PRESIDENT EBOLA: In 2010 Obama Administration Scrapped CDC Quarantine Regulations Aimed At Ebola

In October 2014, the first patient on American soil infected with the Ebola virus sits in isolation in a Texas hospital, prompting calls for travel restrictions between the United States and Ebola-stricken countries.

Meanwhile, four years ago, the administration of President Barack Obama moved with virtually no fanfare to abandon a comprehensive set of regulations which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had called essential to preventing international travelers from spreading deadly diseases inside the United States.

The CDC had proposed the regulations in 2005 under the administration of George W. Bush, reported USA Today in 2010. The original impetus for the regulations was fear that avian flu would spread unchecked.

The regulations proposed under the Bush administration would have granted the federal government a power of “provisional quarantine” to confine airline passengers involuntarily for up to three days if they exhibit symptoms of certain infectious diseases. Federal officials would also have been able to quarantine passengers exposed to people with those symptoms.

There was a fairly long list of diseases. It included smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, cholera — and viral fevers such as Ebola.

Before the Obama administration withdrew the proposed new rules, CDC officials had emphasized that they would only invoke the involuntary “provisional quarantine” when someone exhibiting a set of symptoms refused to work with federal officials voluntarily.

The proposed rules also would have compelled airlines to inform the CDC about sick passengers and to maintain contact information about all fliers in case the CDC and other federal agencies need to investigate a serious disease outbreak.

Airline lobbyists vehemently opposed the regulations. It would be too expensive, they said.

“We think that the CDC was right to withdraw the proposed rule,” Air Transport Association spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida told USA Today in March 2010. Merida also called the regulations “unprecedented” in terms of cost and red tape.

Civil liberties advocates also strongly opposed the CDC regulations.

“The fact that they’re backing away from this very coercive style of quarantine is good news,” ACLU legislative counsel Christopher Calabrese said in 2010, according to USA Today.

Other critics suggested that air travel regulations make no difference concerning disease outbreaks.

“They probably learned during H1N1 that this hope of preventing diseases from entering the country by stationing people at airports is unrealistic,” Jennifer Nuzzo of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told the newspaper.

The H1N1 flu virus caused a worldwide pandemic in 2009.

The first man in the United States to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus is Thomas Eric Duncan. He picked up the virus after traveling to Liberia in September.

The State Department has dismissed calls for restricting travel from West Africa.

“I don’t believe that’s something we’re considering,” a Foggy Bottom spokeswoman said this week, according to The Washington Times.

Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, among others, has a called for such restrictions. Grayson, one of the earliest proponents for federal action on Ebola, wants a 90-day ban on travel from countries where the virus has broken out.

Other critics of the tepid Obama administration response have warned of “Ebola tourism.” The concern, as the Times explains, is that people will become infected with Ebola and come to the United States seeking its exceptional level of medical care.

PARAPHRASING SOCRATES, THE CDC ADMITES THAT ALL THEY KNOW IS THAT THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT EBOLA.

Preventive Medicine Expert: Obama ‘Underplaying’ Ebola Risk
on Breitbart TV 2 Oct 2014

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/10/02/Preventive-Medicine-Expert-Obama-Underplaying-Ebola-Risk

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a preventive medical specialist who practices in Texas and Arizona, who has served as Adjunct Associate Professor in Family Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Assistant Professor in Family Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Medical Director for the Women’s Program at Maryview Hospital accused the government of “underplaying the risk” of the Ebola virus, and seemed to argue that flights from countries with large Ebola outbreaks should not be allowed into the US on Thursday’s broadcast of “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

Dr. Vliet said that the government is not doing everything it could to protect Americans from the virus. Speaking on the prospect of a flight ban and the contention that only individuals who are showing symptoms of the virus can transmit it, she said “viruses mutate and change, and so to say anything with 100% certainty when you are dealing with viruses that change is medically irresponsible.” And that “no one can say with 100% certainty” when someone becomes infectious, and this is the reason why European nations have halted flights from countries like Liberia.
She further wondered why the American recently diagnosed with Ebola was not stopped, asking “why wasn’t he stopped at customs, why wasn’t he screened then, why wasn’t he quarantined as they’re doing in other countries?”

Dr. Vliet also declared that President Obama is “underplaying the risk to Americans, and I think when we have evidence going back to the Reston lab accident in Virginia a couple decades ago, of potential airborne transmission, the Canadian government has said that airborne transmission was strongly suspected [we should be more cautious].”

She reported that Canadian health advisories on the virus scrubbed their mentions of the potential for airborne transmission of the virus even though the data did not change, “I printed out the Canadian public health advisory back in June. There is a statement in their report that airborne transmission was strongly suspected based upon the 2012 Canadian study with a transmission between two species [pigs and monkeys] that were not in physical contact…I just re-printed the Canadian advisory this week, lo and behold, that statement has been taken out…the medical data did not change,” she said.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Posted on 10/03/2014 6:22:11 AM PDT by Dqban22

Quarantine is dog whistle for racis!

The game of Ebola Roulette continues...

*click* spin *click* spin *click* spin…BANG!

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

We’re gonna need

a bigger cart!

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...

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