Posted on 08/07/2014 11:20:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
News that 8 persons in Lagos, a city of 20 million people, were infected by the dying Patrick Sawyer with Ebola and one — a nurse — had died sent a shudder of fear through Nigeria. Close on its heels reports that a businessman had died with Ebola-like symptoms in Saudi Arabia following a trip from a West African trip have prompted assurances from authorities that steps have been taken to keep the Haj from becoming a distributor of the disease to Muslim world.
Ebola is proving the proposition that when dealing with nature, if you lie you die. Nowhere is this clear than in Liberia where the poorly educated population is hiding victims, abstracting them from hospitals, attacking doctors who they believe bring the disease or dumping Ebola corpses in the street, satisfied that by casting the infectious corpses out of doors to be torn to pieces and spread abroad by dogs and carrion, have solved the problem.
And in a way it is rational a rational response to irrational Liberian governance.
With less than half of those infected surviving the disease, many Africans regard Ebola isolation wards as death traps, he said. ‘They are therefore removing the bodies from their homes and are putting them out in the street,’ Mr Brown told Reuters.
The virus has closed down Liberia’s hospitals and killed its doctors. Liberia’s institutions, never much good in the best of times, are being collapsed by the virus. A chart from the Wall Street Journal tells a tale of rout. While Guinea and Sierra Leone Ebola statistics show a constant rate of infection, but Liberia’s slope is increasing as the days progress. It’s getting worse faster.
Panic
Naturally the World Health Organization is meeting to decide whether the experimental drug Zmapp should be provided to the stricken African countries. Nothing like demanding a uncertified, unneeded product created by a morally defective capitalist pharmaceutical system to save the world. The LA Times reports:
the World Health Organization said it was convening a panel of medical ethicists early next week to consider whether experimental drugs should be more widely released.
A decision to allow two American health workers infected in Liberia to have access to an experimental treatment — while dozens of African doctors and nurses have perished — has ignited a controversy over the ethics of the decision, which reportedly sidestepped Liberian health regulations.
If the serum proves their last hope they’ll first demand it as a ‘right’– then commandeer it if necessary. Necessity knows no bounds. But that cuts both ways. There may be no serum other than a few experimental vials. Reality doesn’t give a damn about Liberian health regulations nor WHO edicts nor speeches by president Obama. It cares about facts.
About who invested in medical research, and who didn’t; about who has good epidemic controls systems and which don’t; about which country have functioning border controls and which care about ‘immigration reform’. And there isn’t any serum in production, then there’s no serum. The problem is that since our leaders have messed up the facts, they can’t fix things with speeches.
War, Famine and Pestilence all obey the laws of physics. The media, government and the academy have heretofore cared about the laws of political correctness and the tyranny of appearances. Now we get to see who wins. In recent years it has become fashionable to claim the Narrative trumps reality. Yet you can’t bribe viruses, can’t “hide” infectious victims, can’t appease dictators and you can’t print money. As I’ve written many times before, nobody beats arithmetic.
Not even Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis don’t act rationally then the Haj can become one giant virus distribution system, their K street lobby notwithstanding. If Obama doesn’t close the border, if something can come along, something will come along. Something like Ebola, which if unchecked will teach the Boko Haram and ISIS that chopping off people’s heads and having sex with hundreds of kidnapped African schoolgirls isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The narrative of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is often given a mystical interpretation. But it can be viewed as a straightforward secular warning against folly. According to Billy Graham, the First Horseman is the great liar, the false prophet, the anti-Christ. But even if you’re not a Billy Graham fan, and even if you hate him, it’s easy to see how a venal government, a debased culture, a system of self-deception can lead to famine, pestilence and war.
Corrupting the information store will get you every time.
It may be happening already. As I noted elsewhere, for the first time since the Second World War, globalization is contracting. Air routes are being trimmed to detour around the threat of surface to air missiles posed by the Islamic world and on the Russian border. Diseases know the difference between real and paper countries. Liberia has announced the closure of its borders, and disease knows it has no borders.
ASKY and Arik, Emirates Airlines and British Airways have halted flights to West Africa. And unless the situation is physically reversed, more and more destinations will be declared off limits. The map of Africa may slowly become blank again. Unless the trend is reversed the global elites will eventually reach the point the Chinese called ‘losing the Mandate of Heaven’.
That’s the point when people impeach their leaders not on the basis of party affiliation but on the basis of whether they want to physically survive an epidemic or not; when competence finally matters. Perhaps we’re already there. Charles Krauthammer observed that things have reached the point when ’no one cares what Obama says’, adding he’s “almost animatronic”, like those plastic dinosaurs in a theme park, acting out his theme park presidency.
We often forget that the sacred texts of mankind began as practical documents. They were checklists. And we may well rediscover this fact before the end. One can imagine the last two postmoderns crawling towards each other in the ruins of a once great city to die, and while waiting to expire engage in conversation to pass the time.
“Waldo,” the first said, “do you remember that tablet displayed in front of the Texas Statehouse. You know, back when there was a Texas?”
“Yeah, didn’t it have a whole bunch of stuff scrawled on it? Tell me again what it said,” replied the other.
“Waldo, it said, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ And ‘thou shalt not lie’.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes it also said, ‘thou shalt not steal’. Plus somewhere in the middle said, ‘thou shalt not have sex with people you weren’t married to.’”
“Yeah, I remember it now,” the second post-modern said. “What a bunch of hooey. It’s a right wing, nutjob, racist document called the Ten Commandments. It’s a religious document.”
“No Waldo,” the first replied. “That’s where you’re wrong. It ain’t no religious document. I just figured out it was a survival manual.”
It must be late, but I’m not sure how he mixes the ten commandments, the anti-Christ and Billy Graham with a ebola outbreak in West Africa.
As to the experimental drugs, The US is going to do what is in the best interests of the US to do. Foreign Ethics panels don’t factor in which is why our two people were moved here, and I understand Spain is doing likewise with theirs..
The drugs were not ready, but their readiness had to be tested on humans and they could not do that, so as a result of this outbreak with American’s infected the FDA took steps to partially release some of the holds on the use of the untested drugs.
As the result of the emergency, the drugs should make a leap of progress toward eventual effectiveness and possible distribution if they are deemed ready.
I read in a scientific journal just yesterday that they believe that the precursor or source of the type of virus that Ebola belongs to, might be as old as ten thousand years.
That is as old as the history goes back, in my understanding. So it’s been around for a while and will be around for a lot longer.
I don’t think we need to get out undies in a wad just yet...
out=our
too bad.....tried to warn people....tried to warn them about voting bammey in not once, but AGAIN....just pathetic and tragic....
And this author made some serious accusations with this article. Trying to make sense of what seems to be a chaotic situation. Not bad. Although from my point of view, all four horseman have already arrived. A few years ago. What we see with Ebola, is just one of the tools they utilize as they go about their work. And Ebola is probably a lot older then just 10,000 years.
Later.
Dare I say “Jungle Rules” ?
“....As surely as Water will wet us,
as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
with terror and slaughter return! “
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Nah.
We can always panic later...
I prefer to keep an eye on things so I get the timing right.
Cherry, they can face what they have and do something about it, or the problem will eventually be self-limiting.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Dang, you beat me to it...
If the rumors about his sexuality and about his religion are true, then obama is the vector, our personification of "something will come along" coming to life here, inside US.
Decade after decade, in almost every way possible, our nation has cursed and removed the protections that would have kept US safe until we finally became infected with this progressive autoimmune disease now overwhelming the things that once kept US healthy.
After just a term and a half, we're close to terminal and the world isn't in much better shape than we are.
On so many levels it's like we're one too many NFL concussions stupid and still counting:
"Here, Sodom, hold my beer and watch this!" as we use both hands to flip the bird to Heaven itself.
***The First Horseman***
WAR
FAMINE
PESTILENCE
DEATH.
Not necessarily in that order.
“The ‘copybook headings’ to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students’ special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page.”
We can tell that the fools who rule us were never much concerned about virtues or wisdom. And when I ponder the reference to ‘the Gods of the Market’ I can think of more than a few on “our” side it applies to. How did Kipling foresee the GOPe....
bttt
WHAT A GREAT POEM. FIRST TIME I HAVE READ IT.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING IT.
GOD BLESS AMERICA,LET US PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF Israel, JERUSALEM AND ALL SEEKING TO KNOW AND SERVE OUR LORD, IN JEUS NAME AMEN.
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