Thursday, October 9, 2014
From: Gary L. Bauer
Ebola In America: Day 9
Obama Administration officials announced yesterday that five major U.S. airports will begin additional temperature screenings of passengers from West Africa. These screenings won’t begin until Saturday at the earliest. Critics are already concluding that this is not a serious measure.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told the New York Times, “There’s a sense that this is a be-all-and-end-all and that this will put up an iron curtain, but it won’t.”
Schaffner and others are referring to the fact that Ebola has a long incubation period. An individual could be infected for two weeks before symptoms, such as fever, show up. Such screening would not have prevented Thomas Duncan from entering the country.
Anyone looking to avoid detection could take readily available medications like Advil to mask the fever. Beyond that, officials are also questioning the effectiveness of the body temperature scanners. Consider this excerpt from The Guardian:
“In a guidance paper produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for airport and public health officials, the agency lists what it sees as problems with the devices, including cost, lack of precision, need for frequent calibration and maintenance and training requirements.”
The new screening is not reassuring airport workers either. About 200 workers who clean airplanes at LaGuardia Airport have gone on strike, complaining about the potential exposure to Ebola (among other things). I sympathize with the cleaning crews since the administration is obviously unwilling to impose travel restrictions that would do more to protect these workers than ineffective body scans.
Meanwhile, we have learned that a Dallas County Sheriff’s deputy was placed in isolation yesterday afternoon at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital for exhibiting possible symptoms of Ebola. A definitive blood test takes 48 hours.
Elsewhere around the world, the number of confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa now exceeds 8,000. More than 3,800 people have died. Six more individuals are in isolation at a hospital in Madrid, Spain, while the condition of a nurse who contracted Ebola has deteriorated. A nurse in Australia who had been working in Sierra Leone is in isolation after developing a fever.
All these incidents can be contained, but public confidence in the government’s ability to do so appears to be declining and the economic and political consequences are unknown.
White House Prostitution Scandal
The Washington Post has a major front page story today leveling accusations of corruption and cover-ups against the Obama White House over the Secret Service prostitution scandal in April 2012.
Nearly a dozen Secret Service agents and several members of the military were disciplined for “curfew violations” and procuring the services of prostitutes during a trip to South America. Some lost their jobs. Throughout the course of this scandal, the White House repeatedly denied that any of its staff members were involved in any way.
But separate investigations at that time revealed that a member of the White House advance team (the son of a major donor) was in fact involved in the misconduct. This information was given to the White House on at least two occasions. And both times, it was swept under the rug.
Not only was the information ignored, the investigators were punished.
David Nieland, an investigator for the Inspector General’s office at the Department of Homeland Security, says he was pressured by superiors to “withhold and alter certain information in the report . . . because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration” and “to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election.”
The investigator said that he and two other staffers were put on administrative leave when they objected to changes in their report.
By the way, you’ll never guess what the philandering White House staffer is doing now. He’s working at the State Department’s Office on Global Women’s Issues. And why not? After all, it seems his time at the White House gave him “hands on experience” with global women’s issues.
Kiss Keystone Jobs Goodbye
Frustrated by the Obama Administration’s continued delays, a Canadian energy company is expected to file plans shortly to build a new pipeline for the oil that was supposed to run through the Keystone XL pipeline. But instead of going south to our Gulf Coast refineries, the oil will likely go east to Europe and India.
The new Canadian pipeline will be twice as long as the Keystone pipeline, carry 30% more oil and could be in operation in three years — less than half the time Washington bureaucrats have spent studying and delaying the Keystone project. And instead of American jobs being created by the construction of the Keystone pipeline, radical environmentalists have only succeeded in creating new jobs in Canada.
And Your Healthcare Plan Too
Obamacare is at it again — cancelling health insurance plans that people liked. Fox News reports that 13 states are in the process of cancelling plans deemed out of compliance with Obamacare. In Virginia alone, 250,000 people are expected to lose their current insurance policies.
By the way, Obamacare continues to punish part-time workers and kill jobs (here and here).
“Season of our Rejoicing!”
Carol and I wish all of our Jewish friends and supporters a blessed Sukkot as they celebrate God’s providence.
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