Yeah, This Is Gonna Work Just Freakin’ Great
We all know now just how effective airport screening in West Africa for Ebola exposure really is. We have an example in Dallas of just how well that works.
Well, the US is going to “fix” that problem. The DC Clown Krewe running things Administration has announced that the US will now screen passengers arriving from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria Liberia at US airports.
They’ll do this at 5 US airports, to be precise – JFK, Dulles, Newark, O’Hare, and Atlanta. Because everyone knows people coming into the country from West Africa can’t possibly enter the US through other airports!
They’ll be using DHS personnel to take the individual’s temperatures with “non-contact thermometers”. Because of course, it’s impossible for someone arriving in the US to take a rather large dose of aspirin or ibuprofen to reduce a mild fever while on or before their flight.
The DHS personnel will also ask those arriving from West Africa questions, which everyone arriving will answer 100% truthfully. After all, no one trying to enter the US ever lies to Customs!
They’ll also be on the lookout for “symptoms of illness”. That will work perfectly too, as no on can possibly hide mild discomfort, fatigue, muscle pain, or a queasy stomach from someone watching them.
And if anyone shows indicators, they’ll be referred to “the appropriate public health authority”. Those who don’t show any indications of illness will be given information on “self monitoring” and asked to provide contact information. Which of course everyone arriving will to truthfully and with 100% accuracy.
Yeah, this is gonna work beautifully. We’re saved! Hallelujah! All praise to “teh Won”!
Sheesh. These idiots couldn’t figure out how to wank their crank with an instruction manual and a demonstration.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
Gee whiz,I feel safer already,… NOT!!
We. Are. So. FUCKED.
This will be the “black plague” of the 21st century if this the only way our sorry excuse of government has in action.
The flu of 1918 comes to mind. I mean, there were only a few million that died from that.
Few million, Old Trooper? Best estimates today range from 50 to 100 million dead worldwide in that pandemic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2004/fall/prologues/
How does the estimate on the Spanish flu compare with the three waves of the Black Plague? I know that entire villages in Europe were wiped out and never recovered, and mass burials of Plague victims are now being discovered.
I was being a smartass.
Next time I’ll put the sarcasm label in there.
The administration is doing something! Well, starting Saturday it is. Right now, no travelers from West Africa are having their temps taken upon arrival. Also, the five airports affected Saturday reportedly are the entry points for 96% of the travelers from West Africa to the US. So, even if this were a foolproof approach, that leaves 4% coming in w/o screening, not counting those who came by circuitous route here from West Africa. Says the CDC Director,”We believe these new measures will further protect the health of Americans, understanding that nothing we can do will get us to absolute zero risk until we end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.” See what he did there? He used absolute zero as the standard, as if there were not more that the US gov’t could do now. Hey doc, we would be happy if, at this juncture, the standard were a little lower, which it would be if travelers were barred from the US until the contagion is, as you say, ended in West Africa.
That statement by the CDC Director is, to be blunt, intentionally misleading and mendacious bullsh!t.
A mandatory 21-day arrival quarantine for all persons who have been on the African continent within the week prior to departing for the USA is feasible. So is a ban on nonessential travel to the affected region by US citizens and legal residents.
This would not reduce our risk to zero. But since Africa currently is where all but a handful of known Ebola cases in the world are located, it would reduce the risk of a US Ebola outbreak to a level not terribly much above zero.
Exactly that should have been done weeks ago.
We used to quarantine immigrants (and others) on a regular basis. The problem today is that the frikkin’ leftists have so entrenched the multi-culti PC bullsh!t into the national psyche that almost everyone (or at least those left of center) are terrified of doing what’s needed to protect our nation.
They would rather that we all die off than have someone be “GASP!” offended in any way shape or form.
But yeah. A mandatory 21 day quarantine for anyone arriving from anywhere in Africa, or who have visited Africa (any part of it) within the previous 14 days.
It would be very simple to have FEMA set up a number of their concentration camps at reasonable distances all along our national border and start putting people into them. The costs of those camps, and the care & feeding of those put into them would be far less to our nation than the course that president mom-jeans and his clown-car posse administration have set us on.
Like this?
It doesn’t even have to be 21 days if the PC crowd can’t stand that. But they would have to swallow the expense of blood testing each arriving passenger. Ebola can be detected in the blood 6 days after infection.
Hell why not put that cost of testing back on the airlines that are bringing them in. That is a win-win. The airlines would have to pass that cost on to the passengers or stop boarding high risk passengers entirely.
Any sterner measures to restrict entry to the US, by these folks, would reduce the number of voters available to vote Dem in November.
Why are they making this information public? Now all ISIS has to do is get some of their guys infected and send them to the airports we’re not monitoring. This IS going to work “just freaking great”.
For ISIS.
It doesn’t make any difference. Doing what you suggest is more effort than needed. The Director of the CDC already said that CBP screening for temp was pointless. So as others have pointed out, early symptoms of Ebola are pretty easily masked and the Director also noted that when the idea of aiport screening for symptoms was brought up.
Besides, flying to these airports doesn’t mean we don’t know where they came from. They electronic manifest follows them from origin to destination and would still identify them for additional screening on arrival at a destination airport just as it does for FIS points (where they are screened for entry by CBP and then rescreened by TSA to board a domestic flight).
CBP screening for symptoms is a political decision. The administration has ignored its own experts on the risk level and appropriate mitigations, but has to make the appearance of doing something.
And now the aircraft cleaners are on strike at LaGuardia Airport. Can’t say I blame ’em one bit.
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/26744552/plane-cleaners-strike
And I don’t blame them one bit. How soon before the rest of the airport support staff follows suit?
“ATTENTION. Flight 22 from Monrovia needs its toilets cleaned. Hello? Anybody hear me?”
I have wondered about the high earners and low earners at the Dallas hospital where Duncan was taken and ultimately died. What I wonder is why any of them would enter that place again. The low earners can get jobs elsewhere and the high earners don’t need the place. The niddle income folks? Yeah, they’re screwed.
Sheesh. These idiots couldn’t figure out how to wank their crank with an instruction manual and a demonstration.
Actually that’s what they appear to best at, wanking their cranks when they ought to be actually performing their jobs and making difficult and unpopular decisions to fulfill the duties of their offices.
I don’t need or want leaders who are my buddies and want to be liked by everyone I want a leader who will call bullshit when it’s appropriate and make difficult, unpopular decisions to promote the safety and integrity of the union. Sadly we lack that aspect of leadership on both sides of the aisle as of late and most of our leaders seem to be more interested in sympathetic tears of empathy than leading from the front with hard choices and difficult decision paths.
In our efforts to remain as inoffensive as possible to the largest number of people we’ve turned our nation from a great melting pot of strong individuals with strong ideals into a watered down pablum of like minded namby pambies who do nothing but cry like the giant twatwaffles they are all day long.
Well said.
And, let’s see, incubation time for the virus is about 20 days on average. So a person could be carrying the virus and not show any symptoms, and not be contagious at the time they land. And, they wouldn’t know they were carrying the virus.
So, they could come here, and visit for 5 days and not spread the disease. Or for 10 days and not spread the disease. Or for 30 days and spread the disease.
Ebola roulette anyone?
Average incubation (exposure to onset of symptoms) for Ebola is 10 days, Marl Lauer. 21 days is the maximum observed.
See the article I posted below:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=55711&cpage=1#comment-2047593
He says the virus is picking up the pace, rate of infection now ranges from 7 to 21 days – earlier infectiousness.
I don’t see why sending troops to assist in stopping the spread of Ebola is bad thing. The CRBN is trained for this. The B stands for biological…wouldn’t this fall under their abilities? Take off your tin foil hats.
Ebola has been running wild for months and only 3,500 people have died with 8,000 cases. If this thing was as bad as say 1918 Flu, we’d have tens of thousands dead and it would have spilled into more than 5 nations. Unless it mutates to be truly airborne – this thing is very, very controllable. The AIDs/HIV virus has roughly the same chance of mutating to become airborne as Ebola does. The fatality rate is ~70% IN AFRICA – with decent healthcare that percentage drops – significantly. All of this stacks up to – in 8 months – it will be well under control.
We’ve had numerous flu pandemics since the black plague. Hell, the 1918 flu killed between 50 and 100 million people. That’s 3-5% of the worlds population! It did that in 2 YEARS! This Ebola outbreak has been going for 5 months already, and there’s been ~3,500 deaths and cases in 5 nations. Google Flu pandemics – this Ebola outbreak is childs play, just like H1N1, swine flu and bird flu. Except not as bad, as it’s truly NOT AIRBORNE. Surviving on saliva via sneeze is not airborne.
You obviously don’t know the math describing how an epidemic with an approximately 15 day “generation” time (average time between an infection and that individual transmitting the infection to another person), a multiplication factor of 2 (each case infects 2 others), 45% mortality, no “herd immunity”, and originating from a single index case works. (Those numbers are roughly those for the current West Africa outbreak, by the way.)
I’ve modeled it (that’s pretty simple to do on a spreadsheet when you understand the math involved). The number of deaths observed to date is about what you’d expect from those conditions at 220 days (the West Africa outbreak has been going on quite a bit longer than 6 months). But the actual number of deaths is believed to be far larger, as many cases (and deaths) have gone unreported and/or unnoticed.
To a reasonable approximation, that fits an exponential curve with doubling time not to much longer than 15 days. You really don’t what to know what the numbers look like at 270, 300, and 330 days.
You do understand the concepts of “no effective vaccine” and “no effective treatment other than supportive care”, right?
There is no baseline.
Nobody knows how many people have what temperature or flu symptoms after flying 8 to 12 hours to get here from overseas. As far as I know, there is no statistically normal curve for recently deplaned international passengers.
Any number that they use is arbitrary.
I appreciate the effort, I really do, but it seems to me that they were forced to do it, they did it too fast and without proper information so it is likely to be pro forma and not actually useful.
I am probably the last guy to think of this but — almost everybody that gets pulled out of line will be black. After all, that is the normal situation for people from the affected countries.
I’m thinking that the Rev Jesse Jackson will go all sideways when he suddenly finds out that all of the
inconveniencedprofiled people are black. I’m thinking that his lawyers already wrote up the lawsuit and they are waiting for two guys to be pulled out of the crowds before filling in the blanks and filing the suit.There is a much easier and more effective way to slow the spread; don’t allow folks from West Africa into the country. Period. I noticed they didn’t list Liberia in their screening list; I wonder why?
That was my bad, Old Trooper – brain cramp on my part while writing the article. It’s now fixed. Thanks for pointing out the error.
you forgot that they will only be actually screening about 150 passengers per day. not even one entire flight worth of people
The DHS will do the screenings? Wonderful. They’ll be screening Caucasian grandmothers from Nome, Alaska, and red-haired lasses from Dublin, while ignoring black men from Monrovia and Freetown, Sierra Leone, because we mustn’t profile, doncha know?
UpNorth:
And we must not prevent then from voting the Dem ticket in November.
Aw hell. These idiots have killed us all. It heartens me that some of them will die as well. Only the rocks live forever.
After heart attack, bowel disease, and lung cancer, to be killed by political correctness. At least I won’t have to worry about alzheimer’s! Now I only hope to live to dance on Obamas grave.
Here’s a quote that makes it clear how truly alarming this disease is:
“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the people [who become infected] are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, told the group.
It’s from this article: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the-ominous-math-of-the-ebola-epidemic/ar-BB8lB50
Down the page, Michael Osterholm at U of MN says the virus is picking up the pace. And the incubation rate ranges from 7 days to 21 days, which means that within 7 days, someone exposed to it can become infectious.
You know, when the panic about the media’s misleading attempts to quell rumors about the mutated flu a few years ago, that disease was actually hard to catch and was a natural, wild variant of flu. It turned out to be similar to the Spanish flu, but quick treatment slowed and stopped it, and it hasn’t been back.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening with this critter. I could only wish this crispy critter on the really bad guys in the Middle East, may they rot in the sand.
“I don’t see why sending troops to assist in stopping the spread of Ebola is bad thing. The CRBN is trained for this. The B stands for biological…wouldn’t this fall under their abilities? Take off your tin foil hats.”
Okay, Cloudy, I took mine off but I’m keeping the liner on. Of the 3,000+ US troops, how many are CRNB specialists? There are some four mobile units with a staff of 3 or 4 each. And the remaining 3,000 troops? Oh they get about 6 hours training on hand and feet washing. They are there (or soon will be), in that shithole Liberia, for what purpose?
This is from Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/09/us-health-ebola-macedonia-suspicion-idUSKCN0HY24S20141009
Macedonia, Czech Republic, and while I was in the middle of my lovely grilled cheese sandwich at the watering hole on the highway, the news discussion was about ’14 people in Spain hospitalized with symptoms’.
Hotel Super 8? (in the article) Okay. We’ll leave the light on for you. Those people who have been staying there are now quarantined.
Yeah, tin foil hat? I don’t think so. To avoid getting caught in this mess, it’s best to be informed, not left by the wayside to wonder.
And now, a moment of silence, please:
The man who just died in Dallas flew here from Brussels. Don’t see that city on the list.
Stupid. Just like the woman who vomited on a flight so got taken away by men in suits to be tested. So now anyone who gets airsick, beware.
He also lied about his exposure to ebola.
I’m extremely tired of the whining by his family and their blaming other people for what happened to him. He brought that on himself, he knew what he’d been exposed to and he did not take the precautions he should have taken.
Some congress critters are not happy with bodaprez and his (lack of) administration in regard to the *mis*handling of this problem.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/382958/news/world/lawmakers-want-us-to-bar-entry-of-west-africans-over-ebola-fears?ref=related_stories
One can only hope that common sense will outweigh the boatload of pc crap which threatens to sink us all.
Ah, capitalism. It’s a wonderful thing. The profit motive has spurred new and better ways of getting things done. And so it is with developments in medicine. Comes today a story out of Maryland regarding the testing of an Ebola vaccine in Mali. Work on the vaccine was stalled b/c there was no money in it–until now. Here’s the link to the Baltimore Sun newspaper story:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-hs-um-ebola-vaccine-trial-20141009,0,5979941.story