Africa? Tired, apparently, of all the goddamned evidenced-based pussy-footing coming from people who understand science and public health, the Two Big Guys made their kick-butt pronouncement: They are throwing those weenie volunteers into the 21-day slammer, no ifs or ands or buts. Goddammit.
With this they are further tarring the poor schmuck who is fighting off a life-threatening infection: Dr. Craig Spencer. Remember him? Remember 55 percent death rates from Ebola? Yet Spencers current predicament has taken a distant back seat to the pressing worries of 8 million people who are at zero risk but appear to want to feel threatened. It is an odd inversiondumping on a guy who is sick and at real risk for death and maybe a little heroic (after all, he chose to go to Guinea to help the dying, chaotic masses) and focusing instead on his selfish disregard for the public as he traipsed across the subway system to access the cultured and well-turned-out parallel world of Brooklyn and its contents.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
So they’re trying to get us all killed? Do they think that they’re immune to Ebola?
Sounds like the author needs to do some on the ground germalism in Liberia, because he really doesn’t appreciate what NOT living in a pandemic is like.
"Germalism", haha. It's a typical liberal reaction to avoid risk assessment, especially when the writer thinks others will be taking the risks.
Sepkowitz is married to a broad that writes for the ny times...that kind of explains it to me. Thy’re both superlibs.
What a dumb$hit you are, Kent.
Ebola isn’t the flu, where mortality is far less than 1% and we have mass innoculations against it - no, moron, it is highly lethal (about 50% in the BEST of circumstances, and 70% - 90% in the worst), we have no vaccine against it (reports to the contrary are irrelevant - there aren’t billions of doses ready to go, and there NEVER will be), and there is effectively no treatment. PLUS, we don’t have a complete handle on the method(s) of transmission, PLUS the damned thing keeps mutating on us.
So, moron, NY and NJ didn’t over-react. In fact, they UNDER-reacted. Why? Because they were (until “persuaded” otherwise by Resident Obola or Czar Ron I) only quarantining those coming from Ebola-infested countries who ADMITTED TO HAVING HAD CONTACT WITH EBOLA PATIENTS. Key word there being “admitted.” Cuz nobody ever lies, nobody ever wants to escape being confined for 3 weeks, and nobody ever has the attitude that they are more important than everyone else. So you see, Kent, NY and NJ only did the very minimum for a very short period of time. Pretty soon, we will all see more Ebola cases in this country, and many of them will come through JFK or Newark...thanks, in no small part, to assclowns like you.
Personally, I believe that anyone who believes the government’s rhetoric that Americans can’t catch Ebola are the ones who are insane.
Do they think that theyre immune to Ebola?
(hat tip to: fivecatsandadog!)
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the Bring Out Your Dead ping list (formerly the Ebola ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the Bring Out Your Dead threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
I see what you did there 0_o
This is political. Obama was furious that Christie and Cuomo made him look foolish, by doing what Obama refused to do, protect the people.
The nurse works for the CDC. The quarantine was no more burdensome than the job she was doing.
Who is that suppose to be in the red circle? Obama?
It sure looks like him.
What a coinky-dink!
Put in mind that those who treated te Ebola patients are those apparently most likely to contract the disease.
;)
You see that’s the problem, in good science, you do not assume when you don’t really know, you admit the limits as to how certain you are. In cases where really intense treatment or a high risk of fatality is present, and ebola qualifies for both, you take immense precaution.
What’s more if someone actually has ebola, the quarantine allows for early detection and early treatment.
Also true is that hopefully, and despite the idiocy, we never get more ebola cases at once than we can handle. Because if it gets to the hundreds, we have more at the moment than we can handle with provided isolation wards. If hundreds of people are infected, well, especially if scattered, it will be a nightmare tracking and stopping them from all spreading it. Thanks to the government’s stupidity, if the TSA already wasn’t it, I have another reason to stay away from airports and downtown in various big cities.
That’s funny they let the nurse go home but it was announced today our soldiers have to go into quaranteen in Italy for 21 days and are not allowed to see their families
This does present a tough civil liberties question. So perhaps we should offer this: enter yourself into a monitored quarantine facility for three weeks (and make it nice and cushy) OR if you refuse, then you will not be covered for any Ebola related illnesses, should they occur. You’re on your own for the $500K treatment fee. And you will only be treated after receipt of advanced payment. Probably no more cases of “Trust me, I’ll just monitor myself”. Problem solved.
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