Posted on 08/06/2014 1:07:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered.
What was the point?
Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. (This trip may be the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.)
There's little danger of an Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans at the Emory University Hospital. But why do we have to deal with this at all?
Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first "risk factor" listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola -- an incurable disease with a 90 percent fatality rate -- is: "Travel to Africa."
Can't anyone serve Christ in America anymore?
No -- because we're doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on Earth, is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.
About 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year. More than 38,000 die of drug overdoses, half of them from prescription drugs. More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Despite the runaway success of "midnight basketball," a healthy chunk of those children go on to murder other children, rape grandmothers, bury little girls alive -- and then eat a sandwich. A power-mad president has thrown approximately 10 percent of all Americans off their health insurance -- the rest of you to come! All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity.
So no, there's nothing for a Christian to do here.
If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.
If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.
Of course, if Brantly had evangelized in New York City or Los Angeles, The New York Times would get upset and accuse him of anti-Semitism, until he swore -- as the pope did -- that you don't have to be a Christian to go to heaven. Evangelize in Liberia, and the Times' Nicholas Kristof will be totally impressed.
Which explains why American Christians go on "mission trips" to disease-ridden cesspools. They're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream.
America is the most consequential nation on Earth, and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls, it will be a thousand years of darkness for the entire planet.
Not only that, but it's our country. Your country is like your family. We're supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to "go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel" also says: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'"
Right there in Texas, near where Dr. Brantly left his wife and children to fly to Liberia and get Ebola, is one of the poorest counties in the nation, Zavala County -- where he wouldn't have risked making his wife a widow and his children fatherless.
But serving the needy in some deadbeat town in Texas wouldn't have been "heroic." We wouldn't hear all the superlatives about Dr. Brantly's "unusual drive to help the less fortunate" or his membership in the "Gold Humanism Honor Society." Leaving his family behind in Texas to help the poor 6,000 miles away -- that's the ticket.
Today's Christians are aces at sacrifice, amazing at serving others, but strangely timid for people who have been given eternal life. They need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ's words: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."
There may be no reason for panic about the Ebola doctor, but there is reason for annoyance at Christian narcissism.
But why do you think that this doctor is the deciding factor on whether Ebola arrives in America or not?
Well since ebola has been around for a long damn time and in the past 30 years only about 1800 deaths have been attributed to it I would guess Ro < 1. So relax and forget about banishing your fellow countrymen to third world medicine after risking their lives to save people.
Excellent rant about moral decline from the Log Cabin Republicans’ girl mascot.
Ann, you blew it big time! It isn't narcissists that go where they sense the Lord is sending them, it takes a servant heart with a total sacrifice of self to answer the call of God. We have no business condemning those who are willing to go anywhere for the gospel!
Same here. She and Glenn B get it right many times, but dive over a cliff on other matters. To erratic!
Great post. Thank you. I am so humbled by these servants who were obedient to the Lord’s Call. They will be richly rewarded and deservedly so.
Like I have said before, I am not worried about these two people, arriving in a bubble, and being in in an isolation chamber at Emory. I am more concerned about the untold number of possibly infected people that are streaming in unchecked, via air travel and open borders. This is how something devastating like Ebola or worse will breach our borders.
It is probably not a matter of if, but when.
You are guessing the R0 of Ebola Guinea is less than 1. You guess?
Graph of identified cases is exponential and going ballistic, which leads me to believe (not evidence, mind you) that the R naught is greater than 1.
Further evidence would be the fact that last week the disease was spread by infected patients from two countries to a known five this week.
The way they generally come by an R naught is to look at the trend in reported cases, estimate an R naught, wait a week, and then see if the new cases number falls on your projection curve.
From there, if you have a vaccine, then you can use (1-1/R0) to determine the ratio of uninfected people to infected people you have to vaccinate in order to stop the infection.
So, the idea from here is to use math, not emotion, to figure out what needs to happen next.
If the case numbers continue to fit whatever projection curve somebody has generated at WHO or CDC, they will have to start getting serious about sealing borders and keeping infected patients within those borders.
There’s no vaccine for Ebola, you see, and since this one - this mutation - has a 21 day incubation period and may/may not be transmittable as an aerosol, you have to use your head here. This was the point of her article.
As a post script, I would think the nightmare scenario is a disease like Ebola infecting pilgrims to Mecca.
The Saudis obviously have some adults at work at their MOH, and I would expect, if cases end up being identified in pilgrims to Mecca itself, that they will seal the border completely in both directions.
They will keep infected patients within SA until they expire or get better. If they get better, then they will ask them to participate in a vaccine development effort. Even if they DO get better they will be required to stay until their body fluids are clear of active virus.
Infected patients can transmit Ebola Zaire through their semen, for example, for up to six or seven weeks after infection.
Ebola Guinea may be different. Zaire is Guinea’s progenitor, and a ‘sister’ to Gabon and Congo.
So, Ann’s fears are not misplaced. You just don’t go diving into Ebola as a missionary. If that’s what you want to do, then make the decision that SHOULD YOU GET THE BUG you are going to do the ONLY HUMANITARIAN THING and deal with it in situ and not bring it home - UNLESS YOU AGREE TO BE A DRUG TEST PATIENT. That’s what Brantley and Writebol agreed to.
Still, they should be going through observation and testing THEIR not here. Bringing them back here was stupid and an unnecessary risk.
She has turned into an aging media whore. Sad. Love of power and money will do that to you.
No suitable lab facilities.
Link to prove that, please.
I think Ann has a point here. All be it, she didn’t come across very well and was needlessly caustic in this article. (FYI, I typically LOVE Ann Coulter’s caustic nature.)
If you really think about it, this isn’t really about the physician or nurse that were infected with Ebola. It is about our government bringing them back to the United States for treatment. IMO, we should have sent the CDC’s best doctors, scientists, and researchers to Liberia to treat them. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, should we have brought them here for treatment. Yes, the patients’ prognoses would have been worse, but it would have kept the virus in Africa and wouldn’t have risked bringing it to the United States. This is a big f%#!ing deal! (to quote Bleeding Brain Biden) I’m not saying that the doctor and nurse shouldn’t have been treated. I think we should’ve figured out a way to use the best medical equipment, doctors, and scientists to treat them over there. There is too much hysteria and the risks are too great to have brought them to the United States to. I find our government’s conduct in dealing with this tragic situation ABSOLUTELY REPREHENSIBLE./rwa
It has become a sad situation when you have to add a BARF alert to a piece by Coulter
Send our most advanced equipment and personnel into banishment, knowing that you guys will forbid them and their security to return to America if they get ill?
You want to ship that out at the same time some part of your brain is telling you that America’s future with Ebola won’t be decided by these two patients in our best Ebola treatment center, but by surprise patients, as yet unknown?
Would you get real, these two patients haven’t “brought Ebola to America” as you guys keep screaming into the crowd.
This hysteria is ridiculous, you are telling us that these two patients are deciding our future and Ebola, which is nonsense.
If you are right, then in a few weeks we will know that the threat is all over and we can quit worrying as long as there is no problem with these two and Emory’s Ebola treatment clinic.
Last Coulter column i read. She is an idiot. And a pretend Christian. While we need mission work here desperately, we are also sent to ALL nations. Caring for one of Christs children dying of a terrible disease thousands of miles away is as important in His eyes as building a thousand cathedrals - maybe more important. How dare she....
I am done with her unless and until she changes her ways. She’s just gone too far this time.
She has a point. He could have just come back with a baby like Madona,Paris Hilton, and Angelina Joliet, but no, he had to go and out do everyone!
They're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream.
I would never characterize them as "slinking off", but the choice of "cultural crap here, vs. diseases there" may be worth some reflection. JMHO
So much fail. I was going to fisk this thing in detail, but suffice it to say that there are men and women, here and elsewhere, who every day risk (and sometimes lose) their lives to serve God and humanity, and there are many more men and women here and elsewhere who try to walk the Christian walk in a world that doesn’t always appreciate it, and suffer for it. I’m somewhat less than clear what Ann Coulter has done that qualifies her to sit in informed judgment on either group.
BTTT
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