The great ebola policy divide
It breaks down this way—
The Obama administration and liberals: don’t panic. Trust us, less is more. No travel restrictions, no forced quarantine, the CDC knows best. We are the educated scientists and smart people, you are the dummy hysterics are operating on emotion.
Republicans and the right: the CDC and government have shown themselves to be unworthy of trust, the science is unsettled on this. So why not err on the side of caution. We need to protect our country and our people.
The lines have been drawn, the talking points issued. But are the troops (that’s us, folks) falling into line?
Here’s an article on a recent CNN poll: “CNN poll: Americans confident in Ebola response.” And then below it is a graphic, shouting “More than 7 in 10 Americans say federal government can stop an ebola epidemic.”
Sounds pretty clear, doesn’t it? Americans must be happy with what the government is doing.
But that’s not actually what the poll indicates. It is question 36 that’s being referred to: “How confident are you that the federal government can prevent a nationwide epidemic of the ebola virus?” “Prevent” is not the same as “stop.” The latter assumes that an epidemic is already in the works and is halted in its tracks, which is harder to do than preventing one in the first place (“an ounce of prevention is worth…”). And there can be local spreads of the disease without a national epidemic occurring, of course, and the question specifically mentions a national epidemic.
In addition, it asks about “can stop” rather than “will stop.” There’s a difference between theoretical ability and actual execution. Last but not least, we have the usual form of such polls, where “very confident” (33%) and “somewhat confident” (38%) are lumped together as “confident.”
But there can be a very wide gulf between the two. For example, I might have answered “somewhat confident” to that question, because I certainly think it’s possible that a nationwide epidemic could be prevented (or perhaps avoided in the first place, although that question’s not an option). But I am strongly critical of the government and the CDC’s response.
If you read the entire poll you’ll see that a great many people consider ebola a big issue in the election, and many people think there should be more restrictive policies in place for the entry of nationals from the ebola countries as well as returning US citizens.
On a slightly different but related topic: the good news is that Amber Vinson has been released. I’m happy for her, her family, her friends, and her fiance. But I noticed in the comments section of the linked article that her swift recovery, and that of the other Americans who came down with the illness here, have fed a certain confidence among some people that this would be the norm here, and that the fear about the disease is overblown.
I plan to write at greater length on this topic in the future, because it’s both complex and important. But I’ll deal with it briefly now. There is growing evidence that early diagnosis and intervention can be extremely helpful. Each of the people who survived here got some sort of unusual medication and/or transfusion as well, and in reading the details of the recoveries of the ones who had started out sicker than Pham and Vinson in the first place, I was struck by the fact that they described those moments of receiving the medication or transfusion as a distinct turning point in their illness.
Plus, every single one of the survivors had known prior risk factors. They all had been taking care of ebola patients, and are health professionals. Therefore they knew enough to react at the very first symptoms. We can quibble about how early they reacted (how high the temperature was, for example). But they knew enough to suspect the disease at a very early stage and alert authorities, and they were hustled off to the best of care.
But if ebola were to make a leap into the general population (and there is most definitely a chance of that) and infect a person with no reason to suspect that he/she has been exposed to the disease, then all bets are off for early diagnosis.
To make the point more clear: Nina Pham and Amber Vinson got treatment when their fevers were about 100 degrees and they had no other symptoms. Unless everyone with a fever of 100 degrees starts coming into emergency rooms for an ebola test, the risk of the spread of ebola is significant. And of course, once it did spread into the general population and proliferated, the medical system would quickly become overwhelmed and the sort of treatment Pham and Vinson received would be impossible for most people. That’s what happened in Africa, and also what happened during the 1918-1919 flu epidemic.
I hope we’ll be able to avert these worst case scenarios, but they are very real. And it’s not the least bit hysterical to point them out. It’s realistic.
A major reason for the ACA was so the political class could save medical resources for themselves, instead of allowing valuable and rare bio medical resources to be expended on peasants.
It just shows that when people control health, they can dole it out like food and sugar to their allies, but not if you disobey the Authorities.
“Le bon Dieu est dans le détail” – Gustave Flaubert
post 1975 it became:
The devil is in the details
its the little things that count
its the tiny thing that you catch on that cracks the mask of the psychopath and reveals your friend to be the orchstrator of your misery, when all along you thought they were your friend
its never overt, its always covert, and its tiny things that reveal the illusion your suckered into..
its ALWAYS that way, its the mechnics of it, the nature of the thing, the actuality of the con is that it appears ok on the surface, and that is enough to get our lazy arses from looking at the details and questioning the contradictions
but note that the whole of it, is to ignore contradictions cause thinking is work, and lazy is the easy way through the gauntlet.
how real a movie is to us when we dont think?
we do not time the fall of the object, nor do we notice the potemkin structure of the buildings. we believe because we want to believe, they say what they say cause they want us to believe.
Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies – Fleetwood Mac
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Truth is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not they believe it.”
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
― Thomas Paine
“Objective truth is difficult to come by, and even if you have it, what you can pass on to the next person is the story that you tell about it. In order for truth to be recognized as true, it has to be wrapped in plausibility. Just the same as lies. ― Daniel Abraham
A major reason for the ACA was so the political class could save medical resources for themselves, instead of allowing valuable and rare bio medical resources to be expended on peasants.
no
it was to copy the german nazis, without appearing as the “nationalizers” did, and so, be allowed to compare how much the state has nationalized the various parts, and so, fascistically controls the means of production.
your dealing with power people using socialism
understand that, and you understand them.
read george kennans long telegram
I don’t know if you saw this, but what I read of it was very informative.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/21-days/381901/
I’ll let the subtitle say it all: “An expert in biological warfare warns against complacency in public measures against Ebola.” I didn’t finish because it got very detailed, but a summary in your usual lucid prose would be much appreciated.
Compare and contrast:
Army major general, troops quarantined after Ebola aid trip
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/politics/soldiers-monitored-ebola/index.html
this is doing something and claiming ability, and then waiting for the accidents that must occur, then what?
Then the signing statments that negate the constitution are in place, and thats that…
of course, doing it this way is false flag. its creating a situation that is ambiguous and arguable, that one can deny will lead to where it leads and so, avoid culpability.
or as the psychopath said: its the victims fault that i had to teach them the lesson they got to learn…
or
if they were not so stupid, then i could not act, so its their fault i can act, and i am not responsible for how it turns out
How Psychopaths Choose Their Victims
Just as sociopaths are a special breed, so too are their victims.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201010/how-psychopaths-choose-their-victims
and when they team together they trade notes and work on different groups.
that is the purpose of so many meaningless and contradictory groups in feminism… you cant fool all of the people, so you fool them in different groups, with the singularity of it being feminism… and then their leaders have power as a singular whole.
its easier to see the pattern with feminists, but the same is being done with ebola… ie. you have the authority of the president, if that dont work, you have the authority of the academics and scinetists, then you have the authority of the CDC… if that wont work, then you have the army of the people convinced by authority that will shame you, ridicule you, attack you, and so on
its a process…
opinion polls and social sciences give these people the information needed to work on the largest groups, as does history
women want to feel safe… so you work on giving them what they want, a message of safety they can run to, who cares if its valid. they will deny that they are different from men, and will ignore this as a rule today, and so will not be able to avoid this game because to do so would be to admit difference.
so your going to find an array of doyens telling women that they are safe. the republicans do not have a safe message, and so it doesnt work for them against the array of the left.
note that abortion works the same way, a woman is SAFE from the consequences of her actions. same with welfare, and all the ways they dupe women.
men are a lot harder, more skeptical, etc… but they will go where their women turn their heads as lysistrada taught. so you appeal to the womens in born fear, and the men will follow them…
the left is giving a message that its ok to do this, its safe to do this, your SAFER if you let us treat them, etc. most of what sells to women is fear based. and women negate the need to sell to men.
dont believe me? google search feminists ebola
In Liberia, The Ebola Outbreak is Also a Maternal Health Issue
http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/08/20/the-ebola-outbreak-is-a-maternal-health-issue/
you can see that things are couched in a certain set of fears and custom around it… so its ebola racism… which every feminist knows is also ebola genderism… etc..
wacky… but step back and see how its sold.
Also, according to that atlantic article posted the other day, some 12 or more percent of patients never get fever. So early dx for them will be problematic…
I think what the dem side isn’t getting, or isn’t acknowledging, is that this is all about what if’s. We are ok right now, ish. But ‘what if’ a bunch of things fail (which can happen) and we get too many patients to safely treat? And just because people believe maybe we can stop a nationwide epidemic doesn’t mean we can stop secondary cases, and even all potential deaths. We have been lucky that we have had experimental treatments and relatively young and healthy patients. What happens when someone with a weaker immune system gets this disease?
There are too many what if’s, if we let this get too widespread that will start taking over. That is why it’s best to stop it in its tracks, and our entire policy is geared towards not doing that. Which is scary.
Obama and the CDC better hope that there aren’t many more cases of ebola. Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where Dr. Spencer is being treated, has begun transferring their ICU patients to NYU Medical Center to free up more doctors and nurses to take care of Spencer. That’s the level of care required for one ebola patient. If there were 6 or more patients or if some of the members of the Bellevue medical staff caring for them contracted it, what then?
Australia has announced a travel ban from ebolalandia. Wish we had a federal government that put our protection first. And so far no Australian medical personnel have gone to Africa.
One positive point is that the CDC has decided to outsource the contact tracking to states. See this summary by the OK Dept of Health.
http://www.ok.gov/health/Organization/Office_of_Communications/News_Releases/Situation_Updates/Surveillance_and_Preparedness_for_Ebola_Virus_Disease/EVD_Situation_Update_No_11.html
My state and one local hospital have easy to follow links to what they are doing in preparation. My city and the other hospital are preparing, but not communicating. I complained and they will “look into it”.
Ask your local and state governments now, don’t wait for the pandemic to be too close for comfort. I’ve checked other .gov sites and it has been hard to see what they are doing. Searches on the sites for “ebola” turned up nothing, which is scary.
Sorry to keep repeating this message, but knowing that my state, city, hospitals are doing something makes me feel more confident about the future. Are you confident about your local government?
Neo – if you want me to shut up about this matter, let me know and I will. A friend thinks I am paranoid about Ebola. I’m not – I’m concerned about the local and state preparation since I have no confidence in the national response. It is just too easy to see how the system can be overwhelmed. Right now, we are dealing with the patients, direct contacts and secondary contacts. If the disease expands beyond the expected links, then there will be a problem, especially with the flu season coming up.
The two governors acted immediately in response to Ebola. The ditherer in chief gave a speech.
Neo, I love how you state this about the left:
” We are the educated scientists and smart people, you are the dummy hysterics are operating on emotion.”
What a scream. The irony is that many of the lefties who make those claims are humanities majors who are clueless! The bonafide scientists who appear so blasé about the chances of Americans dying from the disease are often political appointees who have a financial interest in pleasing their political masters.
When a medical study is financed by the pharmaceutical industry, it is questioned because the scientists are assumed to have a financial stake in the outcome and the study is questioned. When the same study is financed by politicians who have a political stake in the outcome of the study, the same scientists are assumed to be completely free from financial incentives to bias – even when it is blindingly obvious that their grants are more dependent on the whims of the ones financing the study than they would be if private industry were financing the study.
I was listening to Howie Carr (Boston radio talk show) on the way home today. He was chuckling over how Kaci Hickox kicked Gov Christie’s @$$. However, I thought the Gov was well rid of her and saved NJ taxpayer’s a bundle by handing her off to Maine. I believe her interaction with Maine has also been contentious. In the meantime, the Governor has discharged his obligation to the citizens of NJ, who can’t be financially on the hook for every potential ebola patient that is in transit to somewhere else.
Did MS Hickox fly commercial to Maine? Anyone?
Exasperated:
I read somewhere that she had a special driver drive her up.
I don’t know whether they disinfected the vehicle afterward. I think they’re keeping pretty mum on that sort of thing.
Today I was eating a late lunch at the local McDonalds and Fox news was on. Unfortunately, since it was late, it means I had to sit thru the President’s speech and Sheppard Smiths comments. I got really agitated being told that “Science” should win out over fear. This misuse of the word “science” when the word “risk management” should be used really upsets me. For example, Science might be able to determine how long Ebola can survive outside the body under specific conditions. Risk management -a human judgement call no matter which philosophy of risk management is used-is not “science”. It can take various scientific facts into consideration-but ultimately it is a human judgement of risk verses rewards/punishments for different courses of action. It is not science itself.
When it comes to environmental issues-the left generally follows the chicken little “Precautionary Principle”.
Please , someone that is a better word smith than I push back and point out they are confusing “science” with risk management!
Note the reframe, too, that being for quarantine is the same as being against medical people going to Africa to counter Ebola.
A real scientist knows what he doesn’t know. Since much of the info on ebola previously came from limited outbreaks and from laboratory studies, there is a base of information. But the size of this outbreak and the potential mutations in the virus means there there is still much to learn about what we might face. The only sensible way to handle this is to try to contain the spread and to collect more information by working with African-based doctors and giving them as much help as possible. Variations in the virus should be identified and followed to see whether there are changes in the time before ebola is contageous and to see whether there are different responses to various treatments. Collecting blood frm many survivors may give us a variety of antibodies useful in treating patients.
The last thing we should be doing is wasting resources following masses of contacts. If nothing else, restricting possible ebola carriers to a few centers would make studying disease spread and treatments much more effective.
Mr Baker: Agreed
I would add that it irks me when science is presented as something other than what it is, a TOOL, and a darned useful one.
Also, to echo what others have pointed out regarding the science:
It is probable that the medical people have collected a fair amount of reliable and valid data on ebola’s patterns of transmission and symptom progression. Yet, this data applies to the environment and climate of W Africa and not the environment and climate of N America. The “experts” gloss over that they are extrapolating.
So, quarantine troops who have not had close contact with people infected with ebola, but don’t guarantine health care workers who have had close contact with people infected with ebola.
The powers that be really do take us for fools.
“The powers that be really do take us for fools.” Their unitended consequence is at a minimum 40% are not fools. Stay cocked and locked. They may have the liv numbers, but we have the guns… and many of us practice weekly. They never stop to consider that when it comes to marksmenship civilians win every time. The only issue when push comes to shove is air cover.
parker…
The social history is that it practically NEVER devolves to gun play.
While many survivalists imagine Night of the Living Dead scenarios — history tells us that epic boobery is followed by a pathetic scrum for essentials — without many bullets flying.
This was the history of the Russian 1998 collapse, the typical experience of Frenchmen during their revolution… etc.
What these all had in common was FINANCIAL collapse.
That’s a totally different beast than political upheaval… like the American Revolution.
There is a strong tendency to conflate one end-of-day- scenario with the other.
I must confess, I can’t quite scope out Barry’s end-of-times scenario.
He is a political agonist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agonist
And, no doubt, he’s putting the World through agony.
&&&
I honestly think that Barry Soetoro NEVER imagines that his antics will generate counter-forces that blow away his “political vector.’ (Policy cluster)
Which is passing strange: Marx’s core principle was the dialectic. Thesis ==> Anti-Thesis ==>> Synthesis.
Marx had it all wrong at one level: nature — the physical universe — represses many a thesis on its own:
Thesis ==> Raw Nature ==> Doom.
Marx never allowed for natural failure for his grandiose scaffolding… which erects him as a new Moses.
He missed his calling: to be a raver posting over at ZeroHedge.
“I know a Helluva lot less about Ebola now than I did six months ago” before studying the 900 pages published on the virus, says Dr. Michael Osterholm two weeks ago.
Osterholm is an old school epidemiologist who nailed AIDS as a viral blood born pathogen, analogous to Hepatitis, years before Robert Gallo identified the actual virus-agent called HIV.
The Ebola-hubris of “scientists” is pandemic.
His peroration of context and cautions before a John Hopkins Conference is here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkMKUa0sxBQ
and repays your attentions.
Orson,
Thanks for the link. Osterholm was fantastic.
Everyone else,
Watch the talk. It’s what we have all been waiting to hear: honesty.
once again, the liberal penchant for wanting lots of rules “to make for a better world” (for them), and their lack of actually following them if they dont feel like it
from the ebola nurse refusing to follow quarantine once she gets back home
to
Ebola doctor ‘lied’ about NYC travels
http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/ebola-doctor-lied-about-his-nyc-travels-police/
meaning 8 million to 350 million are less important than this doc, cause he decied to risk all our lives
risking the lives of millions really shows you care
[and i suspect that the nurse that refuses to follow things will find that many people will be hostile towards her. cause she showed how much she clearly cares for others, they will show her how much they really care about her]
“I know a Helluva lot less about Ebola now than I did six months ago” before studying the 900 pages published on the virus, says Dr. Michael Osterholm two weeks ago.
That’s that kind of thing you will hear from a real scientist.
Lawyer: Maine Nurse Who Treated Ebola Patients In West Africa Won’t Observe State’s Quarantine
http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014/10/29/lawyer-maine-nurse-who-treated-ebola-patients-in-west-africa-wont-observe-states-quarantine/
[she is fighting for the liberated feminist nurses who wish to infect others and set bad examples for others]
When people consider this Regime as a plague.. perhaps they aren’t merely using overblown metaphor.
America became the Obamanation. Then it become Obolanation. Then it is an abomination and the land of the dead, serfs, slaves, zombies included.
CORRECTION
“’I know a Helluva lot less about Ebola now than I did six months ago’ before studying the 900 PAPERS published on the virus, says Dr. Michael Osterholm two weeks ago.”
PAPERS, not “pages.” Big difference. My error – SORRY.