Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard 384
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."
Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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If having a Czar will concentrate more power in their hands then a Czar is what they'll create.
Czar's are usually there to be completely ineffective and take the fall when side A politically leverages hindsight and/or the situation that they themselves have helped create against side B.
Don't be a Czar, it won't end well for you.
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I was thinking they set up a fall guy, just in case.
It's going to be so obvious though, in hindsight, if it turns out they need a fall guy. It's kind of obvious now.
But really, people are going to fall for that? Blame the shrub that Obama set there in front of us? Too obvious.
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As soon as any government appoints a Czar, you know that they know bad things are going to happen.
Usually:
* The person has little actual power
* They are allocated minimal resources
* Decisions come from the people above
* Blame falls upon the Czar's shoulders
* Appointing a Czar makes it look like you're doing something, even though you don't actually have to know what you're doing
* Almost inevitably the Czar resigns or is fired later for being ineffective - because they were never actually there to do anythin
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As soon as any government appoints a Czar, you know that they know bad things are going to happen.
Usually: * The person has little actual power * They are allocated minimal resources * Decisions come from the people above * Blame falls upon the Czar's shoulders * Appointing a Czar makes it look like you're doing something, even though you don't actually have to know what you're doing * Almost inevitably the Czar resigns or is fired later for being ineffective - because they were never actually there to do anything or even empowered to do anything
When you see a Czar being appointed you should immediately think, "they know the outcome here has a high probability of being very damaging politically, likely because they either don't have the answers and they know it, or the answers they have point to a very unpopular outcome".
That's not being cynical, it's just reality.
Just look at what happened to the last Czar they appointed in Russia...
(I think there's a 'In Soviet Russia' joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to say it.)
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I know!
Let's declare war on Ebola!
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Tsars are needed because they create the conditions necessary for Socialist revolution. Well, at least one of them, anyway,
Maybe we need a Surgeon General (Score:4, Insightful)
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Interesting, the truth is overrated.
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Awe.. isn't that sweet. You are mad because i shot down your conspiracy with simply facts that anyone paying attention over the last year would already know.
I'm sorry you hate me now but i still love you.
Btw, [sic] the way you used it doesn't mean what you think it means and more than likely neither does dumass. But hey, those are just facts too.
Re:Maybe we need a Surgeon General (Score:5, Informative)
The rules were changed so certain judicial nominations couldn't be filibustered but I don't think that applies to appointments like Surgeon General.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com]
Either way, with a simple majority vote, they could change that too. Thats all they had to change the rules last time even if it was limited to judicial nominies.
Oh, and slate isn't exactly a conservative site last time i checked. But i see they are trying to be less liberal so go figure.
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If this were about solving disease problems then the President would give the CDC more funding if they needed it.
Did they change the Constitution last week and give the President the power to budget government money? Why wasn't I told about this?
CDC does disease control, NIH does research (Score:2)
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.
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all three are relevant research studies. gay marriage is legal in most of America, obesity is a known problem (it's Health), primates are our nearest analogs, and the latter choice might not be your cup of tea, but you'd be surprised what people do.
More relevant than ebola?
face it, you just love Russia and want America weak.
This is why we can't have nice things. The NIH is like a student that blows their student loans on spring break in Cancun, and then complains that they don't have enough money to pay tuition.
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Re:Politics (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, we already have a "Czar" for this sort of thing. Her name is Dr. Nicole Lurie. That's the real reason we don't need a "Czar" - we already have one.
Secondly, the president can't give the CDC more funding. That's Congress's job.
Thirdly, in the last fifteen years the CDC budget has doubled, so they already have plenty of money. In fact, they have too much money, which has allowed them to ignore their primary mission and go off and do things like stump for gun control, study why lesbians get fat and gay men don't, and determine most monkeys are right handed.
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determine most monkeys are right handed.
Well that's good to know.
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The President can't unilaterally increase CDC funding. He has extremely broad discretion in moving funds around (the check on his power to cut one program's budget and use it for his pet priorities is not that he can't do that shit; it's that Congress would freak out and zero out said pet priorities budget next year), but he can't just add a bunch of money to the CDC.
The Republican House almost certainly claims that if they'd gotten Romney the CDC would have been adequately funded, but the tend to define "a
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Simpsons Did It [wikipedia.org]. Anyone remember the Bear Patrol?
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, that's basically what they've been saying this whole time. Lots of reactionaries in the media are screaming that those very statements are lies and cover-ups.
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And look who's reacting to the reactionaries.
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People don't like some ways of dyeing more than others. Example: airline crash is a real least favorite. We spend far more per death preventing that one than ones like flu.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, fucking Nigeria was able to contain an outbreak with... let's just say less resources than US hospitals and CDC. The real problem is that our "best health system" is actually an otherwise shitty health system with many very good doctors and nurses in it.
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The U.S. system of medical education produces hypercompetitive egomaniacs, not good doctors.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Interesting)
Nigeria overall has less resources than US, sure, but compare the what they actually did and the resources they actually _used_.
First, in Nigeria patient zero hit a good observant doctor with a clue, and instead of being sent home with antibiotics, was kept in hospital and restrained to prevent him leaving - all (I believe) before any official quarantine order or similar. The doctor that did that paid with her life. That action probably prevented an epidemic across Lagos, nothing to do with amount of resources and everything to do with one doctor being on the ball and prepared to fight the system to do the right thing.
The official response included tracing close to 1000 primary and secondary contacts, 18,500 personal visits and 100s in isolation / quarantine. They had emergency presidential decrees, overriding the rights people would normally have (probably a lot less than in the US to start with) and extensive use of law enforcement agencies. Widespread advertising campaigns, banning shaking hands, kissing etc., Changing holy communion practices in churches. Closure of _all_ schools.
The US doesn't appear to have done anything like that, despite its greater resources. Maybe Nigeria over-reacted, maybe US under-reacted and got lucky.
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What do you expect when you constantly tell people they shouldn't have to pay for medical care? Most people don't have a very high regard for "free stuff" or even "cheap stuff".
The US Medical system puts patients and doctors in an adversarial relationship from the start.
The doctor in the US operates as a gatekeeper for medical services. Another word for gatekeeper is guard, and they arm guards for a reason.
I was chatting with a doctor who was talking about how owning a gun increases the risk of suicide, so he was thinking about asking patients about whether they owned one, but was concerned that patients might resent being asked. So, we had a bit of a chat about why patients lie
Re:Politics (Score:5, Informative)
If they had just stated the truth, that Ebola is hard to spread with proper controls, and can be contained...
For the public, notions of safety went out the window after the clusterfsck in Texas.
- A patient went to the ER with symptoms, and was sent home
- People in government-mandated quarantine didn't honor the quarantine, and went to public places. It took armed guards to enforce the quarantine.
- Two nurses, wearing the recommended protective equipment became infected, and are being treated now.
- One of the nurses went on an airline flight after treating the Ebola patient, in violation of a number of CDC policies
- Personnel treating the first ebola patient were in constant contact with hundreds of others, including other hospital patients
Restated facts (or "truth") about how difficult it is to transmit can no longer combat the fear that has brewed up.
A pattern of mistake after mistake has emerged - things that should have never happened did. People who knew better didn't do the right thing, over and over.
It's a PR disaster, pure and simple. Any goodwill or trust the public had was burned up in Texas.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be said that most of the mistakes here were by the hospital in Texas, not the CDC. If the CDC had descended on the hospital like a ton of bricks and the first inkling of Ebola they might have prevented most of that from happening then people would be complaining about Federal overreach. Instead they're complaining they didn't do enough. Regardless of what it does there's a certain sector of the American public that will always find a way to fault the government.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be said that most of the mistakes here were by the hospital in Texas, not the CDC.
That's just endless buck-passing. The reality is that the kind of fuck ups that could happen, did happen, like a storyline from some cheap zombie/biothriller novel.
The CDC protocols were flawed and the CDC wasn't there to advise and observe and if they did they screwed that up. Worse, I think the CDC invited complacency with its don't-panic focus. The whole mess in Texas might have been avoided if they had taken a slightly more danger-focused mindset,
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Quite simple, what happens reflects the nature of a privatised for profit system. They do lip service to government regulations but if it is more profitable to ignore the rules then the cost of the penalties, regardless of the outcome, then private for profit entities will ignore the rules. When it comes to high risk medical services putting it in the hands of private for profit capitalists based upon the reality of the last century of private for profit entities, is just plain nuts, especially where those
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I think blaming for-profit healthcare is certainly possible, but in this case I think it's too overbroad of a critique.
It's reasonable to believe that the profit motive may actually have been a positive motivation -- the hospital makes money from ordinary health care issues, not life-threatening hemorrhagic fevers imported from Africa. Even a mini "outbreak" like this will have everyone who can avoid this hospital going someplace else, and the people with any choice in the matter have good insurance that p
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If the CDC had descended on the hospital like a ton of bricks and the first inkling of Ebola they might have prevented most of that from happening then people would be complaining about Federal overreach.
Really?
If the CDC had clamped down on that hospital, the only people complaining would have been the hospital staff.
Instead, the CDC has lost most of the public's trust.
Ebola is a deadly virus. With deadly things, you are expected to be proactive, not reactive. Once you react, people are already dead.
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Lesson: don't go to a shitty community hospital for anything except a broken arm.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Informative)
tl;dr This isnt an airborne strain, there is absolutely no evidence of that. The currently high infection rate in Africa is from many other reasons all working together to cause a horrible situation thats almost unmanageable for the people currently in charge.
If this whole outbreak had been in america instead of africa the dead would be less than a thousand easily.
Re: Politics (Score:4, Informative)
Africa is not a country. Its a continent you can fit the USA, China, India and the entire EU into with room to spare. Generalization like yours is just as inaccurate. I live in an African country and our infection rates are actually lower than the US (3 there 1 here and he was a traveler who got it in Liberia who died in quarantine here). Hell our quarantine protocols are probably stricter than yours because we don't have many libertarians so nobody thinks personal liberties extends to risking public safety.
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The common cold isn't really airborne either, it's spread mainly by fomite transmission, direct contact and droplet transmission. I think the problem is that people confuse droplet transmission and airborne transmission.Ebola can be spread by droplet transmission but does not survive long enough outside the body to be spread by fomites or true airborne transmission.And the average ebola patient feels rather too sick to walk around spreading germs like a person with a cold might.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
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Care to supply a citation?
Evaluation of transmission risks associated with in vivo replication of several high containment pathogens in a biosafety level 4 laboratory [nature.com] says you're wrong, though.
Re: Politics (Score:4, Funny)
American Hospitals are almost always Non-profits.
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No, they must have revenue to cover costs. That should include creating a cash reserve for bad years and unexpected expenses. They don't need profit.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is the CDC plan didn't work and the CDC and the hospital completely broke proper isolation procedures.
You never give the care takers permission to leave the town until after they have been isolated long enough to be clean. Let alone when one of them ask for permission to fly when she has a slight fever you say no.
I always figured the CDC could handle a major outbreak. now I don't think they could.
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I agree. CDC advises health professionals who are free to not give a fuck what they say and do their own thing. Regulations on doctors in the US are essentially zero and will stay that way. In the end our health system depends on doctors to do the right thing and while most do, some don't.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
That why, even as an 'infectious disease response coordinator,' it's a lawyer and politician who got the call.
If they had just stated the truth, that Ebola is hard to spread with proper controls, and can be contained, there would be no panic, there would be little media attention, and there would be no need for a czar. But as you said, there would be no need to concentrate power, so no dice.
Dude,
I see what you're saying, but you're missing something: Nina Pham is pretty. She's 26. She's got a college degree. She reminds everyone who makes decisions in the media of their daughter/girlfriend/best friend/etc. And she's got a very high risk of death because she caught a deadly disease on her job. Then her boss tried to blame her for it by saying she fucked up the protocol.
The media could be convinced to ignore thousands of poor Liberians dying. It could be convinced to treat the missionaries and Doctors airlifted back to the US. That shit is supposed to happen in Africa. But Nina Pham has a really interesting story, great visuals, and a compelling main character.
Appointing a political hack as "Ebola Czar" to shut the GOP up is the real world version of telling everyone to calm the fuck down and go the fuck home.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Informative)
The onion nailed this two and a half months ago:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/experts-ebola-vaccine-at-least-50-white-people-awa,36580/ [theonion.com]
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about solving problems but about power.
You just summed up the Democratic party.
He also just summed up the Republican Party.
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This is not about solving problems but about power.
You just summed up the Democratic party.
He also just summed up the Republican Party.
No, just politics in general, regardless of party or political system.
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Pretty much, if you aren't voting Green or Libertarian you're most likely part of the problem.
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LOL. No. Written by Democrats and "Progressive" lobbyists, and voted for by Democrats. The Democrats own it lock, stock, and barrel.
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LOL. No. Written by Democrats and "Progressive" lobbyists, and voted for by Democrats. The Democrats own it lock, stock, and barrel.
I'll just leave this [google.com] right here for you.
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News flash: Romney was never elected President. (I do understand the logic, you can't 'blame" this on Bush, can you?)
I'll just leave this [realclearpolitics.com] right here for you.
I can understand trying to weasel out from being blamed for that turkey, but it isn't going to happen. You can try to make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the day Obamacare was written by Democrats and "Progressive" lobbyists, amended with juicy pork to bribe Democrats to not bail on it, passed by Democratic votes, and signed by a Democrat
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Blame: I'll take it. The vast majority of the bill is intended to reduce fraud in medicare (and has done so). The parts that you think of as Obamacare are working out very well too.
But, I do admit that the intellectual conception of Obamacare came from the right wing think tanks. And that makes sense, it's ultimately very libertarian / free market oriented. They just couldn't get it implemented.
Until we upgrade the dumb bunnies (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
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In fairness, some people do feel better when they see something being done by some sort of authority figure. Even a scrawny 19-year old rent-a-cop armed with a radio can make a substantial difference to people's feeling of well being (in one way or the other...)
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And that surprises you?
Re:Until we upgrade the dumb bunnies (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that's not leadership, it's damage control and/or preemptive excuses.
Do you remember the last time Obama declared that we "don't have a plan" because the conditions in Syria were complex and required addition time to evaluate the various options? Yeah, that honesty in leadership went over well, despite the fact that he made it clear that evaluating what was an exceptionally complex set of conditions could go horribly wrong if played incorrectly.
Ebola is just another disease without a (nearly guaranteed) cure. There are others out there, right now, which we know even less about (enterovirus, for example). This one is headline grabbing because you bleed out of your asshole. It's like "Ow, My Balls" but grosser for daytime shock newscasts. I mean, really - a facility takes on a patient with inadequate resources to do so, and fails. We're all somehow surprised.
Instead of stating that hospitals are, generally, bad places to isolate transmitted diseases and recommending facilities and transport set up for such work, we go into shit storm finger pointing mode and massive over-reaction. That's not leadership. That's damage control.
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Do you remember the last time Obama declared that we "don't have a plan" because the conditions in Syria were complex and required addition time to evaluate the various options?
It would have helped if he'd used that time to actually come up with a plan........
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Look - if there's one thing that humans need, it's one ass to kick. Some dude to be the top of the pyramid. A face of the effort. A single point for organization. President, CEO, Principal - it doesn't matter the organization, you need a person in charge. And a person to take the fall if things go wrong. What you want is someone organizing and coordinating all of the response to the epidemic (of three). You can call him a Czar, a Director, or whatever - you still want *somebody* in charge. And somebody to f
Re:Until we upgrade the dumb bunnies (Score:4, Insightful)
There must be an optimal level of security
If we wanted to actually make people safer we'd take very dollar we spend on airport security and Ebola beyond contact tracking, containment and isolation/care for the infected and spend it on:
1) Traffic safety
2) Finding better ways to fight the flu
Those two things would be way more impactful in terms of lives saved then the money being spent to keep air travel safe from terrorists and mobilizing the national guard to fight Ebola (not sure how they're going to do that, absent a shrink machine, Fantastic Voyage style).
Min
As some one recently pointed out to me (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Both Ted Kennedy and Tony Stewart have killed more Americans than Ebola.
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Most effective counter to fear (Score:3)
Oh come on... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
"Fear" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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If you don't want to believe what someone is saying is the truth, you will not trust them. Your opinion is set from sources you do trust, which does not necessarily have your best interests at heart. Politics- next election; news- next ad; military- next budget; church- blind following; nobody is impartial.
What you can control is your own behaviors to ensure the people you trust have common goals that are important to you. A Talking Head can never be in that position. Seek out experts...
Having a Surgeon General would help (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The NRA won't approve Obama's candidate for office because he wants to add black box warnings to guns "WARNING: The Surgeon General reports that guns can kill you".
Re:Having a Surgeon General would help (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Having a Surgeon General would help (Score:5, Informative)
Reid has 55 (D) votes and it only needs 51 to confirm, so put the blame where it belongs.
Why is there no surgeon general? [washingtonexaminer.com]
Short answer: Obama's nominee is a political disaster; a highly partisan anti-gun obamacare cheerleader that the Dems know better than to expose to the confirmation process in an election year.
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The only reason why he is "not qualified" is that NRA decided they will "Score" this vote. Congress critters are afraid to tarnish their 100% NRA approved record. *sigh*
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The only reason why he is "not qualified" is that NRA decided they will "Score" this vote. Congress critters are afraid to tarnish their 100% NRA approved record. *sigh*
Although it may be appealing in some respects to accept at face value your claim that the Democrats running the Senate are adverse to being held accountable, as they have previously demonstrated, it turns out there is more to it. The "nominee" isn't up to standard to be considered for the office.
The Left, Hoping the Lack of a Surgeon General Becomes a Huge Issue [nationalreview.com]
Today on Ronan Farrow’s MSNBC program, the host invited former surgeon general Richard Carmona, who served under President Bush, on the program. The former surgeon general offered a bluntly harsh assessment that Murthy was “a young man who has great potential, but just a few years out of training, with no public health training or experience” and “a resume that only stands out because he was the co-founder of Doctors for Obama.” Carmona made similar comments on Fox News a few days ago.
“So substantive objections as well as well as partisan ones,” Farrow said quickly, moving on from the interview.
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And a president's chief of staff is usually the same person that runs his election. The fact that he campaigned on behalf of the president is only a positive, since we are not getting a random person who's views are not known at all. But the fact that NRA cannot have an anti-NRA person even on the position of Surgeon General, where most of doctors are clearly anti-gun with 32,000 gun related deaths. There are other better arguments I could make against him, but that is not the one the opposition is making.
Utterly misses the point ... (Score:3)
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
Article is right... (Score:2)
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
Let's start by closing the front door (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Let's start by closing the front door (Score:4, Informative)
I was just arguing that this is pointless. When I traveled to Israel, I requested that my visa be stamped on a removable sheet of paper to be stapled into my passport. I did this because I didn't want evidence of a trip to Israel when one of my next stops was Malaysia. If someone is trying to get from Liberia to the US, they will do so with no evidence of recently having been in Liberia.
It's not as if there are huge numbers of flights to and from Liberia.
American Exceptionalism Strikes Again (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Indeed. Here's a breakdown of all the problems:
1. Hubris. US government agencies (policymakers, public health officers, and elected officials) and private healthcare providers (hospitals) assumed that a substantial driving force for the spread of Ebola in West Africa is due to their lack of a developed healthcare system. In other words, these agencies thought that Ebola could be easily contained were it to occur in the US simply by taking appropriate precautions. That, as we have seen, is incorrect: t
I wish they'd focus more on things like MRSA (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they'd focus more on things like MRSA [cdc.gov] and KPC [wikipedia.org] 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 [pbs.org] 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.
Re:I wish they'd focus more on things like MRSA (Score:4, Informative)
Part of the problem with the recent agency flubs is lack of focus on the part of the agency, something that is the responsibility of Congress.
For example the Secret Service was once a part of the Treasury Department, and had a relatively narrow set of missions. However with the creation of the monumental cluster fuck known as the DHS, the Secret Service was uprooted and badly placed under the DHS, then saddled with all sorts of diversions.
Similarly the CDC has been loaded up with all sorts of ridiculous crap like being made responsible for bicycle lane safety and policing of farmers markets. This is a world leading organization that must function at the highest level possible. Loading it up with cruft will destroy it.
Recently I've seen a lot of yammering about some of the people that are seen on TV including Freidman and Fauci, to the effect that they are incompetent and should be shown the door.
I'm sorry but this makes me want to throw up. Anthony Fauci is one of the greatest Americans of this age. His work on HIV/AIDS has saved millions of lives. He is one of the most cited scientists in the world. It is disgusting that he should be subjected to the hysterical politics of the moment.
FYI (Score:2)
For those interested, I made a timeline of Ron Klain's life. [newslines.org]
Re:What does require those things? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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.
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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?
Sure, but that has zero bearing on the degree of concern people should have about the epidemic potential of Ebola in any country with a first-world health care system (Nigeria, say, or parts of the US outside Texas.)
The thing fearmongers like the GP are all about is the attempt to create a sense that Ebola could actually be spreading like the flu, which is so trivially false it isn't even worth mentioning. Yes, PPEs that include good respiratory protection should be part of the standard patient-handling pro
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The thing is, what you're saying there is just plain implausible unless the air itself kills the viruses with remarkable efficiency, in which case it would survive for only minutes on a hard surface (like HIV), rather than hours (like influenza). From what I've read, it survives for hours on hard surfaces, which lends serious doubt to any claim that Ebola exhibits an "almost
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It almost certainly does only survive for minutes on hard surfaces. The surfaces it survives on longer are those which are literally covered in blood and bodily fluids for it to reside in.
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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.
Read what I said.
Billions of people on this planet. Hundreds of millions in the US.
More people die from heat stroke in Texas than are even remotely considered "at potential risk".
It's like you worry about being attacked by Martians while crossing a busy highway.
Pay attention to the cars and trucks in the highway.
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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.
Or maybe, just maybe, the US military (or any functional military for that matter) has the only organization structure, money and manpower to deal with these sorts of major threats.
Don't you watch any televison?
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The US military personnel sent to Liberia are there to build some treatment centers and to expedite logistics for materials to fight the epidemic. They are not treating or even being exposed to the people who are contagious with Ebola. Your post is just more fear mongering.
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In a country like Liberia with its poor transportation systems I think the 101st Airborne Division with their helicopters and skilled pilots is one of the things you need to deliver material and personnel in the area. From the Whitehouse Fact Sheet [whitehouse.gov] on the response:
Scaling-up the DoD presence in West Africa. Following the completion of AFRICOM’s assessment, DoD announced the planned deployment of 3,200 troops, including 700 from the 101st Airborne Division headquarters element to Liberia. These forces will deploy in late October and become the headquarters staff for the Joint Forces Command, led by Major General Gary Volesky. The total U.S. troop commitment will depend on the requirements on the ground;
So out of at least 3,200 troops only 700 of them are from the 101st Airborne and the other units are yet to be specified. It makes sense to jump start the transportation system so the guys that follow can hit the ground running (or at least jogg
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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 epidemi
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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