Posted on 10/11/2014 4:06:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
Reading the bio alongside Steven Bucci’s Daily Signal piece on the Ebola-inspired Liberia travel ban made me want to meet him and shake his hand. He “served America for three decades as an Army special forces officer and top Pentagon official,” now serving as director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Military Hero. Heritage. How do I not love that? Yet oddly, his piece opposing a temporary block on incoming West African travelers struck me as completely wrong, so my usual instinct kicked in— to welcome him to my radio show.
His headline, “Wisdom Should Prevail Over Panic,” suggests he is the wise one and I am panicking. I asked him why he would attach a “panic” label to the large number of Americans advocating the disallowance of incoming LIberians:
SB: Because frankly you are then excluding a ton of folks who are not posing any danger to anyone, you’re really hurting the economies of those countries, when they’re already teetering on the brink, frankly.
MD: So because of concern over the fragile economies of West African nations, or the slight that we may inflict to thousands of people who pose no risk— because of those, we need to say, “Hey, just in from Monrovia? Come on in!”
SB: The biggest reason is those kind of bans have historically been proven to not do what they promise to do. They don’t give you the level of protection as a society, whether it be a city or a country that it seems intuitively they would.
MD: Well, what’s an example of one where everybody thought our level of safety would go up, and it did not?
SB: If you do the analysis after the 1918 Spanish flu, which was like the worst pandemic ever… there were communities, cities in the United States that tried to do that, they tried to basically wall themselves off, keep everybody else out, keep all of their people in, and the disease made it in anyway.
MD: But these are American cities… where freedom of passage, and roads, and— I can’t imagine walling off a city. In no way is that analogous to what a country can do. We are absolutely able to monitor who comes into and out of our country. Liberian passport equals you’re not getting in.
SB: Looking at this particular outbreak, the country of Sierra Leone started, after they had one case that came in, they said, ‘Okay, nobody else is coming in our country’… and it failed, it failed miserably, and they wasted a ton of assets trying to do it, instead of putting the assets against the more useful population distancing and mitigation…
Here’s what was so peculiar: Mr. Bucci had several ideas that were thoroughly valuable in terms of what West African nations can do, and what we can do, to minimize the spread of Ebola. I had no quarrel with any of them. What was disorienting was the enormous pushback— from a conservative!— with logic pulled straight from the index cards of the left. I returned to his curious notion that an American attempt to stop incoming Liberians would be as failed as the Spanish Flu barriers of 1918 or the sparse border controls of West Africa.
MD: We absolutely have the ability to say “If you have a Liberian passport, you’re not coming in.” Try to tell me why that’s not a good idea.
SB: Because it will waste assets and it will not work.
MD: What assets are wasted?
SB: All of the stuff you have to do to make sure that happens.
MD: Wow. “Liberian passport— no.” That wasn’t expensive.
SB: Okay, are you going to do it for Spain, too?
Really? Was this happening? Was the suggestion that the advocacy of a travel ban from a country with thousands of Ebola cases necessarily leads to the advocacy of a travel ban from a country with one? This was disingenuous, and with all respect, I told him so. (Guests are always welcome, in turn, to tell me when they think I am committing a similar sin.)
So we returned to the other premise against the travel ban— that “it will not work.”
MD: How does that, purely mathematically not work?
SB: All the epidemiological studies that have been done by the CDC and these other public health professionals, who are not terribly panic-ridden…
Again with the panic. Getting the theme? It is a sign of delusion to remotely suggest that the CDC may be politically or attitudinally restrained from delivering full honesty. But he continues:
SB: Their point is you can better deal with these things, by one, breaking the outbreak where it’s begun, over there, thats how you protect the world, and therefore increase our protection, and to do that the kind of bans that you’re talking about are counterproductive.
MD: How is that the case? How is doing what I’m talking about— saying no to Liberian entries— how does that hinder the admittedly praiseworthy things that you’re mentioning?
SB: Because it will not give us the protection tat you think it will give us.
Well, apparently they are teaching mind-reading in the Special Forces. Mr. Bucci thinks he knows the level of protection I expect from a travel ban. For those less clairvoyant, I will reveal that I have no idea of the exact level of protection a Liberian passport stoppage would offer. But I know that whatever it is, it is wise. Whether it stops one Ebola-positive entry or one hundred or one thousand, it is a reduction compared to what we would otherwise have.
And don’t talk to me about this ridiculous fever-detection technology in various airports. A fistful of Motrin will keep body temperature under control until the new arrival is well within the American city of his choice.
In his opinion piece, Mr. Bucci quoted CDC chairman Tom Frieden, who set up a straw man a freshman philosophy student could recognize: “I wish we could get to zero risk by sealing off the borders, but we can’t.”
MD: No one is suggesting that the risk can be brought to zero. But mathematically it is true, risk will reduce if we say no to entries from the country that is the absolute ground zero for Ebola.
SB: The trade-off is not worth the added benefit.
MD: So you’re admitting there is a benefit. On the other side of the scale, the things that make it, on balance, not worth doing— so far I’ve gotten concern over the West African economy— what else was there?
SB: That it will essentially cause this outbreak to last longer and get bigger—
MD: How does that happen? That saying no to Liberian entry to America increases the outbreak?
SB: it will cause the efforts there to fight the outbreak to take longer and be less effective.
MD: How? How does that hamper Ebola fighting over there?
SB: Because the flow of goods and services in and out will be hampered, because when the United States does it, everybody else in the world will piggyback on it, and you will hinder the ability of the public health people to get assets in there—
MD: Not at all. Military assistance, charter flights going over there to help…that’s something we can do. My specific question is: how does saying no to Liberian entries over here hamper fighting it over there?
If you are sensing that I am asking the same question multiple times, you are correct. I do that when : a) I do not get an answer, or b) I cannot fathom the answer I am getting. We learn something no matter what happens, when the guest either relents and changes the answer or finds new ways to stick to his guns.
SB: It will not provide the benefit it is promising. You will give people false hope that they are protected…
No one has made such a suggestion. I ask why we should not do everything we can do to reduce risk to the American people?
SB: Everything that is going to be beneficial, and will not have other unintended consequences.
MD: I love you in a lot of ways, but there is not one unintended consequence that you’ve made the case for, not one.
SB: Well, we’d have to disagree on that.
And with that, I sincerely thanked this American hero who works for one of the greatest conservative think tanks in American history. With his history and his current business card, I would bet we would agree on twenty out of twenty other issues he has covered in his current post.
And again, it is not strange to find someone making his arguments. It is strange to find someone making these arguments from somewhere other than the White House or the CDC.
No matter its source, it is a flawed notion that America as a global citizen owes more to Ebola-stricken nations than we owe our own citizens.
Don’t forget the 1st WTC bombing in 1993 , 9/11/01, and what was supposed to be the NYC subway bombing which was supposed to take place in 2007 then 2008 then 2009, were all planned as attacks against the economy.
I’ve got zero doubts left there is a bio terrorist attack being planned to trigger the collapse.
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...
Shill. No logic to his statements.
Nice theory except the last passenger pigeon died in 1914.
You forgive him, I don’t. Sorry, I am not on the side of military worship and don’t buy the line that I have to listen to someone that “served their Country”. That’s weak minded.
If a man or woman serves their Country in the military admirably, I respect that greatly. But when you support and advocate decisions or actions that have a strong chance of KILLING or HARMING my family, then you are just part of the problem; the many serious problems we have here today.
So because he has become attached to West Africans, they can come here freely and “possibly” spread a horrific disease. BS!
Don’t care what your service record is, you are a dangerous character no matter where your heart lies.
Same with a military man who served admirably of Mexican descent who’s later agenda is to stop border control and deportations because it’s his people effected and it is racist. Again, sorry pal, I don’t want third world diseases, tax burden, crime increases and HEAD CHOPPING Cartel influences inside our Country. All may destroy my family and if you support it, you are now my enemy.
I have heard many people on the supposed Right who say they like to read the NYT, or watch MSNBC/CNN to see what the other side is saying. I think that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
How many times does one have to hear that R’s and Conservatives/Tea Party members are racist, ignorant, homophobic and laughable. That’s all you get.
The best education on what I think this Country is up against is to read info posted and threads posted on supposed conservative websites. There is your education.
I learned what high hurdles we are up against when I read the thoughts of supposed conservatives, military members, Law enforcement and supposed Christians.
This interview should be taken seriously because it shows the mindset we will be up against from even decent people. Other major topics where you really saw how things have changed were the acceptance of open gays in the mil. At first I was shocked how many mil members were perfectly fine with this as long as they “pulled their weight”. That short sighted thinking surprised me at first but now I realize that things have fundamentally changed in the US, probably for good.
Same thing when I read the initial venom directed at George Zimmerman by the “Right” when the story first broke due to the Community Organizers dredging up the shooting. At first I was disgusted how many gun owning libertarians and conservatives threw George under the bus believing all the MSM lies. Some people, no matter how they vote, will never get it.
The Bundy Land issue was another topic that I learned from too.
Fragmented.
...One hundred-fifty passengers a day from West Africa works out to more than a thousand a week (1,050), 4,500 a month, and 54,750 a year.
Given the 21-day incubation period for Ebola and the 150 people coming in each day, that means that at any given time there could be 21 x 150 people in the U.S. who could be asymptomatically incubating Ebola, and who are free to wander around the country
Yet the influenza managed to make its way around the world in several waves, killing 25-50 million people.
If Ebola spread like influenza, we would be in the midst of a terrible pandemic right now, comparable to the plagues that wiped out Europe in the middle ages. But Ebola only spreads through contact, not through aerosols--meaning that it can be controlled by controlling behavior. And people *have* been changing behavior to avoid Ebola.
It would be silly to stop all travel from the affected countries. Within those countries, the chance that anyone will have Ebola is somewhere around 0.02%, or 1 in 4500. It's actually less, because that calculation is based on total case count minus the dead, not current number of active cases, which is much lower.
The other problems that could arise from trying to isolate those countries could cause a huge loss of life that dwarfs anything Ebola might cause.
so using those numbers of 1 in 4500 means that we will have one infected person in a month.. and a month from now that number will have quadrupled as the spread is doubling about every two weeks.
So we will have a new case about every week... and then two months from now it will have quadrupled again to about 4 a week..
Keep in mind that I calculated the 1 in 4500 probability on the basis of all cases that have not died, from the beginning of the outbreak in December. Since that number includes everyone who recovered, as well as the currently ill, the probability is a lot lower than what I calculated.
I would really like to see a current, rather than cumulative, case count. Then I could do much better calculations.
I think if I did that calculation on the number of people who were exposed, but not yet showing symptoms—those who are able to travel, in other words—estimated on the weekly case count—the number would be at least ten-fold less than my rough calculation.
We’ve had imported cases of hemorrhagic fevers before, and not one has ever led to a secondary case.
but those numbers also don’t include the un-reported cases either.. which is many fold higher than the reported cases..
unless you estimated the unreported cases in your calculation..
IMHO, there are reasons behind these types of behaviors.
Maybe we all have already been infected with something, and ebola is being made into the scapegoat to explain when a mass pandemic is triggered. It would nicely explain the repetitive levels of seemingly intentional incompetence being promoted around this disease, when the most competent healthcare professionals still fear the disease.
It would be racist to prevent Africans from entering America because of the African in the White Hut...
Drudge had something yesterday about the race industry deciding that saying “Obola” is racist. LOL.
Strikes me as a policy driven play on words. His open borders policy has increased the risk of ebola to our citizens and has earned him the name “obola”.
Another play on words we saw in recent history was: “stay out’n da bushes”
Yep
It's being done deliberately with the goal of depopulation.
Why are you preaching at me - did you read my post? Did you somehow think I agreed with this man after what I wrote? Surely not?
You should cool off a bit... Just because I give him a smidgen of a break for his military service - is no justification for you jumping on me as if I am the problem.
We agree on the substance - the guy is WRONG... OKAY?
IN NO WAY DID I EXCUSE HIM FOR HIS WRONG POSITION by virtue of his military service... GET IT?
I even give John McCain a break for a few milliseconds - then I am back to despising the man.
Please read my post again... okay...
And I have no idea of what else you are talking about with the Hispanic guy ... GET GRIP fella..
Here is one of SEVERAL replies I made about the Green Beret...
I guess you missed them...
Sorry - I was a Green Beret too... but this guy is up a tree.
You don’t ban flights - you shut down issuing Visas... discussing of banning flights is a straw man argument... It is not needed... The average West African has absolutely no pressing need to visit American.. Ninety Percent of them just go to visit relatives and some would go to get treatment for Ebola... No one is talking about banning flights TO West African and cutting off flights from there is NOT THE POINT.. There are not thousands of West Africans doing business deals in the states that will suffer if they are not allowed visit - hogwash... We are not talking about walling off in 1918 technology - we are talking about 2014 where a person’s entire travel history is in his/her passport - VISA —— Where they have been before - there stamps in and out of Europe to take flights to America ... This guys is not looking at the FACTS is equating a 1918 experience with technology of the time to 2014 ... Good GRIEF!!!
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