Even with Ebola having turned up in the U.S., I’m with those who resolutely say don’t panic.
Okay, so some guy who knew he’d been exposed to Ebola decided to get on a plane to the U.S. and he probably won’t be the last. That’s bad, though unsurprising. (If you thought you might come down with a deadly disease, where would you rather be?)
We’re supposed to feel better because Liberia plans to prosecute him??? Okaaaay.
And hospital personnel who knew he’d been in Liberia sent him away to expose more people. Because of “poor communication” or “a computer glitch” or some other bureaucratic buck-passing. (And this just after the staff did Ebola training!) That’s bad and slightly more surprising.
And Our Glorious Leader was proven wrong faster than you could say “hope and change.” That’s … um, not surprising at all.
But as some of you folks have already pointed out, we’re dealing with an illness that’s not spread through casual contact and isn’t contagious until symptoms show. And so far Obama and bureaucrats haven’t managed to reduce the U.S. medical system to African levels. That’s good. So … caution, preparedness, but no panic.
One Faithful Reader and sometime contributor to the blog says he’s more concerned about how to handle friends and relatives who might panic if the virus gets loose here. He writes:
Several times this week I’ve seen breathless warnings to get my preps in order because Ebola. Meh. It’s not that I don’t think Ebola is a threat. I’m prepped. It’s not a goal, but how I live my life.
Could I live through a 3-week quarantine? Yep.
Do I need more fuel, food, toilet paper, ammo, cash, bread whatever? Always, but I’m OK.
Do I expect JBTs or zombie hordes trying to batter down my doors? No more than every day. We’re long past the point where they need an excuse.
What will I do when my free-loading brother-in-law pulls into the driveway?
Drink a half a cup of maple syrup, then vomit all over him and enjoy watching him scream like a little girl and run away.
That’s a pathetic waste of maple syrup. 🙁 Plain corn syrup should do as well.
Ok, I’m bad.
Ebola can only be exchanged via body fluids, it is not airborne.
Add to preps: Maple Syrup.
You can never be too sure. 🙂
Even if all the fears over Ebola were reasonable, panic never helps the situation. Want to die quicker? Panic. Want your best chance of surviving with the least possible damage? Don’t panic, but think things through.
I know, panicking is so much more exciting and newsworthy. You might even get on the TV!
But it’s still OK. Obama’s administration said so again yesterday.
With Obama, it’s difficult to tell if he’s crazy, or just too stupid to know the difference between a “foothold” and an epidemic.
Bear, haven’t you accepted the fact that Obummer is BOTH crazy and too stupid to find his face with a fork all by himself? In fact, they probably only allow him to use spoons without adult supervision…
Assuming there ARE any actual adults within shouting distance.
To be honest, Mama, I’m not sure. Very often, the crazy&stupid label seems to fit, but other times I get the impression he really is reasonably intelligent, but so dissociated from reality that he only sounds stupid.
So mostly I subscribe to the even-crazier-than-you-thought, but not stupid theory.
Have you ever gotten trapped in a discussion with a schizophrenic conspiracy nut (the real thing, not just Internet know-it-alls with fact-checking difficulties)? The sort that start pulling out individual letters and numbers from the Bible and other mysteriously selected books — characters psuedo-randomly chosen on the basis of a formula that invisible space aliens gave her — to prove that the Trilateral Commission is behind her ex-husband trying to get custody of the kids? I have; she wasn’t stupid… but she’d lost enough contact with what passes for the real world for most of us that she had trouble comprehending simple words like accident, but, or even no, because they didn’t parse out properly (i.e.- support her paranoid theories) in the alien character selector formula. Crazy, but not stupid.
(And no, there are no discernable competent adults in the White House.)
With Obama, one could say that he’s evilly smart, which requires to be apparently stupid and sometimes crazy. In order to keep the rest of us from putting up our guards. Or even to lower them.
Obama is certainly not on par with people such as Buckley, or Kissinger, or Clinton, in the intelligence department, however, neither is he dumb as a post. Primarily, he is dissociated from reality, in a very leftist way, and significantly out of his depth.
Yeah, Bear, I’ve gotten trapped in a “discussion” with that sort of person- someone whom I still believe to have been smart, but absolutely bats#!t, chewing the door frame, crazy: Fred
I didn’t say he was a genius. Just smart enough, at least to follow the directions of his overlords.
But yeah, even I wonder at the WTF stuff he pulls at time to time.
On a mound in back of the place where the old Indian School sat in Lapwai, Idaho is an unmarked grave site. It holds the remains of numerous Nez Perce who died from smallpox. As a small child my aunt Alta would wonder up there to find treasures like bottles and beads unearthed by animals. When my grandmother discovered the tiny medicine vials little Alta brought home, she panicked. Clothes were boiled and the child was scrubbed clean after stern admonition to never, ever go there again. Such was the fear that virus generated. And with good reason.
My grandmother had 12 siblings, 7 of whom died either from smallpox or diphtheria.
Ebola isn’t a laughing matter despite the fact that we are ruled by an evil doofus. Pray that it isn’t already airborne.
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/timelines/smallpox
One day when I was about 12 (1957-58) Dad came home early from work. We all went down to someplace (Health department, hospital, clinic?) and waited in line. After they checked off our names we sucked on a sugar cube. Then we celebrated by going out to dinner. It was a grand adventure.
I figured out later, of course, that it was polio vaccine, and my parents were celebrating because none of us would end up in an iron lung. Our family was lucky, only one of our older cousins caught a mild case, and had to wear a leg brace the rest of her life. Part of that was because of public health warnings, and a healthy fear of the disease.
Today, unfortunately, every disaster movie features some Top Man saying, “We can’t tell people what’s really going on. They’ll panic.” Unfortunately, I don’t think Hollywood’s wrong about how problems will be handled.
And it’s true that crazy doesn’t equal stupid. See A Beautiful Mind. As far as the president is concerned, however, I think he’s philosophically still in Chicago.
So pardon me if I’m going to be watching the health news for a while.
“So … caution, preparedness, but no panic.”
That pretty much sums up where I am on this Ebola situation. I’m keeping aware of happenings as they arise. At some point I might conceivably alter my activities, but I don’t really anticipate that for the foreseeable future. And I definitely don’t expect that .gov will be riding to my rescue, if necessary, no matter who’s in the white house. I suspect that any action the feds might take, no matter how reasonable it might appear at the time, would merely be the first step down a very slippery slope, and that concerns me more than Ebola.
Any faith we have that this won’t end up as a major disaster in Everytown, USA, is faith in government. When some alphabet soup government agencies says, ‘don’t panic, we got this cover’ — you probably can’t even guess how the situation can be politicized for Leviathan’s gain, (Fast and Furious gun smuggling to druglords to increase bloodshed for more gun restrictions… Seriously???). The amount of incompetence and downright evil cannot be overstated. Panic, heck no. Just remind yourself to whistle as you buy those garbage bags.
I am so glad I live in far away from an urban center. My brother lives in Dallas just 1/2 a mile away from the school where the “exposed” kids were attending. He is an optometrist and is looking in eyes all day…yeah, he’s a little wigged out. Should be interesting once we see it pop it up in New York and DC! I bet our “wise” leaders will take notice then. Hospital isolation wards get over burdened quickly and then what will we do…This disease will cost the tax payers millions if not billions. So keep the screening in place and let the planes drop of hundreds of people from infected areas everyday here…It seems to be working just fine. No one will lie to get on a plane to get the best medical care in the world and save their own skin. Where is the CDC? what are they doing? Don’t they have the power to restrict flights? Are they trying to build enough of a test group for new treatments currently under investigation? So many questions so few answers.
“Are they trying to build enough of a test group for new treatments currently under investigation?”
Probably. I’ve long suspected that is partially the essence of accumulated public health statistics.
Also it’s in fedgov’s favor to rustle up another health scare to keep us “terrorized” – and the media has been fast on the job to help this along.
So, let’s see… We’ve had a fairly regular dose of hyperbole from the government “health” experts and politicians over the last 20 years or so. In no particular order: HIV/AIDS, SARS, various types of flu, anthrax, hoof and mouth disease, “mad cow” and others I can’t remember just now. To various extents, we were all supposed to die of these, and our cities devastated, etc.
They all served as an excuse for more “regulation” and more intervention into everyday business and personal lives, but most folks didn’t seem to notice that, or care too much if they did. And besides, it’s “for your own good,” and “for the children.”
And yes, “Old Printer,” a number of diseases proved to be nearly genocidal to the native population in America, and around the world many times. But this was mostly because they simply had no natural immunity to the causative organism, and little or no understanding of how infections spread, as well as insufficient provision for hygiene.
A great many people in the US today have seriously compromised immunity systems, and many of those also have poor understanding of either infection or good hygiene. A great many of those people are at great risk for ebola, or other such diseases.
The answer for most of us seems pretty clear. Educate yourself, avoid both people and situations where disease takes hold, and maintain good nutrition and hygiene. Those who do so will most likely survive. Nothing most of us can do will save the others if this thing really gets established. And no government is going to fill that gap, no matter what the motive or opportunity. That’s just the nature of that beast.
Might keep this in mind….
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/27/health/ebola-hiv-drug/index.html
(CNN) — A doctor in rural Liberia inundated with Ebola patients says he’s had good results with a treatment he tried out of sheer desperation: an HIV drug.
Dr. Gorbee Logan has given the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That’s about a 13% mortality rate.
Across West Africa, the virus has killed 70% of its victims.
He also knows American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. That would involve taking a much larger patient population and giving half of them lamivudine and the other half a placebo.
“Our people are dying and you’re taking about studies?” he said. “It’s a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people’s lives.”
Colloidal silver anyone?Look at this and how it preserves milk.I think there are things we can do to help stop spread or treat diseases.We as individuals have to educate ourselves .Its up to each of us to get past the idea gov will help us,they will send us up the river in a heartbeat.
Milk test starts at 3 minute mark
MamaLiberty, my family is not Native American but your point about immunity is well taken. Unfortunately the Smallpox statistics are gruesome. From the article referenced: Some estimates indicate that 20th-century worldwide deaths from smallpox numbered more than 300 million. In this country about 30% of infected people died, usually within two weeks. Children whose immune systems weren’t fully developed had much higher mortality.
While the CDC tells us that Ebola is like HIV and transmitted through body fluids, they ignore doctors and nurses who have caught it while presumably taking every precaution. It’s difficult to get infected with HIV – usually requiring multiple direct contacts or blood transfusion. Not so with Ebola. Has it mutated and become airborne?
But say it is transmitted like HIV but faster acting – AIDS can take years to kill. AIDS deaths last year were over 1,600,000 worldwide, and about 17,000 in this country. And you can’t get it from doorknobs or gasoline pumps.
I’m told I have a talent for cynically pointing out the obvious, and will plead guilty. So, I suggest that the correct statement above, Claire, would have been “…with an illness that WE’RE TOLD IS not spread through casual contact and isn’t contagious until symptoms show.” I’ll believe all that ‘not dangerous’ stuff when Obama stops trying to tell us not to worry.
As to ‘Old Printer’s comment – back in the ’70’s I was told (we all were if your memory is that long) that Smallpox had been eradicated from the world. I however, being a cynic, insisted on getting my children inoculated because I knew it would still be hiding in some remote area somewhere. I was of course berated as some kind of cranky young nut case. And guess what? We still have Smallpox, and I’m still a cranky, cynical, nut case.
It becomes airborne when an infected person coughs.
People better start using their greatest natural asset.