Posted on 10/25/2014 5:12:21 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The biggest two words right now at the intersection of government and public health might be “travel ban.” But despite many politicians framing such a ban as a “common sense measure” to protect us from Ebola, a closer look at both the logistics and the history of such bans show that they are anything but.
First, what are these “travel bans” all about? They’re a moving target, and they’ve morphed a bit just in the last few days. Initially they were a call to ban flights from the affected countries—Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea—into the United States, in order to reduce the possibility that another person silently incubating the Ebola virus would show up in our cities. This is how Ebola entered Texas, via Thomas Eric Duncan, who had been exposed to the virus in Liberia before entering the United States to visit family. Visa restrictions have also been discussed. Would these bans make us safer?
Let’s take each potential model in turn:
1) Stopping flights to the affected countries Shutting down flights from these countries sounds straightforward. Unfortunately, what many proponents of such a flight ban didn’t realize was that there actually aren’t any direct flights from any of those countries into the United States. Nate Silver searched and identified direct flights from Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria, but none from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea.
Most flights from the affected countries instead route through Europe or the Middle East, but even for those, Silver found, “In total, this represents just 18 weekly flights from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone combined, nine of which are currently suspended or are not yet operating.”
Duncan was routed through Europe, flying out of Monrovia, the Liberian capital, to Brussels, Belgium, then on to Washington-Dulles Airport and finally to Dallas-Fort Worth.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
First, this is mathematically highly unlikely if the multiplier is on the order of 2x or greater. Every derivative of 2x is positive. Given the estimate of 400,000 confirmed cases by the end of January, the number cannot be 1,000 now.
Given the known multiplier for official cases, nearly all of the cumulative cases since the last MMWR occurred in August and September. That's the way geometric progression works. At current multiplier, the difference between 1,000 cases and 10,000 cases is about 5 weeks. That's not really a very long time. It would push the 400,000 "officially confirmed" expectation from the end of January to the first or second week in March.
BTW, have you considered that the CDC might be... well, overstating the numbers a bit to try to get more funding?
The confirmed numbers come from too many sources to be fudged. I expect the "2.5 unreported cases for every confirmed case" is a high overestimate. Is CDC doing that to get more money? Covering their @sses is more likely; they aren't going to get a bunch of money but relief organizations, Pharma, countries in Africa will get more money for sure, in which case WHO would be the outfit most likely to be exaggerating.
Whether the military going there is a good thing yet remains to be seen. If they're put to effective use building quarantine facilities, transportation, supplies, logistics, body disposal, or just intimidating the idiots who are killing healthcare workers, yes, I agree those would all be good. I can envision a number of good "photo-op" uses that would not only epidemiologically worthless, but highly dangerous as well, and this administration has yet to prove that they have the slightest idea of how to use the US military, and the professional ticket-punchers in the Pentagon have yet to stand up to them when they don't.
Don’t go. Don’t bring…bring…bring...
He's from Rhode Island! LOL! His daddy is Mitchell Levy, a New York doctor.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Did she get into looking at visas on passports? Couldn’t force myself to go to the source to let a moron school me any more on how we can’t stop them from getting in.
...And abstinence causes unwanted pregnancy, comrade.
They can’t even track illegal invaders.
Clearly we need a quarantine to stop them before they reach the US as well as stopping it in Africa.
It’s very important to understand why those in power are opposed to stopping arrivals of passenger aircraft from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, or imposing other types of border control such as quarantine.
On October 1, 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an opinion paper co-authored by Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Rahm’s brother and an important Obama adviser in his own right. It was titled “Why Should High-Income Countries Help Fight Ebola”, and it contained the following language:
“…there are obligations of global justice to combat Ebola and strengthen health systems and infrastructure in affected countries in the longer term. Advocates of so-called cosmopolitanism – a key position in the philosophical debate about global justice – argue that national borders have no significance and that all people, regardless of where they live, are entitled to the same education, health care services, and other social resources…”
The people in power have been creating a borderless world for at least sixty years. They have achieved functional borderlessness in the U.S.A., using the covert revolutionary tactic “think of it always, speak of it never.” Most Americans still believe we have the ability to close our borders on short notice, when clearly we do not.
In any event, Obama, his Health and Human Services secretary, his Labor secretary, his acting Surgeon General, his Centers for Disease Control Director – all of them would DIE before they agreed to stop the flights, because doing it would affirm our borders as actual physical objects and demonstrate that it could be done, and they are mortally opposed to both of those things.
When tens of thousand have died, the disease will run it’s course. That is in effect stopping the progress at the source.
In 1348 one plague ship arrived in Genoa and infected all of Europe with the Black Death that went on to kill about a third of the European population.
The source is in Africa. Containing it to the maximum extent would be the way to go. If you have a leak in the side of a ship, do you add more leaks? If you have a defective part in a car, do you ignore it? How stupid are these so-called medical experts that they don’t understand the basic engineering repair strategy? Or are they expecting us not to know the basics?
“...And abstinence causes unwanted pregnancy, comrade.”
Best one I heard today. Although in all honesty, they make even plenty of dictators look good with their abject stupidity and/or complicity in spreading disease.
Protocols can exist, but overburdening and exhaustion have a tendency to produce a weakening of one’s ability to accurately carry them out. I am well aware of what the CDC is saying, but it doesn’t appear to me at all that they even so much as care about what the real truth is on ebola. These people are extremely delusional and fringe or not, they are using supposedly trustworthy sources to throw information around. The problem I have is that people sit around talking about how the rules are so perfect, while sitting in an ivory tower.
Perhaps only a dollars and sense(sic) approach will put it into perspective. While we can still count the number victims here, on two hands, how much has that cost?
Yup. No more borders, language or culture. We are the world, we are the people. We are West Africa.
Of course people get tired and so forth while using the PPE, especially in hot climates.
The issue that I see with the CDC is that Dr. Friedan is a total nerd, so that even though he communicates the correct information, people don't want to believe him. He appears to be used to speaking to highly technical audiences, not the general public. And the general public is not familiar with scientists.
Nerd doesn’t cut it. Ebola is a class 4 biological threat. Locate the source, contain, eradicate. Friedan is being misleading about it.
There are very few scientists who are not nerds. We’re comfortable with each other, but we definitely are not charismatic.
I have not seen Friedan say anything that is inaccurate or at all inconsistent with the scientific literature.
Agreed you have to stop the disease at its source & to do that most effectively you have to keep the spread of the disease contained ,failure to do so is a waste of money & more importantly lives.
The politicians are letting political correctness & ideology get in the way of seriously considered public health measures that will end the pandemic sooner rather than later.
The political class needs to realize that when you are dealing with a level 4 bio-hazard pathogen like Ebola people will die & all the hand wringing & PC indignation in the world will not change that fact.
Quarantine combined with medical care at the source of the pandemic on the other hand will stop this disease.
I don’t understand why we can’t do ALL THREE SIMULTANEOUSLY.
How does a travel and visa ban from West Africa affect fighting Ebola at the source?
It’s not as if we’re banning experts from GOING to West Africa, just preventing West Africans from coming here.
And the ban is TEMPORARY. No one is saying we’re going to ban them forever.
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