While you’re worrying senselessly about getting the Ebola virus, your kids are facing much more serious threats, and I don’t see the media demanding that the government do better than giving them tents and directions to “a thick patch of woods outside the town limits where they won’t be rousted by the police.”
The biggest epidemic in the country is not Ebola, and our politicians are not being asked about it.
OT, but when I read that article you linked and saw the name Rittenhouse, my mind immediately flashed back to Jim Capozzola and his blog Rittenhouse Review. In my early days surfing blogs, his was one that I hit regularly. Hard to believe he has been gone over 7 years.
Always considered Capozzola the most elegant writer among the bloggers.
“…our politicians are not being asked about it.”
Which is probably for the best given how they have historically chosen to deal with the problem.
I feel that we are just at the very beginning of an awakening to sane drug policy. Let’s get the public educated to a level where they can make informed demands on their law makers.
But if they paid attention to these other diseases that were here before OBAMA. Then they could not blame it on President Obama!!! That just would not work!
When I first saw this, my first response was to say that the biggest epidemic in the country is our politicians themselves.
After reading the article, I FB’d it to my friends with the context (1) blowback from the war in Afghanistan just like cocaine was the blowback from Iran/Contra and (2) the coming need for detox and counseling infrastructure.
And I was struck by the fact that the most expensive thing that government in that area was doing was using police to roust them.
There was a recent article arguing that alcoholism, mental illness, drug addiction, and homelessness are not and should not be crimes. And we should not be spending $40,000 a year incarcerating people without dealing with these issues year after year after year when $40,000 a year per person for one year or two years could deal with the actual issue through providing jobs, homes, and transitions.
Yes, dare we ask where all this cheap heroin is coming from?
O/T, but Mitch has deployed his slave-catching coons. I’m doing what I can to mute them…
That link is now dead. I hope you screen-capped it while it was working.
It’s in my TL, but here’s the text:
Am I missing something at the beginning? Is Holt trying to get her to write in Yarmuth, as a way of lessening Grimes’s votes? Somehow I don’t think Holt will convince many people.
Holt was talking bad about Grimes (Senate) and Yarmuth (House).
“I’d much prefer a weak voice for me than a strong voice against me.” I like that. I may use it for my sig.
Is anyone on here the least impressed by Rand Paul. Quite a challenge for a little l libertarian to “package” his ideas to young, bisexual pot smokers and old, evil white business guys.
Progressives, Libertarians outflank you on two of the three legs of evil “Conservatism”…y’all just hate “rich folk”…
Didn’t like him much till now…too smart for his own good…but he’s getting skills now
You have Arthur Gilroy in your corner.
OT:
Booman:
Are you going to address #PumpkinFest ?
On the other hand, the circumstances of the first Ebola death does say something about America’s dysfunctional healthcare system:
Ebola didn’t have to kill my uncle, Thomas Eric Duncan Chicago Tribune
Presbyterian workers wore no hazmat suits for two days while treating Ebola patient | Dallas Morning News
A class-segregationist privatized healthcare system is just perfect for a contagious disease. It’s a little miracle that CDC managed to prevent a major outbreak of some pathogen until now.
Does Dallas Health Resources-Presbyterian-Dallas even have hazmat suits and proper isolation facilities for ebola or other highly infectious diseases. Probably not.
But letting people who were exposed to an ebola patient go on trips around the country is a huge blunder in PR if not in practice.
But the misdiagnosis on Duncan’s first trip to the ER was the error that probably created the others.
All of which is attibutable to (1) money-oriented health care administration; (2) the “it can’t happen here syndrome”; (3) seduction of triage risk analysis that dismisses infrequent or unlikely possibilities.
Your conclusion in your last paragraph is right on target.
I suspect if there is an honest analysis, we have missed a major outbreak because of the actions in travel screening and the quality of local in-country health care infrastructure when it comes to infectious disease and public health. USians have not learned that the most expensive health care is not the “best health care system in the world”.
“Does Dallas Health Resources-Presbyterian-Dallas even have hazmat suits and proper isolation facilities for ebola or other highly infectious diseases. Probably not.”
IMHO, part of the reason why people are freaking out about Ebola is that too many are confusing (or speaking without clarity about) virulence on one hand and ease of transmission on the other. Ebola is often deadly, but it is not highly infectious. It’s hard to catch Ebola.
Obama’s Weekly Address:
There’s no doubt that the Dallas hospital messed up, likely due to their management and systems. But even with the errors, it’s highly unlikely that the two nurses who did get infected infected anyone else. This episode should wind down over the next few days, and that should be the end of it (at least until the next importation occurs).
The real tragedy about Ebola is that the WHO and similar international health organizations let it spin out of control and were so slow to treat it seriously in west Africa. MSF has been screaming about it since the spring (if not earlier)…
On heroin, I don’t know why it’s been below the radar so long. I guess the Republicans haven’t found a way to beat Obama over the head about it – that seems to be the only way something becomes part of the national news… “Cui bono?” might be a good question to ask for guidance…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
what little I’ve seen on teevee, ppl are/ were very confused about transmission and virulence.
WHO called for nations to fund its ebola response six months ago. To date, it has received only 25% of what it needs. The Republicans in Congress and some weak-kneed Democrats are responsible for the US’s failure to pony up–because “deficits”. WHO is getting the rap for the central bankers who have pushed austerity policies.
Heroin addiction in the boonies is still under the radar. The article BooMan put up is from a local newspaper serving southern Delaware. And the treatment options there (tents) are so striking for how it illustrates how austerity and police overemphasis in solving every problem creates stupid and cruel alternatives.
WHO has also admitted that 1) it didn’t take the early MSF reports seriously enough and 2) the Africa operation that doesn’t report to Chan is staffed with incompetent political cronies. So, it’s not just a matter of funding.
Why the fuck did this thread prove my point so goddamn effectively?
Because EVD is easy compared to homeless, young Americans. The former has a defined, single cause and the latter is complex, particularly in the case of homeless, heroin addicts. A predictable outcome of our war in Afghanistan given our experience with wars in Indochina and Central America.
WHO’s slow reaction was in no small part due to recent major cutbacks. Bt West Africa was not all negative:
How Did Nigeria Quash Its Ebola Outbreak So Quickly? – Scientific American
The CDC report that the SA article is partially based on and Dr. Igonoh’s first hand story of being infected by Sawyer and surviving are also worth reading.
Oh sure. Because everybody that shows up in an ER gets promptly and correctly diagnosed and gets treated and lives. And never infects any health workers that come in contact with the patient. I’m really sick of this meme.
When Patrick Sawyer showed up in a hospital in Lagos, at a far more advanced stage of Ebola than Duncan was even on the his second ER visit, it took two days before the doctors recognized that he could have EVD. As he’d reached a more virulent stage of Ebola upon admittance (and like Duncan not only didn’t suggest that it could be Ebola but denied any such possibility), he infected nine health workers. Of those nine, two doctors, two nurses, and one hospital maid died. Like Dallas and the US, Lagos and Nigeria hadn’t seen an undiagnosed EVD victim before Sawyer showed up. And Nigeria is a hell of a lot closer to the countries experiencing an Ebola epidemic than the US is.
he said he’d been in Liberia. they shouldn’t have sent him home with “take two asperin and call me in the morning”. that’s elementary and just stupid, doesn’t matter what resources the hospital has/had
No, he didn’t. On his first ER visit, he said, “Africa,” (which is a really big continent) and denied any contact with anyone that had been ill. Liberia was added on further questioning when he was admitted to the hospital on 7/28 and when a physician contemplated Ebola as a possibility, Duncan and his “family” denied any such possibility. The physician nevertheless went ahead with testing for Ebola.
oh, I didn’t know Africa was big. last time I saw it, it was sizable, but might have become smaller with rising sea level. seriously, I read that he said Liberia. my bad.
.
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/17/6988377/threats-to-americans-ranked-ebola-isis-russia-furniture
There ya go worried about EBOLA, better to worry about your furniture and the threat it has to your health.