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© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Obama says U.S. can't seal itself off in Ebola fight
By JIM KUHNHENN WASHINGTON©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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MarkG
Contradictory of Obama the require the US military serving to assist in the Ebola region into quarantine. What is he thinking? Meanwhile Kaci Hickox is violating her state requested self quarantine. Not to mention the "Ebola Czar" has not been seen, heard, or issued ANYTHING!
What comedy under this administration!
Wolfpack
Obama must think the public are idiots. Obviously if there actually were a travel ban then no, it is not true that there would be cases in the US. But a travel ban would not be necessary if a common sense three week quarantine were implemented instead. Yes, it is an inconvenience but it's better than having more nurses become infected. The science says that the incubation period is at least 21 days. As a public health matter, follow the science and take the precautions to protect the public.
What? By not following the science and respecting the incubation period how is that looking after 'our own public health and safety?'. Are health care workers really that unwilling to help out given that they are already willingly risking their lives? Of course not. Obama's nonsensical thinking is best illustrated by the fact that his own armed forces are doing the rational thing by adhering to a mandatory 21 quarantine for all troops returning from West Africa. The military personnel do not even purposely have contact with Ebola victims as do the medical personnel.
This is such an easy and uncontroversial decision yet Obama is ignoring the science and needlessly exposing domestic health care workers and the public to a contagious disease with a 70% mortality rate. President Obama has lost touch with reality and is himself quarantined in his own White House bubble.
MarkG
@ Bass4funk-
Fairly obvious. How else can you explain the decisions in the past 6 years. They are just becoming more evident.
Ebola seems to be easily treated if caught early as we see so far in the US. Thats not to say it's easy or inexpensive. The cost of the extra measures alone needed to treat a single case must be fairly steep. Yet, with a stressed economy Obama decides to disregard common sense. When multiple potential persons in contact with a confirmed case the cost skyrockets! Yet we have no worries.
The Wall Street Journal reports due to race. Interesting.
Australia institutes a ban- Bravo Australia.
chikv
That would mean vigilance, not quarantine. IF symptoms appear then yes, science recommends quarantine.
Not really, not following irrational and unnecessary measures brought forward by ignorance is still perfectly compatible with looking out for the public heath and safety.
Imagine that suddenly everybody says that if you have read any Ebola news on a computer you have to be quarantined because it is well know that computers can be infected by viruses. That is the feeling that every health worker that comes back from Africa gets when knows that people are asking for quarantine of everybody even in the absence of any symptom. They have been days, weeks or even months working directly with the disease and know perfectly well how it is transmitted and how it is not. Quarantines put in order based on fear and imaginary characteristics of the disease are not something that anybody that is well informed will accept easily.
Actually, according to the science and recommendations of all international experts the military quarantine is the irrational one. Yes, it is a very popular superstition but still only a superstition. You just have to check what the WHO recommends and easily you will see who is being irrational.
nath
From the wingers we hear, "Sounds like a challenge to me!!!"
WilliB
chickv:
So, did you talk to "all international experts"`? Anyway, the issue here is that Obamas own military disagrees with the Potus. And top it off, they quarantine them in Italy, where there already protests against this. Just brilliant...
sangetsu03
The first step to stopping an epidemic is to isolate the people who are affected, otherwise known as "sealing them off." This is the most effective way to limit the spread of the disease, and this has been understood since the middle ages. Obama should know better than to say anything other than what is written by his speechwriters, and shown on his teleprompter.
kazetsukai
Is Mr. Obama really that ignorant, or is he acting that way?
If one looks at everything he has done and especially what he has NOT done, he has not cared for nor helped USA or any of its allies including Japan, our host country. Everything he has done appears to be a pretense. Everything he has done or appears to have accomplished has been contrary to what was said or promised. Look at the results and not at the rhetoric and excuses using others as scapegoats.
In the final analysis, if one looks at the world picture, every action and inaction has only benefitted the Islamists. Even this current ISIS situation and Ebola crisis, it is his inaction that tells the story. To begin with, I still question why he got the Nobel Prize, without any accomplishment what so ever. And, he made trips only to the Muslim countries. Why?
He still cannot work with the US Congress. The most dangerius thing is that he has put some dangerous people as Department Heads of all key department within the USA, that interpret the laws and actually controls the effect of those laws by making policies and procedures. So therefore, the Ebola solution only hurts the USA. He is using the situation for some design of his own and it is not for the people of USA.
chikv
So, you think that the only possible way to know what the international experts on public health, communicable diseases and so on think should be done about Ebola is to talk personally with them? and put that comment in an INTERNET NEWSPAPER?
That have absolutely no importance, the reason they disagree is not based on reality or science but fear and ignorance, so they would still be in the wrong. I would not go to a doctor (does not matter how important) for advice on how to fight a war, neither will consult with a military officer about how to control infectious diseases, especially when he contradicts the real specialists.
ToshiYori
All of the troops are volunteers, i.e., they chose to voluntarily serve in the US military.
CraigHicks
Because Hickox has been in contact with terminally ill Ebola patients, there is still a chance she could get sick. If she gets sick it is going to be necessary to "trace" all her contacts in the one day or so window before a confirmed temperature reading - even if it is overkill that is how it is done, so far. Contact tracing is an expensive, laborious, and error prone task. Therefore, it is desirable to keep the number of contacts as low as possible.
(We also have to consider the chance that she could get sick without a warning temperature, the possibility of which has been reported by the WHO. (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-1012-ebola-fever-20141012-story.html#page=1)).
The total number of volunteers returned to the US so far is about 50. Given the number is so few, it would be easy enough to set up a temporary quarantine center with plenty of surrounding space for exercise somewhere in the US. Perhaps Obama could even offer Camp David for the purpose. Leaving the Ebola volunteers to the masses is just bound to create problems - you can argue until you are blue in the face but it won't help - and it could make things much worse, e.g. if Hickox now gets sick.
I respect the Obama administration, but I think they are taking far to much of laissez faire approach to the Ebola problem. As a result of lack of a strong plan, the vacuum is being filled by xenophobic hysteria which will interfere with solving the problem.
A Realist
One thing certain, the Obama administration does not seem to have a clue what it doing most of the time.
Kathryn Stewart
Is Russian tightening it's borders and making a presence perhaps in a plan to move against ISIS? As far as strategy they would be one step closer to petro domination.
Wolfpack
Whether they are volunteers or sent by order of the military, Obama is making an irrelevant distinction. In fact, it is much more likely that the volunteers have been exposed to the virus than the military personnel. Again, Obama thinks the public are idiots.
@chikv
If one waits until symptoms appear it is already too late. At that point you have an infectious person sitting in the cube next to you or standing in the middle of a crowd in the train station. The science says the incubation period is 21 days. A little common sense pre-caution is not unreasonable. Has science now decided that the whole idea of quarantine is no longer scientific? I don't think so.
I think this is a good example of the ridiculous comments that Obama and the PC crowd are down to. Their reasoning about infectious disease and public health lacks logic so they end up with an analogy like this.
Taking sensible precautions to protect public health is not 'fear and ignorance' anymore than government taking precautions to ensure that food and water are safe to consume are somehow nefarious. Claims like this is nothing but political correctness going overboard to the point of being dangerous. It is ironic that the Left would go to such lengths to protect individual rights over those of society as a whole. Political correctness has become a law in itself and there are now people willing to risk the lives of others to enforce it.
chikv
@CraigHicks
Not really necessary, they only need to trace those people that came in important contact with her body fluids, that would restrict the pool quite a lot (likely to 0) symptomatic is not the same as infectious, especially at normal everyday interactions. People have a very wrong idea about how Ebola can be transmitted and that is why everybody push for irrational measures to "reduce the risk". In many cases such as this the risk is actually so little that the recommended measures are much less strict. It is important also to remember that reducing this tiny risk have a price, and that is to rise a much more important risk of the disease spreading to other places in the world with a lot of people and bad health services, that would lead to pandemic and involve the whole American territory without any realistic way to prevent it. So, by reducing an already diminute risk you increase another already huge one.
@Wolfpack
The problem is that the irrelevant distinction has been made in the opposite direction, neither group should be subjected to general quarantine just because exposure but popular ignorance can put a lot of pressure, military personal have no choice but to follow orders so they can be put in an irrational and useless quarantine without real danger of them refusing to go. Volunteer health workers that understand how foolish these measures really are and who can not be forced so easily to risk their lives can opt out much more easily and that is a big problem.
More the opposite, Obama and all the relevant professionals realized that informed and experienced health workers would recognize immediately that the general quarantine for non-symptomatic people is just ignorance and fear, so they cannot force it on them without having huge negative consequences, they had to choose between calming the ignorant and fearful masses or getting the necessary professionals on board. Fortunately they choose the option that still makes possible the disease control before is too late.
Can you please cite the scientific article that proves this? The literature until now says this is false. Differently from what zombie and disaster movies teach, profuse bleeding from every body orifice is not the first symptom for Ebola. A person that get sick will first have general symptoms (fever, headache, fatigue, etc.) that will not make him infectious. Any person would at that point realize that he is getting something, much more in the case of an experience health worker, and he or she would still have plenty of time to go safely into a quarantine without increasing the risk for others. So yes, you may be at risk of having somebody feeling sick next to you, but you would not be at risk of getting ebola from them (unless of course you are exchanging body fluids extensively).
But it becomes unreasonable when it runs contrary to proven scientific data, looking at the sky it seems perfectly reasonable to think that the Sun goes around the earth, but since we know the truth that belief is considered unreasonable.
Science has decided that the indiscriminated quarantine idea is not useful and brings more risk of a big outbreak in the long term. And also that the only reasons to push for it are not scientific
Every informed health worker have exactly the same feelings about the general quarantine, the difference is that they have extensive experience and scientific data to support their position, but the opposite side have only their own fear and beliefs (of course disguising them as "common sense") to hold their opinion in place
General quarantine for asymptomatic people is way outside of sensible precautions, it is as unnecessary and irrational as just general quarantine for every person in the country with or without any kind of contact with Ebola patients.
Oh no, it have absolutely nothing about political correctness, it is all about practical reasons. You need much more professionals on the field to even have a good chance to stop the spreading of the disease, and no way to force them to go, so the only thing that the government can really do is at least take out as many obstacles as possible for them to go. Even then is is quite possible that it will not be enough, but there is no logic in lowering even more the odds by listening to people that frankly have no idea what they are talking about.
kazetsukai
Please everyone, you must look at the entire picture unemotionally. No one becomes a thep President of the USA , the most powerful position in the world without having very powerful backing from those that belive that he has the ability to do the job for them, be it beneficial for the country or not. And, Mr. Obama had to be smart and able strategist to take that power. The only problem was that no one knew for whose benefit he will use that power.
Therefore, everything Mr. Obama does or does NOT do has to be planned and is desiged to get results that he or his associates desire, be it for the good of the country or not. The key with Mr. Obama is in what he does not say and does not do.
Everything he does is a distraction to prevent others from looking at what his associates and subordinates are doing. Look at why he appears to be doing nothing. He is taking advantage of every major event and disaster to accomplish what?
If there are no definable and meaningful results, then who benefited from his action or inaction?
In this case, his inaction and delayed or limited action did benefit something or someone. Then who really benefited?
Sine he is a world leader and Ebola is a world crisis, one must look at the entire world.
Why did he do waht he did?
Whas it a distraction to mask some other activity or events occuring?
With a war on terror, ISIS, and risk of war with China and Russia, why expose the elite military to danger. Be it for quarantine, or simple prevention, the already short military manpower is far less effective. Then whom did it benefit? It certainly was Not the USA.. was it?
You must look at what each action taken or not taken communicates, and find out who benefited from it?
You must also see that Mr. Obama apparently does not care about anything anymore, since apparently he has accomplished what he wanted to do as President. One obvious result is world economic disater and world wide social and political instability. Now... who or what entity benefit from it all?
Did you benefit?
Why, when, how, where, how much of what?
arrestpaul
White House spokes model Josh Earnest seems to be confused about just how confusing the White House actions have been to the public. U.S. troops can be isolated because they were in an area that had ebola but a arrogant nurse who had direct contact with ebola patients AND an elevated temperature reading can't be?