Replies

For all:

Stand back and look at the real picture. So far, every American has survived the disease. In Liberia, it’s one out of ten.

The difference? No wonder drugs in this mix, remember this first and foremost. We do it with fever control, early ID of the disease, IV liquids, and using blood anti-bodies from previous survivors. Toss in some decent first-class care, and liquid foods that stay down. That’s it. Nothing really that fancy....no $16,000 special drug treatment...no wonder drug.

So, the Africans look over this and say it’s unfair. You need to cough up some “fairness”.

So, you ask yourself this logical question....how exactly would you transport daily....maybe five-hundred patients, with very risky transmission...who already are days into the episode with high fever....safely across the Atlantic for fourteen hours....avoiding undue stress which might kill them as well?

To make this work, you would have to deploy upwards to ten thousand US troops into the zone....create at least five hubs for US transport planes to land, then work out agreements that allowed you to have that many military troops there, and allowed these undocumented individuals some type of emergency passport. Cost per month? Figuring one military site for all of this....maybe in New Mexico...around $1 billion a month.

You could hand the $1 billion a month over to the various countries, in the form of medical aid, and break even...but no one wants that deal.

Good points, but the question of numbers is key. Suppose we have a non-U.S. doctor working for Doctors Without Borders, or a non-U.S. citizen working as part of a mostly U.S. aid team (therefore "one of ours," by extension), or a Liberian doctor, a certified hero, who has been working for six months in abysmal conditions, staying at the job as he has watched all the other front line responders die? Would you take one or a few of these people, on an individual basis? Most of us would.

But are we willing to fill up a 747 a day and transport hundreds routinely, to be dumped in semi-prepared ICU's around the country? Of course not.

And now the real question: who is willing to trust Team Obama to make rational distinctions in such a matter? Anyone? I didn't think so.

This is only a 1-in-10 thing for those who are incredibly fortunate. It is, more realistically, a 50% - 70% lethality disease, since most who have gotten it, AND MOST WHO WILL GET IT IN THE FUTURE, will simply not have access to the degree of care necessary to survive this thing.

Again, I am not so much concerned with the costs (though that IS of concern to me) as with the effectively (or lack thereof) of our efforts to stamp out this hideous and ultra-virulent disease. So far, those efforts have been pathetic and largely unsuccessful.

I would advice you (and anyone else curious about Ebola and wondering what the bear naked truth is) to go to http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/ and start reading. Go back a few weeks and catch up to today. Everything said there is true, and all of the predictions made about Ebola and the consequences of stupidity/political correctness have been borne out. FYI, this is NOT my blog, I’m just a reader.

For some more recent and pertinent information, read the following 2 posts:

http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/who-comes-to-jesus-we-have-liftoff.html W.H.O. says that there are 12,000 cases as of 10/24, and that there is STILL under-reporting by at least 50%.

http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/kids-dont-try-this-at-home.html The challenge that anyone trying to treat Ebola at home will face. This is clear evidence that it is nothing to be joked about or treated with less seriousness than a 10-mile wide asteroid hurtling toward Earth. IOW, this is a potential extinction event (and costs are secondary).