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Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard
Lasrick writes: David Ropeik explores risk-perception psychology and Ebola in the U.S. "[O]fficials are up against the inherently emotional and instinctive nature of risk-perception psychology. Pioneering research on this subject by Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff, and others, vast research on human cognition by Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, and research on the brain's fear response by neuroscientists Joseph LeDoux, Elizabeth Phelps, and others, all make abundantly clear that the perception of risk is not simply a matter of the facts, but more a matter of how those facts feel. ... People worry more about risks that are new and unfamiliar. People worry more about risks that cause greater pain and suffering. People worry more about threats against which we feel powerless, like a disease for which there is no vaccine and which has a high fatality rate if you get it. And people worry more about threats the more available they are to their consciousness—that is, the more aware people are of them."
If having a Czar will concentrate more power in their hands then a Czar is what they'll create. We already have the CDC. If this were about solving disease problems then the President would give the CDC more funding if they needed it. This is not about solving problems but about power.
Look, every idiot out there wants to see a "response". Take anyone below the 90th percentile a they won't have the intellectual ability to process any probability less than 1 in 4. It's like the entire airline screening process - people feel safer if they see someone doing something. In reality it does little or no good, but until you figure out how to instantly make people smarter and less gullible you will get irrational panic and calls to "do something."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
" People worry more about threats against which we feel powerless, like a disease for which there is no vaccine and which has a high fatality rate if you get it."
People also worry more when they are poorly educated in basic science or how to assess the credibility of a writer, are taught that every story has two sides regardless of how crazy the other side is, listen to talk radio commentators rather than scientists, have alarmingly stupid television news, and have staggeringly poorly-educated politicians openly exploiting the stupidity of their electorate.
I am British. As with mainland Europe, we actually have a really big potential exposure risk (a very large West African population who are no more than an afternoon-long flight from their homes). We didn't need a Shep Smith to tell us to shut the fuck up and stop panicking.
Though it might have helped if we could have shut the Daily Express up.
More americans have married Kim Kardashian than have died from Ebola.
And what is the land of the free creating more czar's for? a czar answers to no one. Instead how about we make the people in charge responsible for their actions. oh wait congress can never take responsibility for their failures.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
TFA is right. Ebola requires not an "Ebola Czar" but a team of people who are well trained with comprehensive strategy to tackle / combat / defeat Ebola
Right now, as it is, the fight against Ebola has been a sham --- this disease was not a new phenomenon, Ebola has been known since the 1970's, but because it had always been confined in the African continent, the continent in which the "low class people lives" (to the uninitiated that ain't my opinion but it has been the opinion of the colonial elites) nobody takes Ebola seriously other than very few cases of vaccine experimentation sponsored by military of various countries
The fact that WHO has to resort to collect the blood of those who survived Ebola to make a "serum" trying to cure Ebola tells us how unprepared the world is against this disease
Until now the establishment still insists that Ebola is not airborne but at least one experiment in Canada has indicated that Ebola could spread through air ( see these links --- http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
http://healthmap.org/site/dise... )
If the establishment until now still does not want to tell us the truth, who can we trust ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The most effective counter to the epidemic of fear this article talks about is for the government to convince people that it is following an effective policy to address the dangers. Unfortunately, our politicians have gotten the idea that the best way to do that is to manage the "optics" of the situation. As a result, people are convinced that the government's responses to this danger are designed more to convince people that the government is doing the right thing that to actually DO the right thing.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There has been a narrative in the media lately that the western world's response to the ebola outbreak has been too little too late, implying that the situation could have been better than it is today with an earlier swifter response from the developed world. I've noticed a lot of people have called for the head of the CDC to be fired.
I tried doing some searching to find out if there is any evidence to support this notion, and as far as I can tell the only people making these claims are politicians and activists, ie people not really qualified to make such claims.
Is there any hard evidence that this is the case? I mean the notion that "the west has screwed Africa over once again" on the surface rings true, but are there any statements from virologists or any experts in disease control who agree with this? Or is it just a case of white knight-ism and politicians trying to gain political capital?
Is this just a knee-jerk emotional response, or is there expert testimony and evidence to back it up?
The Obama Administration (and Bush / McCain / Romney would have been no better) looked around and were thinking ... hmmm... who could we appoint for this? An expert in epidemiology? Somebody with experience in coordinating the logistics of an emergency response? A useless public relations shill? Or an even more useless lawyer crony with connections to that epic success Solyndra?
Yeah, that last one sounds about right. We'll go with that.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
"What difference does it make now anyway?"
Is that you, Hillary?
Fear is relatively easy to manage if you actually have, you know, the peoples' trust. Imagine that. Why, if the public was actually used to the government telling the truth (including telling them when something was actually potentially detrimental to national security, rather than using that as an excuse to obscure _everything_) I'll bet you could just be honest with them and people would be rather rational about the whole thing. Lie through your teeth and then blame it on your predecessors or people you have appointed and you get the current situation.
Then again, who among us today has any experience in an environment where people were actually being honest, even a majority of the time, and especially in any governmental context? The closest you'd get to that today would be certain military units and small teams at companies.
This sort of thing, shelter in place, what's happening in the Poconos, the police response to the Boston bombers is to acclimatize the sheep to a police state
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
On the face of it, sending un-trained US miltary personnel into the hot zone makes zero sense. So why might they have been sent?
The 101st and National Guard aren't being sent to mitigate the situation in Liberia et al. in any meaningful way. They're been sent for training.
Worst case scenario, if the virus causes serious disruption in the US, troops with Liberian experience will be used to train up stateside forces to back up health workers and quell unrest. As a bonus some of the surviving infected troops will have immunity to the virus.
OTOH, Maybe I'm giving Obola credit for a level of cynicism that isn't there. Maybe the administration really is the most incompetent in US history.
What utter non-sense. It is rational to fear Ebola, because it has the potential, repeat potential, to cause a deadly and disgusting epidemic in the US, as it ALREADY is in some countries. Unlike certain other threats which are pre-existing, such as mental illness, crime etc, disease can and often does exhibit a "chain reaction" like progression. One need look no further than the infamous Spanish Flu epidemic of the early 20th century.
The fools are yelling for an Ebola Czar.
Perhaps filling the position of Surgeon General would be simpler. Controlling the spread of disease is one of the functions of that office.
But, approving the the candidate for the office would require the Senate to actually do something.
You don't have to be a risk-perception psychologist to get what's going on.
Nutty people said, "Do something!!!!"
So we have a czar.
FTFY
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Who fed you raw sewerage as a kid? That can only explain how dumb you are.
While this is a Fox News topic, the comments are not as bad as what you would get there.
For example not one reference to Obola yet.
Yes, it's the fear of Ebola that's the bigger practical problem. However, the remedy for that fear is precisely doing things like declaring an Ebola 'Czar' and promising to deploy the National guard 'if necessary'. Note they didn't actually call up the national guard, just promised the obvious, if the national guard is warranted (it won't be) it will be called up. The nomination of a 'Czar' is pretty much free and convening ' a two-hour emergency meeting with every top federal official involved in public health and safety.' is actually not that terrible either. These measures are not a big deal in cost, but are important in their significance to the general populace.
So someone who is well informed may rightfully see all this as silly from a practical perspective, but I don't think they would perceive a significant investment of real resources in any of it.
Meanwhile those inclined to not be so well informed are assured by some response that really doesn't cost much.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Cmon, this is typical behavior of the American Government.
We no longer think through problems, we put ( troops, guns, fleets, drones ) into ACTION !!! Wurds are for de GIRLY MEN ya !
Give us a bit more time and we'll declare war on Ebola. . . . ( soon as we figure out how to make money off of it )
would make for a good story.
Are these people SHROOMING?
Force me to use Slashdot "Beta" and it will be the last, sad, straw.
Would all of this talk about a Czar be an end run around the current problem of the Repubs blocking all nominations for a Surgeon General? Maybe that's the only way the administration feels they can have a real working department head?
The risk of gettng ebola may be low, but the stakes are very very high. If you do happen to catch ebola, you are so completely and utterly hosed...
A certain caution is merited. Which is not to say that appointing a 'czar' is necessarily a useful embodiment of that caution.
It would go a long way if the US refused direct commercial flights to and from the countries with outbreaks, and refused entry to anyone that has been in one of those countries in the past 3 weeks. The exception would be for US citizens and they should go through quarantine.
The _actual_ infectivity rate of ebola strongly suggests that it isn't airborne at all, and even droplet spread is not a very significant factor
While you are correct that the airborne vector isn't significant need I remind you that Ebola is not a disease whereby the person infected with it gets a mild fever and minor headache and the cure is two aspirin tablets?
The droplet spread may not be significant but when we consider the outcome --- in the case of Ebola, even something that is NOT supposed to be significant must be accounted for - or people die
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
We assumed we could easily handle Ebola if it came our way, because we are the most powerful and richest country on Earth. What we should have done is asked, "What are our weaknesses? Where is our medical system likely to fail?" Unfortunately we tend to suck at this kind of introspection. If we had asked, the most glaring weakness in our system, "Not everybody has medical coverage", might have been considered. Then when a sick black man recently arrived from West Africa came to the hospital without medical insurance we might have thought "EBOLA" and treated him right away, instead of thinking "poor Nigger, not gonna pay his bills" and sent him home with some Tylenol.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
"Grammer"
Oh, the irony!
I see what you did there.
If you're a kid and you haven't had a polio shot, you're at greater risk of that.
Especially if you're at a school for rich kids.
If you're an adult, your best advice is to get a flu shot.
Early symptoms of flu are similar. If you get a flu shot, you won't be put in isolation until we know you don't have Ebola.
That said, you really shouldn't worry about Ebola if you live in the US. Unless you recently went to Africa.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The funny thing is it's the cut in NIH funding that means we don't have vaccines, not the cut in CDC funding, which only manages it after it spreads.
CDC means Center for Disease Control
NIH means National Institute for Health
That and the cut for health care in Texas that increased the risk factors.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
or you were a health care worker caring for Duncan. Or happened to live in the apartment complex where Duncan stayed. Or you happened to be on a flight from Texas to Ohio. Or on a flight from Ohio to Texas. Or one of those within 2 degrees of separation of any of these.
Ebola has been known about for about 4 decades. No one knew where the virus was hiding, but it was hiding somewhere in Africa. In the past, the local medical systems would do a quarantine, and Ebola would fizzle out... until 2014. The Ebola epidemic had been going on since early 2014. If Congress had thrown some money and doctors at it back then, Ebola might have fizzled out by now. Now, some cities in Africa are shut down. Think of the lost economic productivity.
Congress is not skilled with Ebola, and Congress has many other issues to deal with. Appoint an Ebola czar, and Congress won't have to think about Ebola anymore. Some senators wanted an Ebola czar. Obama chose a politicial aide. oh well.
People are prone to panic about these things--it goes back centuries, to when you didn't even really have government being an issue here. One of the major ways the Black Death spread is people fleeing it. What's changed is that we don't really use the fear productively--we aren't using it to go "Yes, you should be scared, this is the sort of thing quarantine exists for, let's bring it back."
The last time we had actual major-level quarantines going down was nearly 75 years ago, and the really nasty thing is that we have known pretty much the entire time that something like this was certain to happen. The questions have only been 'what' and 'when,' but people have been rather too gormless to listen, complaining about it being so antiquated & saying it's been just so long and antibiotics will work forever and vaccines are magical enough to have permanently banished those icky disease demons...and never listening when told that the Sword of Damocles will fall.
The worst part, in some ways, is that we do have the technology to make people a lot less likely to mind being stuck in a room for days on end. It's called 'the internet.'
I wish they'd focus more on things like MRSA and KPC which kills far more people in this country and are far more deadly. These diseases are easily spread and there is no cure for them. While not trying to diminish the cause to fight Ebola, frankly there are a lot of things far deadlier in this country that people should be worried about.
The cases in Texas I think can be squarely blamed on incompetence from the Dallas hospital.
In the case of KPC, Congress has basically put their head in the sand and handtied the CDC and FDA from effectively studying and fighting it, thanks to the livestock lobbies Frontline has a good episode on this. It doesn't help that congress has cut the budget of the CDC significantly over the last decade and played politics to make it difficult to study and fight the causes.
As it is, the CDC had to cut back on their research on Ebola due to the budget cuts and the delays in the worldwide community for fighting and funding the fighting of Ebola aren't helping matters either. If the Dallas hospital wasn't so incompetent, there's a good chance Thomas might have survived and nobody else would have become infected.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
"[O]fficials are up against the inherently emotional and instinctive nature of risk-perception psychology .. People worry more about risks that are new and unfamiliar."
The solution is to gather up all those talking-heads at Faux News (including the one with the plastic hair) and lock them up in Guantamino ref.
Here to prove John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, are we?
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
For those interested, I made a timeline of Ron Klain's life.
If Ebola were even half as transmissible as the flu I'd stock up my pantry and not leave my house for two months. Fortunately it's so hard to transmit to others that it has no chance of reaching epidemic proportions in a country like the US with a first world health system. It's difficult to be perfect and there may be a few cases that slip through the cracks like Thomas Duncan but even if some ISIS terrorist tried to bring it here deliberately there's no chance for it to develop into a widespread epidemic as long as it's so difficult to transmit.
The problem is not about our knee jerk reaction - it's about the fact that our procedures looked so incredibly sloppy, that whatever miniscule risk we believed we had before about ebola was made several orders of magnitude worse. If the government took enough proactive steps to at least look like they were taking the issue seriously, the public would never had have the severe reaction it does now. It's as if we honestly believed the problem only exists in Africa.
Yes, for the 30 seconds per day they have "news" they are. For the other 24 hours, it's all conservative opinion shows pretending to be the news.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't tow the "Climate Change" line, don't get funded
Exactly! Without scientists to move it, the "climate change" line, or for that matter, any line marking the boundaries of current human knowledge, it stays stagnant and fixed. Towing the lines helps our society prosper and grow...
And to think that George Orwell thought it a Dying Metaphor!
1. Saturate media with Ebola
2. Conduct a survey of how scared everyone is of Ebola. Report your findings on TV. Update results often so you and your audience know how your doing.
3. Watch political response to incited fear yield new policy while retroactively criticizing x, y and z for not freaking out from the beginning.
4. Dedicate portions of your non-stop coverage to resulting overreactions.
Ebola is a real issue that must be address. It is growing exponentially, and the epidemic must be controlled and halted by an international cooperation before it either becomes a) endemic or b) pandemic.
People are scared by the very real numbers alone, the mere mention of those numbers, and the uncertainty of the statistics themselves, in part because they don't understand 1st) probability and 2nd) medicine.
When you point out that we shouldn't have to worry for at least another year, and that along the way there will be clear signs as to whether the situation is getting better or is worsening, giving us time to prepare, then they freak out even more, when it should actually satiate their fear, because it proves their fear of a slight chance of immediate threat is misplaced. It's as if a longer range perspective where we have time to watch and judge and plan makes them feel like the inevitability of an approaching disaster is more certain, when it's not.
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
Addressing this as a purely american issue.
Ebola has the potential in africa to hit really quite scary numbers, quite fast.
10000 new cases per week in a couple of months are not looking unlikely.
This will spread over the world - admittedly greatly less in 'the west' and risks becoming a long-term health problem for americans - both in Africa and heavily infected regions, and in people travelling from them.
This both affects trade, and causes increase direct costs for stuff like extra screening.
Putting in the funds to kill the disease in Africa now - even with some deaths of US personel - could be significantly cheaper than allowing it to grow exponentially uncontained - at which point the 'leakers' from the hot zone vastly go up in number increasing expense and causing much harsher travel restrictions.
If Ebola were even half as transmissible as the flu...
I think you need to look up the medical definition of "airborne". Ebola can, and will, be transmitted by coughs and sneezes.
There's been a lot of panicky commentary on the virus evolving to be airborne. That was a concern in equatorial Africa.
In the USA it's far more worrying that the virus can piggy back on mucus and phlegm expelled by flu and cold sufferers.
If Thomas Duncan had flu, hundreds would be infected with Ebola now.
Not true, when this site started I was a professional engineer - it's only now that I'm a wannabe technician with an inflated sense of self importance.
"People worry more about risks that are new and unfamiliar."
Geesh, of course they do. THAT'S THE INTELLIGENT THING TO DO.
Hmmm, little green men in flying saucers hovering over every major capital. I'm going to decide to worry a lot about that because I know very little about them.
and FEAR!
The reason why you are probably safe is because there probably isn't someone near you with Ebola emitting bodily fluids directly on you or on something you might touch or eat. Since its transmission rate is above 1 and we are living in a highly populated area, a response might keep it that way.
No, Ebola can sense fear;It is better to play cool. The system is handling it fine as it is.
But irrational people insist on it.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I forgot to mention whistling. If you are afraid of Ebola, whistle. The worst thing about Ebola is the fear and while whistling you won't be afraid.
If you have any deck chairs, you can rearrange them as well.
Isn't Czar an emperor of Russia? Like Theodore I or Boris Godunov? Uhh.. why is the U.S. using a Slavic/Bulgarian/Russian term?
Apparently humans normally do not act on reason at all. Recent experiments suggest that we act on emotions completely and then build a logical excuse for out actions or thoughts. We are a very screwed up species.
When did you move into management?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
For current situation you are 100% correct. No real and intimidate danger in any first world country. But that is the situation now and its hard to tell how it might play out if epidemic is not gotten under control. After all this disease on this scale has never before seen. For example, could you imagine Ebola epidemic getting out of hand in say Mexico? Lets say it happens, US would have to deal with much more cases than just few slipping through. Now you could say, naah will never happen Mexico might not be quite that rich, but they could manage few Ebola cases no problem. But Mexico is bordered by Guatemala and Belize, situation is much the same as with US and Mexico. And this applies to pretty much every country in the world. Right now only countries bordering Guinea and Liberia are in much of a direct danger. But if that danger becomes reality, then there will be more countries facing the same situation all over again.
When he needed more time to post to /. ?
Your day is kinda long, but make it a bit longer and we won't need leap days.
It's a riot that at the top of this (otherwise sensible) article is a Doomsday Clock announcing that humankind is "5 Minutes to Midnight." That's closer than it was for much of the cold war! Sure there's a pretty good chance some third-world nutjob will get his hands on a tiny nuke soon, and yes, over the next CENTURY, several million people will need to migrate inland to avoid flooding, and probably learn to farm different crops.
But Doomsday? In five minutes?
That clock is, literally, the single most needlessly alarmist message coming from "experts" since... Ever.
The _only_ reason there is an Ebola Czar is that the President sees political badness coming out of this and it puts a person on whom responsibility can be placed between him and the crisis. If the President were serious about this post accomplishing anything there are about a dozen people at the NIH who have actual knowledge of Ebola who could serve in this position. There are a few at the CDC whose voices are being nullified by the Director who has been told to downplay any potential threat from Ebola and there are people at the University of Texas with such knowledge. Likely there are others also, but these are the ones that I with my non-medical background am aware of.
For the President to choose someone with no knowledge of the disease with the advice that he is able to call upon tells me that the Ebola Czar is a sacrificial lamb prepared for the time when this all goes bad.
Thanks George Romero. Now every scary disease is a sign of the coming apocalypse.
Braaaaaaaains!
Wrong, entertainment network. Remember, courts have said news is entertainment in England and the US. The rest of the world gets news, we get entertained, or lied to.
This is a good article and a good post, but the "Czar" thing isn't reflected in the article itself, so it's a bit of creativity on the part of the submitter.
The issue here is the mainstream media, which have seized on this and are whipping up people's emotions. No one expected anything else from tv "journalism" these days, but still, it's pathetic to see how it is playing out. I live in West Africa in a country that until recently was exposed to ebola. There was a patient living not more than 5 miles from my house. But life here is surprisingly calm and people are not panicking in any way, shape, or form.
Back in the States it's panic and mayhem, and as seen from abroad it looks like a big joke, which is exactly what news media have become. It's too bad.
On Reddit they had a contest to complete the sentence, "than have gotten ebola in the United States." One of the winners was, "More people have married Kim Kardashian ..."
Keep it perspective, people.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
If there were a vaccine, the anti-vacciners would be all over it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Appointing an Ebola Czar is about managing fear. People don't think the government is doing enough and people think the CDC and health care workers at the Dallas hospital fucked up. That's why there is an Ebola Czar. You'd think the person who wrote this article would understand that very simple point.
Again, I choose classic slashdot, and the list of posts come up properly classic.
I click "Read the comments" and it goes to BETA. How amateurishly arranged this web site is.
Or - how malignantly feindish the planning is to force the beta version on readers.
Owners, managers, and website administrators: Get it right, or get another job in shoe sales (Al Bundy style).
Well, if they're going to force me to tow something, maybe I don't want to have that kind of funding. I "toe the line" that towing is hard work, and I'm allergic to hard work!
How many people from that apartment complex are infected? Zero.
How many people on those flights are infected? Zero.
How many people within 2 degrees of separation of any of those are infected? Zero.
Maybe you should stop spreading uninformed panic, and instead pay attention to the facts.
At least you get a choice in who you can vote for - people who feed their families on foodstamps _forced_ to vote for the Democrats and do not have a voting choice.
I've seen this happen at a lot of large bureaucracies, including my own company - problem arises, and CEO feels compelled to appoint a special "czar" to deal with the problem. This only creates additional problems:
- Being appointed directly by the executive, the czar is not responsible to anyone
- The special czar will be appointed without any additional budget, and thus has no power
- Being outside of the conventional hierarchy, no one reports to him, and thus will find difficulty obtaining cooperation from other groups
- Responsibility for the problem will already be clearly defined in the existing hierarchy - appointing a czar will only confuse existing responsibilities and create conflict with the group responsible for the problem.
I foresee the same problems arising here if an "Ebola czar" is created.
No, Fox news told the court that they were entertainment, not news.
Which meant that the court ruled that, being entertainment, not news, they had no duty of accuracy.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I always thought it funny that in the US there seems to be this fear of socialism and communism, yet lately they appoint Czar's to everything it seems, which are most commonly attributed to pre-communist Russia...
Foreshadowing of things to come?
Being named Ebola Czar pretty much guarantees you'll never have a date again.
Maybe we could ask the new Ebola CZAR? (Where are we.now in Old Mother Russia?) to please place the appropriate severity of penalty or a spark of American Patriotism onto those who may have contracted the infectuously deadly and highly contagious ebola virus before they can be safely evacuated, so they may realize the wisdom behind this idea: that refraining from travelling outside of their homes if they have reason to believe they are at risk for developing full-blown symptoms has to be voluntary, but quintessentially mandatory to prevent the nightmarish scenario of officials (dressed in full Hazmat garb) having to retrace every possible contact they may have had in the last 3 weeks since they may have become infected and the contacts of those they contacted. THANK YOU
RE: "[O]fficials are up against the inherently emotional and instinctive nature of risk-perception psychology."
Not quite. Officials, particularly the CDC, have shaken public confidence by openly demonstrating their incompetence.
1. We were told that the virus would never reach our shores or it would be months/years before it happened. Oops.
2. The virus cannot survive exposed to air for more than two or three days. Wait three days before cleaning out the apartment. Oh, sorry. It can survive six days.
3. Any big city hospital can handle the containment protocol, and the CDC provided written instructions. But, of course, the first cases was handled first by a small comunity hospital.
4. About those written instructions: the CDC did not recommend face shields or covering for the head. That's bad. They have given out new instructions.
5. The old instructions called for a poor procedure for removing gloves. And removing the gloves before the gown does not appear to be rright, either.
6. The CDC failed to provide guidance for workers outside the hospital setting. Hence we have a worker rolling up the sleaves of their hazmat suit.
7. The total capacity for beds to be used for Ebola patients is about nine, with overflow capacity of 19. Plans to increase that? [Sound of crickets.]
8. The CDC and the NIH have recommended that travel restrictions are a bad idea. Their reasons are incoherent. But even worse, there is are basic questions, including: if someone gets infected and has sufficient funds to travel to the US, wouldn't it occur to them to travel to the US before they develop symptoms? That way if they get sick, they will stay in the US and get first class care. (That's essentially what Thomas Duncan did.) Let's say 0.1% of people that contract Ebola do this. The WHO suggests that there may be 1,000,000 people with Ebola. Is the US prepared to handle 1,000 cases? NO? Then travel restrictions might be a good idea.
There are several things wrong:
1. The public health authorities haven't really had to deal with problems like this, and they are clearly unprepared. Public health, in general, is very good. few diseases threaten us.
2. Public health authorities seem to be spending too much of their time doing soft science like researching obesity.
3. There is a lack of imagination. There is a significant threat to public health, and those in charge failed to see it coming. It's important for them to get back on track. There are other diseases they may threaten us. (I am also very unimpressed with the lack of interest by the CDC in researching the outbreak of EV-D68.)
...Obama has no leadership experience at all. He procrastinates making decisions, and when shit fails he blames someone else. He's never accountable for anything.
Who would have thought that a community organizer and a state senator with a record number of "present votes" can't lead.
Weird.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
If you think that the inherit fear of Ebola wasn't spread by the media in the first place, you would be wrong. Of course they are aware that an Ebola czar is unnecessary, it's just another way to waste taxpayers money. This Psychologist's perspective is just a mere observation of what is taking place, but I think it is just a distraction of what the real problem is, government fraud, waste and abuse. That coupled with fear mongering of the public to relinquish more of our freedoms and money.
Truth is... the only thing that's really required is to Enjoy Barack Obama's Legacy America.
With the establishment of "Ebloa" Airport entry sites, the USA has now the opportunity window to kill thousands of human beings only to please the sexual desires of President Barak Hussein Obama, and his Kenyan Punta Government of the USA.
At the designate airports, workers and machinery are now directed to dig 'Pits'. These Pits will be the holding cells of the thousands of travelers who enter the USA. The travelers will be striped of clothing and anything they carry. They will be dumped into the pits for "Observations." Such Observations will take not less than 21 calendar days. Meanwhile the US Treasury and State Departments will upon using the conficated credit cards of the travelers remove all money from their accounts and render their monies into the accounts of Barak Hussein Obama. Properties of the travelers will be forfeit to Barak Hussein Obama. Their original countries of residence will declare the travelers as Person Non Gratis, pending conversion of monies from Barak Hussein Obama into the Countries Presidents accounts by wire transfer.
WoW I am Shocked and Awed by Obama.