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.