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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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It's impossible to make up the hysteria of the right, and their eagerness to avoid any personal accountability while blaming Obama--or venting their prejudices. There are so many opportunities for irony--lost on the right who fail to examine facts as well as their own prejudices. First, the right, and particularly the John Bircher's who have re-emerged, have long fought both foreign aid and participation in the United Nations. Of course, according to this article, it was failures by the WHO that allowed Ebola to begin to spiral out of containment in Africa. Second, the righties who have seen no reason for government any larger than what you can drown in the bathtub, now see that perhaps government needs to organize containment effort--and lacks capacity because of right wing funding cuts. I'll leave you to research what Ryan and those even farther to the right have proposed to cut in the way of national and international health funding. Third, the right has avoided any mention of the mistakes made in Texas--hotbed of resistance to any type of national health care--as they rushed to send a patient home without reviewing his chart or where he had begun. Finally, I can't help noticing that the WHO is mrgybe's go-to supporter of his campaign to use DDT and blame enviros for all things malarial. Perhaps they have some institutional weaknesses?
| Quote: | MARIA CHENG AND ADAM GELLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 17, 2014 | Updated: October 18, 2014 8:39am
LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization bungled efforts to halt the spread of Ebola in West Africa, an internal report revealed Friday, as President Barack Obama named a trusted political adviser to take control of America's frenzied response to the epidemic.
The stepped-up scrutiny of the international response came as U.S. officials rushed to cut off potential routes of infection from three cases in Texas, reaching a cruise ship in the Caribbean and multiple domestic airline flights. Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration debated the value of restricting travelers from entering the U.S. from countries where the outbreak began, without a resolution.
But with Secretary of State John Kerry renewing pleas for a "collective, global response" to a disease that has already killed more than 4,500 people in Africa, the WHO draft report pointed to serious errors by an agency designated as the international community's leader in coordinating response to outbreaks of disease.
The document — a timeline of the outbreak — found that WHO, an arm of the United Nations, missed chances to prevent Ebola from spreading soon after it was first diagnosed in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea last spring, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information. Its own experts failed to grasp that traditional infectious disease containment methods wouldn't work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems, the report found.
"Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall," WHO said in the report, obtained by The Associated Press. "A perfect storm was brewing, ready to burst open in full force."
The agency's own bureaucracy was part of the problem, the report found. It pointed out that the heads of its country offices in Africa are "politically motivated appointments" made by the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Luis Sambo, who does not answer to the agency's chief in Geneva, Dr. Margaret Chan.
After WHO declared Ebola an international health emergency in August, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stepped in and had the United Nations take overall responsibility for fighting and eliminating the virus, among other things setting up an emergency response mission based in Ghana.
Dr. Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, agreed that WHO acted far too slowly.
"It's the regional office in Africa that's the front line," said Piot, interviewed at his office in London. "And they didn't do anything. That office is really not competent."
WHO declined to comment on the document, which was not issued publicly, and said that Chan would be unavailable for an interview with the AP. She did tell Bloomberg News that she "was not fully informed of the evolution of the outbreak. We responded, but our response may not have matched the scale of the outbreak and the complexity of the outbreak."
Meanwhile, Obama moved to step up the U.S. response to the disease, naming Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, as the administration's point man on Ebola.
Klain is a longtime Democratic operative who also served as a top aide to Vice President Al Gore. He does not have any medical or public health expertise. But the White House said he would serve as "Ebola response coordinator," suggesting his key role will be to synchronize the actions of many government agencies in combatting the disease.
"This is much broader than a medical response," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, citing Klain's experience in the private as well as public sector and his relationships with Congress.
"All of that means he is the right person for the job, and the right person to make sure we are integrating the interagency response to this significant challenge," he said.
Republican lawmakers continued pushing the administration Friday to consider restricting travel to the U.S. from the three Ebola-stricken West African countries. But despite Obama's statement Thursday that he was not "philosophically opposed" to such a ban, Earnest affirmed the White House's resistance to such a move.
Republican Mike Leavitt, a former health secretary under President George W. Bush, said Friday that he sees "lots of problems" with such a ban. While it may seem like a good idea, Bush administration officials who considered it to contain bird flu concluded that it would not work, while raising a host of difficult questions about who would be allowed to travel.
Other nations have taken steps to prevent travelers from the affected areas from crossing their borders. The Central American nation of Belize announced that it would immediately stop issuing visas to people from West African countries where Ebola had spread.
U.S. officials continued their efforts to contain the fallout from the nation's first reported case of Ebola, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian traveler who died last week at a Dallas hospital. To augment federal resources available in Dallas, the Obama administration said it was supporting or designating a White House liaison as well as a coordinator from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be stationed in the city.
Officials said they were working to remove a hospital worker — who had handled an Ebola lab specimen — from a Caribbean cruise ship, although she had gone 19 days without showing any sign of the infection. The Carnival Cruise Lines ship was headed back to its home port of Galveston, Texas, on Friday after failing to get clearance to dock in Cozumel, Mexico, and officials in Belize would not allow the woman to leave the ship.
The lab worker and her spouse were in isolation and she is "not deemed to be a risk to any guests or crew," a cruise line spokeswoman said.
Doctors at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland said that a Dallas nurse, Nina Pham, brought there for Ebola treatment was very tired but resting comfortably Friday in fair condition.
"We fully intend to have this patient walk out of this hospital," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said.
Another nurse to contract Ebola, Amber Vinson, was being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
Her uncle and family spokesman, Lawrence Vinson, said in a statement Thursday night that she was stable.
"She followed all of the protocols necessary when treating a patient in Dallas, and right now, she's trusting in her doctors and nurses as she is now the patient," he said.
His statement was released by Vinson's alma mater, Kent State University, where three of her relatives work. The school said those employees, who have been asked to remain off campus for three weeks, work in administrative areas and have little contact with students.
Concerns persisted about people who might have been in contact with her during a recent trip between Texas and Ohio. Police said Vinson stayed at the home of her mother and stepfather in Tallmadge, northeast of Akron, and the home has been cordoned off with yellow tape. Eight individuals in northeast Ohio were under quarantine, health officials said.
Frontier Airlines said it would contact passengers on seven flights, including two that carried Vinson and others afterward that used the same plane.
Despite the stepped up attention to disease, though, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim warned Friday that officials in many countries were focused too much on their own borders.
"I still don't think that the world has understood what the possible downside risk is not just to the west African economy but to the global economy. And we are still losing the battle," he said.
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9300
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| GURGLETROUSERS wrote: | I would have thought it obvious that IF borders were temporarily closed to those from countries experiencing a spreading outbreak of an incurable disease, those who visit such a country would, on return, immediately be quarantined for the necessary period of possible incubation of that disease, before being given the all clear. Such (isolation/quarantine) has happened already to those few already infected.
We (Britain) have always used the quarantine system for our doggy friends (far more important than mere human beings in most owners eyes) to keep us free of rabies. (Though happily, an offshoot of that disease which results in verbal gibberish and afflicts the loony left, can safely be ignored by the majority.) |
No doubt our forefathers had it right. They quarantined everyone who was suspicious. We have lost our minds here. TB, Enterovirus, chicken pox, foot and mouth, scabies, Ebola and many others have been brought here by the progressives via open borders. I think some common sense would be in order about now.
PS, quarantine costs should be borne by the traveler, not increased government. |
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uwindsurf
Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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| stevenbard wrote: | | GURGLETROUSERS wrote: | I would have thought it obvious that IF borders were temporarily closed to those from countries experiencing a spreading outbreak of an incurable disease, those who visit such a country would, on return, immediately be quarantined for the necessary period of possible incubation of that disease, before being given the all clear. Such (isolation/quarantine) has happened already to those few already infected.
We (Britain) have always used the quarantine system for our doggy friends (far more important than mere human beings in most owners eyes) to keep us free of rabies. (Though happily, an offshoot of that disease which results in verbal gibberish and afflicts the loony left, can safely be ignored by the majority.) |
No doubt our forefathers had it right. They quarantined everyone who was suspicious. We have lost our minds here. TB, Enterovirus, chicken pox, foot and mouth, scabies, Ebola and many others have been brought here by the progressives via open borders. I think some common sense would be in order about now.
PS, quarantine costs should be borne by the traveler, not increased government. |
Here is a little reading for you Bard: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852098/vanderhook2.html?sequence=4 |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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Bard--you're just whacky. Paul Ryan's budget would have cut NIH spending from over 31 billion in 2010 to under $27 billion by this fiscal year. You guys were all over that. The consequences?
| Quote: | Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has "slowed down" research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.
"NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, 'Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'" Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. "Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready."
It's not just the production of a vaccine that has been hampered by money shortfalls. Collins also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola "were on a slower track than would've been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory."
"We would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference," he said. |
But you haters keep avoiding responsibility, any understanding of science, and trying to blame everything on Obama and liberals. You are dead wrong. |
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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It never occurred to me that Ebola was completely Obamas fault.
Those who hold that idea won't be very effective in the fight against the disease so perhaps we should quarantine them to keep them out of the way.
They can entertain themselves by blaming their quarantine on Obama.
When the outbreak is over they have already agreed that easing the epidemic won't be to Os credit. |
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pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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| keycocker wrote: | | It never occurred to me that Ebola was completely Obamas fault. |
Oh, yes, everything about Ebola is very much Obama's fault.
And my neighbor had a flat tire last week -- picked up a nail somewhere.
That, too, is clearly Obama's fault.
Because the economy is improving and construction work is on the upswing, construction workers are driving everywhere. A few nails must have bounced off the back of a truck. Obama's responsible for the improved economy and the work and workers, hence responsible for the nails and the flat tires.
However, Bush gets credit for planning all the marvelous and welcome economic initiatives while Obama is blamed for the nails in the road.
See how it works?
Ebola's here because we have a commie Muslim Nazi illegal socialist Kenyan golf pro who secretly hates America who never attended college and faked his birth certificate and college transcripts. And, of course, he has many too many czars, because "czars" are Russian, and he refuses to appoint an Ebola Czar.
Mr. G, Mr. B, NW, Mikey -- they have all the details on this conspiracy.
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9300
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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You can characterize it any way you want, but it's hard to argue that conservatives did not want tighter border restrictions and liberals have allowed the borders to remain open. Sadly open to anyone who doesn't want to follow the rules, yet restricted to those who do.
Our founders according to youws's post have been quarantining new arrivals since 1647. And....
Under Obama median income has fallen, and average household income fallen, mostly due to open borders, free trade, and poor economic policies. You can characterize the looney right as being at fault, but this next election should tell the whole story.
Why has this president delayed so many important items on his agenda until after the election? |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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Some study -- I didn't catch the source -- concluded that, yes, hard-working and honest immigrants to the U.S. contribute enough to the economy so that the public recovers its investment in them ... in 38 years.
That's the honest and hard-working ones.
Got a better figure? Be my guest. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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The claims of the ignorant, most lately include:
| Quote: | | liberals have allowed the borders to remain open |
That is happy horseshit. I already showed you how much funding to the Border service has increased while Obama has been President, and how the existing legal framework is the result of Reagan's proposals. I then asked you how much money you thought would be needed to complete the job to your satisfaction. You are actually clueless, don't bother to check facts, and just want something to hate Obama with. Facts be damned. |
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J64TWB
Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 1685
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Gas at $2.95 is Obama's fault. Corporate profits at 5% is Obama's fault. Zero deaths from ebola is Obama's fault. 5368 gun deaths in last 8 weeks is Obamas fault. Just the facts ma'am. |
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