Posted on 04/12/2015 4:35:34 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe
That characterization is undeserved, and with your 20-20 hindsight, many of the unknowns of the time have been removed by studying the current outbreak. The disease is still extant, only the information on what is going on has gone away.
Awkward things like inadequate protocols from the CDC and the fact that there were only 22 level 4 beds in the US get swept under the rug that way. After all, it is somewhat embarrassing for the "Obamacare" administration to be caught with its pants down in the face of a potentially serious biological threat, and the possibility of biological agents being intentionally released by terrorists always looms in the background. It takes very little "What if?" to realize there are wholly inadequate means for dealing with a serious biological threat here, the borders are worse than porous with illegal immigration encouraged, and the safeguards virtually nonexistent.
To be tediously repetitive, there were only twenty two BSL-4 beds in the entire US, and the one case outside of such containment led to two more.
Now, about your serious case of normalcy bias.
Just because it hasn't happened yet does not mean it will not (actually we have had a pandemic here, although it only killed 2.5% of the people infected).
I have no incentive to evoke panic, nor would I want to do so. Panic is counterproductive.
I do want people to be informed, because being informed allows people to assess any risk and take appropriate action as needed to minimize that risk.
The government lied about Ebola, and about its level of preparation for such an outbreak should it occur, insisting any hospital with an isolation unit could handle the disease.
Aside from a disease that has killed over 10000 people (yes, Africans are people, too), the way our government lied should be cause for concern.
We dodged the bullet this time. Instead of taking that for the wake-up call it should be, all things considered, looking back on a disaster that did not happen and using that as justification for the stance that it can't happen here is ludicrous.
That isn't hysteria, it is just calling for responsible preparation for a pandemic event that is going to happen again sooner or later.
I suppose we could all spend our time watching reruns of Keeping up with the Kardashians instead, but then you wouldn't have anyone to get hyperbolic and snooty with.
20-20 hindsight, I knew it from the beginning, why didn’t you and the others?
20-20 hindsight is dishonest to say, my posts and my links show that we knew all this stuff when you guys were pushing the hysterics and the fantasies, that is why I could call Ben Carson and Rand Paul idiots when they made their statements.
Here you are still trying to argue like this was a year ago, when do you just admit that the hysterics were clueless and wrong?
Maybe because we were looking at what was in front of us not out the other end.
Clueless? Projections of the disease's progress in Africa were pretty much spot-on until new treatment methods and additional assistance were forthcoming, so I would not say that was "Clueless".
Most predictions of possible disaster here were based on the disease getting in the wild on these shores. That, generally, did not happen. It's like saying that because the person standing in the puddle of gasoline didn't strike a match, there's no danger of fire, and then saying "I told you so".
That the fundamental conditions which those projections were based on did not come to pass did not mean there was no danger if they had. It just means the conditions were not right. So you bet on the best-case scenario. Bravo, kudos, don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back. My purpose in all this wasn't to predict so much as to chronicle, and be aware of what the worst case might bring. (Hint: we already knew if no one got sick there wouldn't be a problem.)
There was a lot of interest in preventing that worst case, and the gross missteps the administration was making in doing so did little to gain the confidence of anyone paying attention. Ebola could have very easily been much more of a problem than it was. Thankfully, it wasn't.
Actually we're glad not to be burying people wholesale, too (well, at least most of them).
Go look at those old threads and how nasty the hysterics were, and how the people who had a good grasp of this were attacked and reviled.
You are still obsessed with it, you keep coming back for days to pester me with long posts about this.
It’s over, you guys were wrong, move on with your life.
A Pandemic is quite possible. People are not as isolated from each other as they used to be even 50 years ago. The media may not be effective at getting important messages to the public. Music, TV, and advertisements are broadcast each day. People do not listen unless something is over-hyped. Large groups of people can be motivated to respond to fear. After making people fear several times with no bad outcome apathy will prevail.
Ebola got here and into other civilized nations, it didn’t amount to much.
Africa has had dozens of outbreaks over the last 40 years, and even there it gets handled.
This current outbreak has been the worst ever, and by African standards, it hasn’t killed many people.
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