… AT LEAST UNTIL EBOLA VIRUS IS UNDER CONTROL
By FITSNEWS || U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan wants Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to suspend travel visas for individuals traveling from areas of West Africa impacted by the Ebola virus.
At least until the outbreak of the deadly virus is under control …
In a letter to DHS secretary Jeh Johnson dated October 15, Duncan noted that the government’s failure to contain the first U.S. case of Ebola requires such drastic action.
“Despite the strong public health system in the United States to combat a spread of Ebola, the most recent cases involving the two Dallas health care workers demonstrates the vulnerabilities of our system and steep learning curve public health officials are facing,” Duncan wrote. “In light of these current vulnerabilities, we urge you to consider temporarily suspending visas of individuals from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone until the outbreak is under control. Such a measure would ensure healthcare workers and supplies are able to be transported to impacted areas of West Africa, while also ensuring the public health and safety of the American public.”
Hard to argue with that …
We’re still unsure whether the 2014 Ebola outbreak – which began in West Africa last December – is deserving of all the panic it has created. We know it’s being exploited for political gain, but at this point it’s impossible to say how widely it will spread in America.
We do know the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has not lived up to its promise to stop Ebola “in its tracks” in Texas.
A virological taxon first discovered in 1976, Ebola has killed more than 4,500 people over the last ten months – and those numbers could soon mushroom if warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) are accurate.
In South Carolina, the response to Ebola is being managed by S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) and its director Catherine Templeton. We’ve written a pair of stories on her efforts (HERE and HERE).
76 comments
It’s the beginning of flu season. Each year, influenza kills anywhere from 3,000-50,000 US citizens; up to 500,000, world-wide. Hence, let’s stop visas from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, China, etc.
How about this one, let’s make sure Texas hospitals understand and use long developed protocols for Ebola. Better yet, let’s make sure they understand communicable disease protocol for diseases that are spread by touch, specifically exchange of body fluids including semen, saliva, feces, sweat, blood, etc. and prevent them from being spread via open sores, cuts, vaginas, penises, mouths, noses, eyes and ears or other means of exchange of fluids.
Wait, I forgot. Rules don’t apply to culturally arrogant Texans.
Here’s a thought, let’s quarantine Jeff Duncan in Laurens, Princeton, or Waterloo.
And let’s make sure our RNs understand that one does not use enclosed public transportation immediately after exposure to a deadly virus.
Why should a nurse need to call the Center for Disease Control in order to ask if she can expose a plane load of citizens to Ebola?
Why should the CDC tell the nurse she’s ok to fly when her temp was 99.5 when everyone knew that the Spanish nurse had ebola with that exact same symptom?
Why should a effing RN have to ask, Jackie? Wouldn’t you expect a nurse to know that answer about a communicable disease that is as deadly as you previously alluded to?
Are you that obtuse?
Yes, let’s hold a nurse with 15 minutes of training on Ebola to a higher standard than a federal agency with billions of dollars and hundreds, if not thousands of experts, that was specifically created to deal with controlling infectious diseases like Ebola.
Yes, let’s hold a nurse with 15 minutes of training on Ebola to a higher standard
Why not? A majority of the people on this thread are playing armchair Ebola experts with even less than that, zero medical expertise and 15 minutes of
trainingwatching some anchor sensationalizing the fuck out of a virus to jack up ratings for his corporate media employer.Sorry, but the “experts” at CDC have done little to convince me to ignore my own common sense and rely on their judgment. Let’s see their response to the present outbreak:
1. They tell the world they will contain ebola, stop it dead in its tracks. Ok, that sounds good.
2. The family of a guy who was exhibiting ebola symptoms is quarantined in the same house where ebola patient sweated into the sheets. Only after 3 days of being stuck in a contaminated house were they moved to a clean house. CDC admits it should have had a better response.
3. The family was quarantined, but people were seen coming and going from the residence without any protective gear on.
4. The nurses treating the ebola patient at the hospital were provided literally no training, equipment, assistance from the CDC for how to treat ebola patients. CDC director admits that they should have had a stronger response to the hospital.
5. The CDC instructs the 75 people or so that treated Duncan to self monitor for ebola symptoms. CDC takes no measures to ensure that these people were not traveling. CDC director says he’s not even sure if anyone told the second infected nurse not to travel. Should be common sense, but the CDC should at least have taken extra precautions to tell them not to travel.
6. Person with direct contact to ebola fluids and ebola patient with low grade fever calls CDC asking whether she should travel on plane. CDC says “sure go ahead, you’re good.” Turns out woman has Ebola. CDC scrambles to track down everyone from the flight.
7. NBC news camera man gets ebola overseas. His fellow NBC co-workers from Liberia are placed on voluntary quarantine by the CDC. A member of the voluntarily quarantined medical team is seen in New Jersey at a sandwich shop during quarantine period. CDC scrambles to place her on mandatory quarantine.
8. CDC director Thomas Frieden says you cannot catch ebola on the bus from an ebola patient, but that ebola patients should not travel because they could give ebola to someone on the bus.
9. CDC director Thomas Frieden says the only way to contain ebola is to continue to allow 150 people a day from ebola countries to fly into the US.
10. People arriving to the US from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea are given a pamphlet that if they begin to experience ebola symptoms while in the US, they should call their doctor, potentially resulting in Ebola patients sitting in waiting rooms while contagious.
11. The only screening measures for people flying to the US from affected countries involve a questionnaire form based on the honesty system and taking the travelers temperatures, which only tells you whether the person is currently contagious, not whether the person has ebola.
12. There are many reports that the Liberians taking temperatures of travelers at the Monrovia airport did not understand how to use the temperature gauges and were writing down temperature readings that were impossible for a living human being to have (like 32 Celsius) The CDC admitted here again that it made a mistake and sent additional personnel to assist the Liberian screeners.
Naysayers, please insert your own thoughtless comment about “tinfoil hats” below this comment or like comments, DESPITE mounting evidence that we have a problem, a SERIOUS problem.
After listening to Frieden say eliminating flights to West Africa would stop volunteers from arriving and it would hurt those counties economies…I knew his comments were given to him and I didn’t need an anchor to tell me that.
I’m not an Ebola expert and the doctor is not an expert in transportation or economics.
You kidding me? Canceling those 2 flights per week to Brussels would cripple the US, European, and African economies all at once, causing a catastrophic depression like this earth has never seen.
That ain’t nothing compared to the impact this is likely going to have on holiday shopping and the economy in the US this year if they don’t get this shit under control. Not that they want to get it under control.
It’ll be a boon for Amazon. (don’t forget to use BSI and sanitize the package before opening… I hear folks from West Africa are dying for the temp jobs)
Spanish nurses have hotter blood. Everyone knows that.
“Why should a nurse need to call the Center for Disease Control in order
to ask if she can expose a plane load of citizens to Ebola?”
I agree wholeheartedly, since the CDC doesn’t have a problem with continued flights from West Africa, why call the CDC?
(doesn’t understand mortality rates)
Give us a quip on paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 of my comments, Jackie. Also, paragraphs 1 & 2 on my comments about the RN.
We know you can do it.
(wants responses to nonsensical “paragraphs”)
Probably not a fair comparison. It’s worth highlighting which demographic sustains the vast majority of influenza deaths (elderly, infants, pre-existing weakened immune systems, etc.)
Ebola has potential lethality to even the healthiest of middle-aged adults.
What makes one think that Obama wants to keep Ebola out of America?
Obama,Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton gonna make damn sure if the blacks in Africa are dying from Ebola that the white’s in America are going to feel the same pain.
Obama gets a 2 for 1 by not instituting a travel ban per Africa- he doesn’t piss the “race hustlers” off before the mid-terms and he can finish destroying the economy by crashing the stock market.
Hey, Jeff.
The flu will kill tens of thousands of Americans this year, like it does every year. What are you doing about that?
Enterovirus68 has definitively been tied to the deaths of 2 children and possible links exist to 4 others. What are you doing about that?
Do you know how many parents in your district are refusing vaccinations for their children? But, wait…fear of vaccines predominantly afflicts the college educated. You don’t have to worry about that among your voters, do you?
The cognitive dissonance of those who object to vaccines but then complain about controllable and preventable communicable diseases in the population is stunning.
I don’t give the public much credit for their ability to think while mouthing off, but that notwithstanding, I simply throw my hands up in despair over the vaccination hysteria.
Thanks to that self-serving hack that put out the now-retracted Lancet paper, people think MMR causes autism. Guess what that shit’s done for measles outbreaks?
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
it’s mercury… that’s what it is… mercury in the vaccines has turned millions of Americans into Republicans!
Duncan is correct but no worries. Obama will declare Martial Law prior to the landslide Republican victory in the mid-terms before he does a damn thing to protect the homeland and its citizens.
(doesn’t understand exponential growth curve)
So your point is:
1. Because we already have a naturally occurring diseases here called Enterovirus D68 (with Case Fataity Rates of about .4%)
and
2. We have some stupid parents here
that
3. We shouldn’t do anything that might help prevent an outbreak of a non-naturally occurring disease with a CFR of 60% here?
1. That “naturally occurring virus” … Is that the “mystery virus” that is plaguing the East Coast right now? … and the rest of the country as well? … the virus that has infected more than 20,000 kids nation wide? … The one that was brought here by the Central American illegals? … That would not be here if we had a secure border? … A secure “quarantined” border?
I’m hand waving away the fact that Enterovirus D68 showed up about the same time that
illegal immigrant despots and a few childrenrefugee children fleeing political oppression at home started showing up in droves overwhelming ourpoorly managed and inepthard working and dedicated Border Patrol.Yes, because there are other diseases and viruses that kill others, we should not take sensible precautions with a different disease with potential for exponential growth that is having its worst outbreak in history.
If there was some sort of tangible upside to allowing unrestricted, non-essential travel from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierre Leone, I would agree with you. But if you look at this from a cost benefit analysis, the benefits of restricting travel outweigh the costs by several orders of magnitude.
Exactly. Checking them in customs is plain stupid. That’s the last stop before freedom in the terminal. By that time you’ve been with the huddled masses an hour or more.
So, before a travel restriction is in place, there will be a panic to get any flight over here.
The problem is the healthcare system in Texas. Hospitals , administrators, and doctors cannot be sued in Texas for incompetence and malpractice, thanks to Shrub Bush and No Clue Rick. They have no incentive to take appropriate protective measures because they don’t have to. There is no downside to malpractice in Texas as there is no personal responsiblity.
Repugnants in Texas don’t want anyone held accountable and least of all the insurance companies for big bidness, big pharma, etc, etc
The problem is the healthcare system in Texas. Hospitals , administrators, and doctors cannot be sued in Texas for incompetence and malpractice, thanks to Shrub Bush and No Clue Rick. They have no incentive to take appropriate protective measures because they don’t have to. There is no downside to malpractice in Texas as there is no personal responsiblity.
Repugnants in Texas don’t want anyone held accountable and least of all the insurance companies for big bidness, big pharma, etc, etc
Yeah that’s why no nurse in Spain caught it.
Mr Duncan, while you are apparently light years ahead of President Obola and the Democrats on this particular topic, the time for this action was at least two weeks ago. Even then, it was such an obvious and logical move, Stevie Wonder could have seen it.
Any way, thanks for at least thinking of it now, even though the horses may already be out of the barn.
This. Southern African countries have all banned travelers from the 3 affected countries. Colombia has followed suit. Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well. How many cases do those counties have?
Zilch, would be my guess.
Exactly. All I’ve heard from the CDC director is that quarantine wouldn’t work. Except that it would have worked for 100% of the cases we currently have.
I also heard him use fighting a wildfire as an illustration. When you fight a wildfire, you dig a fire break between the fire and the homes you want to save.
Can we suspend flights from Texas too? Maybe build a fence around the state?
Can we throw Jeff Duncan in QuaranTexas?
(stole from Huffpo comments)
[citation needed]
Maybe the recursion was too long? Thus, “citations omitted” would be allowed.
I think FITS threads bring enough creativity without the need to steal from Huffpo and the likes. Of course, GT might single-handedly bring our overall score down.
If I were nature, I’d be ashamed of giving Damned Tango opposable thumbs.
Gettin weird down there. Rumor is the abortion queen running for governor , Wendy Davis , fucks her pit bull?
If Texas suddenly gets 1000s of new cases in a week, then, yes, they should.
So if we kept people from coming here from Liberia.. or even Africa.. how would that stop people coming here who were infected by people who traveled from Liberia or Africa.. say, to Israel?
..and how will the “protocols” keep Ebola victims from infecting people if they don’t go to the hospital?
Has ISIS thought of this yet, or are they going to stick with beheadings and nanny nanny boo booing from across the Mexican border?
The CIA and the NSA, of course, hasn’t thought of any of this.
If I was a Jihadist, I’d be shipping every “cannon fodder member” of my organization to Liberia right now and then flying them first class to Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta and LA
Why not fly them to Israel first?
No direct flights. Boat them into and out of Monrovia from Abidjan in Cote d’Ivroire. Hop on a Corsair International flight direct to Orly, Paris and then fly them all over the “Infidel World”. If they moved them quickly enough, they could be in the New York or Tel Aviv or Moscow before they showed any symptoms.
Easier than that – fly them to Palestine, there are plenty of “suiciders” who would gladly agree to be infected and take a flight to America… and at the same time, take a stroll through the coffee shops in Haifa, spitting in the cinnamon.
Have to go by way of somewhere – not a lot of flights from Liberia to anywhere right now (Brussels and Casablanca are still incredibly accepting flights). Once you get out of the “hot zone”, game on.
Israel is accepting flights from Liberia.
I think you need to avoid them getting caught mid stream – I’d only use direct flights to a major population center on the off chance that one of your biologic “not so smart bombs” got caught he’d at least infect Paris and hey, I’m not sure I’d have a problem with that…(as long as we could contain it to just Paris – or maybe all of France…)
You can go to Casablanca, and from there – the *world*!
Orly or De Gualle have exponentially greater numbers of destinations times the number of destinations (De Gualle is the 8th or 9th busiest airport in the world)
I read somewhere that Casablanca is one of the most “observed” (read spied upon) airports in the “free world” due to the likelihood of “evil doers” transiting the country.
That’s ok.. .the ISIS guy drinks ebola laced blood, and gets on the flight the same day in Casablanca.. then he goes to somewhere that has direct flights to Israel, and infects a sympathizer there, who flies to Israel, waits for the symptoms, bleeds into a super soaker, and plays with the kids, spritzes a few people at night from a passing car… stops by a few coffee shops and restaurants…
presto!
Sheer ‘effing genius – I’m glad you’re on my side!
You are on my side right?!?
Genius, my ass!
All you need is determination and a high school diploma and America is *toast*!
Somehow, that answer doesn’t make me feel a lot better…
No direct flights. Boat them into and out of Monrovia from Abidjan in Cote d’Ivroire. Hop on a Corsair International flight direct to Orly, Paris and then fly them all over the “Infidel World”. If they moved them quickly enough, they could be in the New York or Tel Aviv or Moscow before they showed any symptoms.
I just reread your
plotpotential terroristic scheme. The spread the blood around via super soaker idea is genius though that might get it tracked back to the“evil genius terroristic son of a bitch”freedom fighters who launched the attack. Just bringing inbiological not so smart bombshuman vectors would allow you to spread it for several days before eachbiological not so smart bombssuccumbed.You squirt me with a super soaker, Ebola laden or not and you’re likely to get a case of terminal “super soaker in rectum” thus ending your usefulness as a
biological not so smart bombsvector.Drive – by… the homeless, street walkers, and staggering drunks at midnight.
…and besides – they *want* to die for the cause!
I like it, you do seem to have a military purpose, although not combat related. I apologize for beg rude to you before.
I like it, you do seem to have a military purpose, although not combat related. I apologize for beg rude to you before.
This is true, but it’s also the argument the “experts” keep making against travel bans. To me, this is akin to saying “well, someone with a bulldozer can bash down my front door, so why lock it at all?”
More like closing the screen door in a submarine.
And yet that screen door would have prevented 100% of the current cases in the US.
True – it takes a few minutes for a submarine to fill up with water and sink to the bottom, killing everyone inside.
When you are falling out of an airplane without a parachute, do you put your hands out to break your fall? It would postpone the inevitable for about 2 microseconds.
Besides, it might give the terrorists the idea that we are worried, and they’d start planning a way around it. When faced with a Grizzly, stand still and look tall. If you run, it will only cause a chase.
You’re dead in any case.
Interesting article about unprotected person in vicinity of Nurse #2. This gets weirder and weirder.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2794854/what-thinking-mystery-man-without-hazmat-suit-seen-helping-2nd-ebola-nurse-board-plane-atlanta-joining-them.html
Very disturbing phone call to a radio call-in show. If this is true, absent any reason to believe it may not be, it really looks as though the propagation of this stuff in America is intentional. The level of stupidity for it to be otherwise is incomprehensible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUYbGrKU_bw
Duncan may be right, but its not enough. We need to quarantine the state of Texas. We need to stop all travel into and out of Texas until this thing is resolved. If Ebola appears in another state they need to be quarantined as well.
And where are our governors. Governors have the authority to declare an emergency and block travel into and out of airports in their states. What has Haley done? Nothing! We need protection. We need an order from the governor blocking flights into SC from Texas now. We need an order from the Governor directing that no Ebola patients be brought into SC for treatment or sent through SC. There is an Ebola patient in Charlotte NC. If she travels to Atlanta for treatment she will travel through SC. Why does Haley allow that?
Quit making political moves. Quit trying to just embarrass Obama. Get serious.
Obola has done an exemplary job of embarrassing himself already.
This “humorous” point about banning flights from Texas is being made ad nauseum by message board commentators. I suspect it is meant to poke fun at those who want to restrict non-essential travel from Liberia, Sierra Leonne, and Guinea.
Well, let’s compare apples to oranges here. Texas has two cases (caused by a Liberian traveler by the way), with open borders that are crossed by something called the interstate. Compare this to the west african countries with 1000s of new cases each week, an exploding epidemic, with only one reasonable way to escape — through flights, because you would be essentially dead by the time you reached america if you tried to hop a ship and make it by sea.
I don’t give a shit about political games. Many of us are not trying to score points against Obama. Rather, we want to take this deadly disease with potential for historic consequences seriously. Cancelling visas and non-essential travel to the three most affected countries has little to no downside — yet we refuse to do it, presumably, for politically correct reasons.
Duncan may be right, but its not enough. We need to quarantine the state of Texas. We need to stop all travel into and out of Texas until this thing is resolved. If Ebola appears in another state they need to be quarantined as well.
And where are our governors. Governors have the authority to declare an emergency and block travel into and out of airports in their states. What has Haley done? Nothing! We need protection. We need an order from the governor blocking flights into SC from Texas now. We need an order from the Governor directing that no Ebola patients be brought into SC for treatment or sent through SC. There is an Ebola patient in Charlotte NC. If she travels to Atlanta for treatment she will travel through SC. Why does Haley allow that?
Quit making political moves. Quit trying to just embarrass Obama. Get serious.
“NIH SPENT MILLIONS STUDYING ORIGAMI CONDOMS, POOP-THROWING CHIMPANZEES INSTEAD OF EBOLA” – breitbart 10/16/14 ( http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/15/NIH-Spent-Millions-Studying-Origami-Condoms-Poop-Throwing-Chimpanzees-Instead-of-Ebola )
Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) — There is a deep-seated fear among some Americans that an Ebola outbreak could make the country turn to science.
In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.
“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”
Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”
At the end of the day, though, Dorrinson hopes that such a doomsday scenario will not come to pass. “Time and time again through history, Americans have been exposed to science and refused to accept it,” he said. “I pray that this time will be no different.”
First their was E-file for taxes, then E-verify for employment, next came E-banking, E-tickets and all those thing were good but why the fuck they need to improve bola? Now we have E-bola thanks technology.