Obama and Ebola

There has been a continuing thread of "science versus politicians" over how to handle the threat from Ebola. The big question is how far can we trust the "scientists".

The debate is over closing the border to people who have traveled in countries where the disease is epidemic and how we should treat people who have been exposed. The experts say that Ebola is very difficult to catch and people who are not exhibiting symptoms are not contagious. They have also said the closing the border would make the problem worse. The preferred response is to identify people who are infected then try to identify everyone they came in contact with while they were communicable.

Closing the border is a huge point of contention. While our scientists say that they know best, other countries such as Great Britain have closed their borders. Are these countries ignoring their scientists? The US policy seems counter-intuitive.

Identifying infections and people who were exposed only works as long as we have a tiny number of cases. There are only 19 beds certified for Ebola in the entire nation.

We are told that Ebola is very difficult to catch but that ignores the fact that it is an epidemic. Medical staff following isolation protocols have been infected.

The insistence that there are no symptoms until the temperature reaches 100.3 is strange. One infected nurse was cleared to travel because her temperature at the time was below that magic threshold. Apparently a victim's temperature does not rise to the magic number instantly.

There are other reasons to be concerned. President Obama values partisan loyalty over competence. That has led to wide-spread failures across his administration,  If top officials didn't know that the web site for Obamacare, the centerpiece of the Obama administration, was inoperative at launch then do they know what is happening in other areas?

Currently the nation has no Surgeon General. That's because Obama's nominee's main qualifications were that he was the head of Physicians for Obama and that he planned on using the office to lobby for anti-gun legislation. His Ebola czar is a lawyer with no medical expertise.

There is also reason to distrust the CDC itself. In 2009, a version of the flu called H1N1 seemed more dangerous than most and there were shortages of vaccines. The CDC advised people to sneeze into their elbow instead of their hand and to use hand cleanser. They also stated that it was more dangerous to younger people and older people seemed to have a natural immunity so seniors could skip vaccines.

The advice about not sneezing into your hand was valid Hand sanitizers are anti-bacterial and have no effect on viruses like H1N1. Worst, the virus had the same mortality rate among seniors as other strains of the flu. The claim that seniors had a natural immunity was a bit of social engineering. The CDC figured that kids in schools were at a greater threat of catching H1N1. With the vaccine in short supply, they told some white lies in order to get the vaccines where they believed it would do the most good.

So, how much of what we are being told includes white lies? There is no way for us to know.  

The Perverse Logic of Indigenous People's Day

The second Monday in October is Columbus Day, celebrating the date that Columbus sighted land and starting the chain of events that led to the modern world. This year Seattle joined Minneapolis, and South Dakota in celebrating Indigenous People's Day (or American Indian Day in South Dakota). These people see Columbus as a conqueror and the indians as a vanquished race.

Keep in mind that all Columbus never touched the mainland in North America and none of these places are proposing any sort of reparations to the Indians, let alone giving the land back. The whole thing is an exercise in political correctness, denouncing previous generation of Americans and patting themselves on their smug backs through a meaningless gesture.

The people who celebrate Columbus Day are celebrating the triumph of American culture. We're here and we're proud of it.

The Obama Doctrine Meets Reality

Officially the current motto of the Obama administration's foreign policy is "Don't do stupid shit."

The real policy, as outlined in the president's West Point speech, is "It doesn't matter what happens in the world as long as it doesn't affect Americans." While this sounds fairly harmless, it has proved to be disastrous.

The Ebola outbreak is an example. The US was slow to react because it was only killing foreigners. The US government didn't step up its reaction until an American aid worker was infected. The problem here is that plagues can't be contained. The best way to stop Ebola in the US is to stop it in Africa. This means putting US personnel at risk, helping to treat African victims but if it continues to spread then it will come here and start killing American civilians.

Syria is another example. When the civil war there started, outsiders urged Obama to get involved by finding non-Islamic rebels and arming them. Obama did virtually nothing at the casualties mounted. Even when Syria crossed his red line and used WMDs, he faltered. It is obvious that he didn't want to get involved as long as the conflict only involved foreigners killing each others. Hundreds of thousands dead and over a million displaced was not enough to sway Obama.

This continued as the war spilled over into Iraq and the gains made under the Bush administration were lost. Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a Junior Varsity team despite intelligence briefings that said they were very dangerous to the US. Reports of mass slaughter of conquered men and enslavement of women was insufficient to convince Obama to do anything against the Islamic State.

Obama didn't change his mind until the IS began beheading Americans. By that point it was too little, too late. Air strikes are not enough and the President is still unwilling to take sides in Syria.

The result of Obama's earlier inaction is that Ebola is spreading with no end in sight and the Islamic State has conquered a third of Iraq with no sign of slowing.

The Misstatements of Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is famous. He has a TV show. He writes books. He gives speeches on science. The problem, as reported in the Federalist, is that he gets some things wrong. Four specific errors have been noted. So far I have not seen anyone actually analyze these errors and put them into perspective so I'll do it.

Error #1 - the drugs and the coins

According to Tyson, he was on jury duty and had to explain to a judge that what sounded like a large amount of drugs was comparable to the weight of a coin. The amount of the drugs and the comparable coin vary from one telling to another.

This one is harmless.

Error #2 - 50% of students are below average.

Tyson quotes a newspaper headline as saying that 50% of the students are below average.

On the face of it, Tyson has a point. Assuming that the average is close to the mean, then you would expect half the students to be above that point and half to be below it. The problem is that this is a bad assumption when talking about students. "Average" for students usually means ones who earn a C. Below average means students earning a D or F. Any school district where half the students are earning a D or F has a problem.

Unless Tyson can produce the article and show that in the context, "average" means "mean" rather than "C" he should stop using this one.

Error #3 - a Congress member doing a 360 degree turn

Tyson says that a member of Congress said, "I've done a 360 degree turn on this." Since that's a full circle, this was probably a misstatement for a 180 degree turn.

Tyson does not name the member of Congress who said this. Instead he uses the quote to belittle all current and past members of Congress. Given that the quote is years old and Congress has a lot of turn-over, he's tarring hundreds of people with this quote. Worse, the person who said it probably knows the difference and misspoke (as President Obama did when he implied that there are more than 50 states).

This is a cheap shot and Tyson should stop using this one.

Error #4 - The same god who named the stars...

This is the most troubling error. When giving the eulogy for the astronauts who died on the space shuttle Columbia, President Bush said, "The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today."

Tyson wanted to use this as a springboard for talking about the fact that 2/3s of the stars have Arabic names because of the contributions of Arabic astronomers. The problem is that Tyson also wanted to belittle President Bush so he misrepresented the quote. He said that it was given right after 9/11/2001 and meant to divide "us" and "them". He also asserted that the Old Testament god is the same god as Allah, an assertion that would get him executed in many Muslim countries.

The fact is that Bush went to lengths to say the exact opposite. The memorial service that Tyson attributed the quote to was very inclusive. Bush made it clear that we were not at war with Islam, just with a small, violent subset that does not represent the true version.

Tyson brushes this off as a minor issue but it isn't. It is a deliberate misrepresentation of Bush that Tyson gives in order to make himself look smarter. Listen to the clip here. Tyson spends four minutes running down Bush and making himself look smarter.

This is not a simple error. This is a deliberate falsehood and Tyson should apologize for ever using it.

All of these fit a pattern. They are meant to show that Tyson is smarter than anyone else - judges, reporters, members of Congress, or the President and, by extension, people who listen to Tyson are also smarter because he has shared his vast knowledge with them.