Two viruses are making the news these days. One, Ebola hemorrhagic fever has infected two in the United States with no deaths yet. It has created wide spread concern bordering on panic. The other, Non-Polio Enterovirus D 68, appears to have infected 825 this year and been directly responsible for at least one death and indirectly responsible for many others, primarily among children. It has generated comparatively little media attention and very little panic. Why the difference?
First the victims of D 68 are primarily children, Ebola also strikes adults. As a culture we no longer value children as much as we once did. Children are an option, almost a luxury. They have become more expensive than most luxuries we consume. Perhaps it is because the high cost to rear a child is reflective of the damage we humans are doing to the planet Or because so few of them die at an early age as compared to the past. And I suspect that childlessness is far more prevalent among our media elite opinion makers. In any case, few children vote and so they don’t really matter to policy makers.
Second, D 68 generally kills indirectly by weakening the child so that pneumonia or some other respiratory illness can be the cause of death. Ebola eats you alive! I’ve seen it on TV! And it is a terrible new way to die unlike ways we’ve died before.
Finally, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE. D 68 is poorly understood and we have no idea how prevalent it is in the population or how many childhood deaths it has contributed to. And it’s non-Polio. But we know Ebola has a 50-70% fatality rate among those who contract it in African third world countries. After all it’s hemorrhagic fever. We’re going to bleed to death. So, if it gets loose here we could have millions of deaths like that! But we actually have all the tools we need in our public health system to prevent it from spreading widely, once we get the Bozos out of power. So it’s highly unlikely that this outbreak will spread among the general population.
It’s a very small probability of a terribly frightening event. And some folks have used the propensity of people to exaggerate the possibility of catastrophic outcomes to further their political goals. I’m thinking of nuclear power, an energy source that has killed no one in the US. Compared to the coal industry, which routinely contributes to the death of both its producers and consumers, nuclear power is harmless. However, some used Three Mile Island to shut down the development of power plants that could have cushioned us from the effects of the OPEC cartel. Or how about the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) fraud? Or the reaction to a terrible but unrepeated terror bombing? The public has been taught to fear by leaders who want to harness public opinion to support their political goals.
Now comes Ebola. True, a threat. But a highly improbable one. Except when the incompetence of our elite leaders is made abundantly clear for all to see. And then those leaders have the audacity to be surprised when a formerly courageous people are reduced to trembling? The chickens are coming home to roost.
I want to see where the occurrence of Enterovirus D68 is correlated with the presence of recent child immigrants from Central America. Yes, I want to see that – and to see if any of the Major Mainstream News Organs can recall their original mission.
Ebola threatens – but Enterovirus D68 is already here and threatening children. So … will the parents of children sit still for a threat to their most precious? Stay tuned, my friends.
The only trembling here is from anger fueled adrenaline whenever I think about the venality, corruption, and utter incompetence of the ruling elites in this country, and the west in general.
We need a thorough housecleaning of all our self-important elites in the media, academia, and politics, from the feds down to the puffed up little cadres in some town in Idaho, and everything in between.
It will happen, either by the ballot or the sword, but it will happen.
My twilight years are shaping up to be very interesting, indeed.
At least more people have died of Ebola than in Ted Kennedy’s car. That might be progress.
>a formerly courageous people are reduced to trembling?<
still courageous, the trembling is from the excitement and anticipation of tar and feathering the "ruining class"
Sgt. Mom, Snopes says that’s a false story.
When Michael Chrichton wrote State of Fear he asked many of the same questions. Read through some of the first reviews, several by climate scientists and one by Mosquito Man. They make many of the same observations you have:
http://www.amazon.com/State-Fear-Michael-Crichton/dp/0061782661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413767875&sr=8-1&keywords=state+of+fear
Politically, there’s a lot to gained by maintaining a state of fear among the populace. As many here realize, what passes for “news” is often little more than propaganda. You have to dig and research to actually get to a level where you see actual data, then do a lot more reading to understand how that fits and how it is, or is not, changing. Too many people in our society are mathematically and scientifically illiterate. A non-linear graph is meaningless gibberish to them, so they are incapable of doing that. Instead, they are led to the slaughterhouse. It’s a very old story.
This is also being used to establish the Surveillance State where everyone and everything is monitored and policed ‘for your own safety’. That, of course, is the justification for every police state dictatorship in history. Old wine in new bottles, but it still sells like hotcakes, doesn’t it?
NO? I’d like to see it dealt with by more than an internet site known for being slanting their debunking more towards the liberal establishment meme.
“The CDC does not mention this disease as a ‘border flu’… and if it were a border problem, I would expect more border states to have higher illness rates, like California and Texas! ”
That is the reason why these children were dispersed throughout the country. I think the distribution mirrors the distribution of these children and I am not usually a conspiracy theorist. I don’t think it was to hide the diseases but to make it impossible to demand they be repatriated.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
>It’s a very small probability of a terribly frightening event.<
no it is that you are bringing the ebola virus into an ecosystem in which it does not exist:
Ebola: Is bushmeat behind the outbreak?
the “ruining class” in america are a-holes.
“But we actually have all the tools we need in our public health system to prevent it from spreading widely, once we get the Bozos out of power.”
Good luck with that.
Mrs. Davis “Snopes says that’s a false story.”
They would.
““But we actually have all the tools we need in our public health system to prevent it from spreading widely”
We don’t know the story and the authorities lie. Tell me we know how to deal with this.
Now, with one case in Dallas leading to 2 nurses sick, and with a couple of weeks left in the incubation period for the other healthcare workers, and with unknown 100s of folks exposed to the nurses; the USA is also on that exponential growth curve. Yes, we are down at the toe of it, but on it we are. It will be 20 days before we know how far on it we go. That’s about November 6 or so. We can make no statement at all about how many Ebola cases are in the USA until then. Only if we get no more at all can we then say how many there are… Until that time, we must assume we are on that exponential curve and act accordingly.
We know the ‘protective measures’ didn’t work for those nurses. We know that exposures have happened. We know that cases have doubled. We know that we don’t know how to stop it. Yet.
So the right thing to do is to act as aggressively as possible. Assume the worst and assume you do not know how to prevent spread nor treat the disease. So far that looks to be accurate.
Now, I’m going to watch football since I can do nothing to help this plague.
Sgt Mom, I think Cassandra at V.C. speaks to your question:
http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2014/10/did_illegal_imm.html#more
I suspect many will have their “a plague on both their houses” granted, tho.
Dunno what it’s going to take to make someone say it. Folks still using the term “incompetence” Incompetent?
I hate to join in the general tinfoil hattery – but I am convinced that the Obumbler WANTS the US to be hit by plagues, civil unrest, and third-world shortages of everything from electrical power to toilet paper. I think he would love to have us all reduced to the third world – especially us rebellious flyover-country citizens of pallor, as long as the chosen credentialed or blood-elite can rule. He is a Savonarola, come to punish us for the good of our souls.
“He is a Savonarola, come to punish us for the good of our souls.”
I think that may well be his state of mind but I think he is too lazy to do much about it. He is the king of entropy.
Historically, the concept of entropy evolved in order to explain why some processes (permitted by conservation laws) occur spontaneously while their time reversals (also permitted by conservation laws) do not; systems tend to progress in the direction of increasing entropy. For isolated systems, entropy never decreases.
When neglected, systems become disordered and assume a random state. That explains the Obama administration.
I suspect MikeK is more right – we can see what happens when nothing happens, when energy and life and even common sense is dissipated.
A part of me still agrees with Sgt. Mom. My tin foil consideration came early and I’ve tried to shake it ever since. Robespierre made sense then, partially because I remembered guys in South Chicago in 1968 who cheered the North Vietnamese. Even given my addled self in the 60’s, I was shocked. I wasn’t in Nebraska anymore, where people I knew sang Wobbly songs and ran headshops but weren’t really communists, just vague leftists. I figured Obama was taught by the Chicago guys – and my generation. But then, we wrote the books and spouted the crap, that was who were in some unattractive and real sense.
It isn’t like there isn’t a world out there, full of proof that their vision is wrong. Maybe, that’s incentive, too. Pull it all down and no one can tell what worked and what didn’t, who was wise and who was foolish.
I think Obama really just doesn’t understand about the entropy. He expects things to just work…CDC to take care of Ebola, power companies to generate electricity “somehow”, and isn’t interested in personally expending effort to MAKE things work. “He didn’t build that”…THAT in this case being the federal agencies that actually do useful things…and he has neither the interest nor the skills to fight against the entropy that will afflict any organization if not resolutely and intelligently managed.
“the entropy that will afflict any organization if not resolutely and intelligently managed.”
The left doesn’t understand entropy or any science, really. That explains their fascination with Astrology and other forms of magical thinking.
I don’t think understanding entropy in THIS sense requires scientific knowledge…what it does require it experience actually doing things and running things. If Obama had ever run a hamburger stand or a factory or a ship or an infantry brigade, he’d understand about entropy, whether or not he actually ever learned the thermodynamic/philosophical concept.
The problem with the progressive elites isn’t simply ignorance, although in any number of “real world ” situations they are astoundingly uninformed, but their utterly deluded belief that if their ideology says things should be a certain way to achieve certain results, that it is never their ideology that’s wrong when unintended negative consequences develop.
The essence of empirical, scientific attitudes is the recognition of data and it’s meaning, without pre-determined claims that ignore or twist the evidence to fit.
Tragically, but unsurprisingly, collectivism has been allowed to claim the mantle of science even though it’s ideological approach to any and all issues is the exact opposite of a truly empirical method.
Of all the myths that collectivism has been able to peddle over the last century, the pose of being scientific has been one of the most blatantly false, and yet most advantageous to their agenda, as it gilds their unrealistic policies and beliefs with a false patina of rationalism.
The book speaks of “whited sepulchres”, attractive on the outside, but inside filled with all manner of filth and corruption. Truly, no better description of collectivism has ever been given.
Statistically, the odds of getting Ebola are very low.
But.
I do not want the virus here in USA, and potentially getting a foothold in the fauna that live here.
Hospitals cannot handle MRSA and C.Difficle bouts, and continue to distribute them through their wards, so I expect their handling of Ebola would be just as successful. Good luck if you get sick.
Since the CDC blamed the two nurses for ‘not following protocol’, I would like to see the CDC following the EXACT same protocol in Atlanta, when cleaning up vomitus and diarrhea, changing bedding, etc. n.b., they have changed their tune.
But this is big government at work. There is no penalty for failure, nothing driving success, nothing driving innovation, and the results are just as shabby as expected. Big government proponents should be forced to live by their word, and there might be more success. Until then, not so much. As noted, problems are considered resolved in the Oval Office by the end of the meeting when the notes are written up and distributed. No further action necessary. Make it so. Adolescent ivory tower bull sessions where the problems of the world are solved over beer and pizza.
I truly would like to see problems come back and take a chunk out of the gluteus maximi of some State talking heads, and some WH muckety mucks.
The left doesn’t understand entropy or any science, really. That explains their fascination with Astrology and other forms of magical thinking.
Mike, you hit the nail on the head. Nearly every conversation I get into with leftists eventually gets around to astrology and other superstitions they love, like Marxism….
Speaking of the left and their brilliance, George Clooney wants to return the Elgin Marbles to the “Pantheon in Rome.” If he were smarter he might even be dangerous.