Fighting Ebola
Fox News reports that there are boots on the ground in Africa so the US military can shift their fight to battling the Ebola virus;
The Wall Street Journal reports that troops from the Navy’s 133rd Mobile Construction Battalion began building the first of a dozen planned hospitals in a field outside the main airport in Liberia, one of three countries along with Sierra Leone and Guinea that has been hit the hardest by the epidemic.
As of September 23, the Journal says 6,574 cases had been reported in five West African countries — Senegal and Nigeria are the other two — with 3,091 deaths reported. Those official numbers represent a twofold increase in both categories from August, and global health officials have repeatedly stated their belief that the number of cases has been underreported by a factor of three or four. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that the number of cases would skyrocket to 1.4 million without international aid.
There’s one of our commenters over on Facebook that keeps telling me that I shouldn’t oppose this particular operation because of the danger the virus presents to the world’s health. Well, I’m wondering why he isn’t over there fighting the disease. I have a problem with doing stuff for superstitious people who think that the folks who have come to help are the vectors of the virus.
They kill folks trying to help them, they raid hospitals and steal the infected bedding and clothes and spread the virus even more. So all of these trained medical professionals are so concerned about Ebola, from behind their desks in Atlanta far from the people who need their expertise. Instead we send GI Joes and Janes who don’t have a choice – the folks who are already saving the world in other shitholes around the planet.
So, if you people think this is such an important operation that deserves our attention, put on your contamination-protective suit and dig in next to the troops. It’s just my opinion that there are better-trained medical people than our troops who can do the job equally-well who are sitting safely in their cushy offices cheering for sending troops over there – and more than likely, they don’t think the troops should get an adequate benefit package for wading into that morass of disease and disrepair.
Category: Military issues
Yep. As I suggested previously, let the do-gooders have at it, including college students of military age who think this is great. I would have no problem if tuition remission were authorized for them at an appropriate rate, with a three-month minimum for a semester of tuition.
As for our military’s battle with this contagion, is their a French strain of this virus? (yeah, you can complete my thought.)
There, their, they’re. Got me.
Jonn, Thank you and well said. I’ll leave your comments to stand since I don’t want to go into a blood pressure spike before I go see the doctor in a while.
I am taking a few college courses courtesy of the Post 9/11 GI Bill and I may use this whole Ebola episode as support for my paper defending some of Darwin’s theories.
I think it was RangerUp that had shirts:
“We need to do something about Syria”
“We need to do something about Iraq”
“We need to do something about Libya”
“We need to do something about XYZ”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Sure it’s just a pronoun, but it means something to me when I’m part of that “we” that they keep insisting “needs to do something”
I need this shirt in my life.
So who is Dear Reader going to blame this time when our folks start coming home in body bags?
This is really cutting into his golf game.
Yeah, Seabees have the training to prevent Ebola…/sarc
When they come back, if anyone of them has been exposed, they are, all or mostly, going to have to be quarantined for a month or two, yes?
Either way, people will be screaming like banshees.
Yeah, it should be pretty obvious at this point that the Army really has no place trying to manage Ebola.
They can do humanitarian crisis stuff, but they’re not equipped or meant to manage a deadly, rampant infection.
I’d use them to enforce quarantine and shoot anything trying to leave without screening, and that’s about it.
Leave the actual treatment to the doctors, not the infantry.
What bothers me about all this is the deliberate and unnecessary vulnerability of our military personnel.
The news media uses the term, “Soldiers”, but the photograph shows only smiling Air Force female nurses, and it’s Navy Seabees doing the construction work.
Nothing has been said about whether our troops will be armed and authorized to engage and/or react to potential immediate threats from local hostile forces.
Sounds like a jerb for our millions of illegals. I didn’t realize the US military was Obama’s personal physical labor force.
What a joke.
If only Ebola was the worst problem W.Africa had to deal with. The dysfunction & chaos makes Central America look like Kansas in comparison.
I’ve nothing to add, except to nominate this young woman to teach the locals how to care for patients.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/health/ebola-fatu-family/index.html?
And after that, send her to college.
Speaking of Green on Blue attacks, it was 2 years ago today that SFC Daniel Metcalf and DOD Civilian Kevin O’Rourke were murdered. RIP sirs. You will not be forgotten.
Thank you for the reminder.
Well, the military will not be doing the heavy lifting on treatment, just building the infrastructure needed in an austere expeditionary environment. Still plenty of room for the civilian care providers around the world to shoulder the majority of the burden.