An Even More Interesting Open Thread and other scary stuff...

Thanks to Koshkat, we have an interesting topic for discussion:

How do you define censorship?

No introduction or explanation. I have a clear definition, but what do you think?



Halloween Tradition:
What is your tradition for Halloween? I remember as a kid, it was THE best holiday ever. Even better than Christmas morning. We got to run around the neighborhood demanding candy...CANDY...from all the adults...AND they have to give it to us or face the threat of a trick! It was the perfect extortion plan. What could be better than that? Okay, so you had to wear a scratchy costume with a stupid plastic mask that you couldn't really see through that could cause bodily harm that sometimes required...ugh...a sweater, but CAAAAANNNNDDDDYYY! And you could wear lots and lots of red lipstick and EYE SHADOW and adults couldn't say anything even if it was blue!!!

Thousands (well, it seemed like thousands) of children running willy-nilly from house to house conspiring as we went along as to which house was giving the best treats! And free CAAAANNNDDDYYY everwhere you went. And every once in while there would be that special house that gave out full-sized Hershey chocolate bars! Full-sized!!! Yeah, and then there would be those houses that gave out fruit (what was up with that?) that could have been laced with razor blades or homemade popcorn balls that might have been filled with dangerous poisons like vitamins, but who ate those anyway, right? It was glorious. Of course we always had to have dinner first, but who could eat when you knew...KNEW...that all you had do to was suffer through dinner and then...well...CAAAAAANNNNDDDYYYY was waiting just for the taking! Ah, fun times.

And what is better on Halloween than more stuff about Ebola:
You know the doctor in New York City who devoloped Ebola that caused Govs. Cuomo and Christie to institute that mandatory quarantine? Well, it appears that his voluntary quarantine was not as he orginally described. He said that he self-quarantined himself in his Harlem apartment taking his temperature, however, now it is being reported that was all a big lie. It turns out the cops checked his Metrocard activity and discovered his travel schedule. So I am sure that the bowling alley that had to be shut down for decontamination has a case to sue him. Let the games begin.

Oh, and the nurse who was forcibly detained at Liberty Airport in New Jersey and quarantined is now in Maine. Now,the Governor of Maine has taken action to mandate a mandatory quarantine in Maine. As would be expected, the nurse has filed suit because she has been treated unfairly. Is it so unreasonable to ask that those who have had direct exposure to actually be responsible enough to limit their field of exposure for 21 days just out a sense of sensible caution and not to cause general panic?

On a finally note:

I would just like mention that it has now been two years as of October 10, 2012 since we lost our dear Lawrence Hawk (a/k/a LawHawkRDF and LawHawkSF) and may I speak for all us that he is still very much missed...

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EBOLA and other headaches

I really did not want to have to discuss this again. But, are you panicked enough yet? Well, I'm not, but, if Govs Cuomo and Christie need an issue to rally the electorate...hey, who am I to judge. No doubt you have heard that Govs. Cuomo (D/NY) and Christie (R/NJ) conspired together to mandate a mandatory quarantine for anyone entering their respective atates who come from West Africa.

Firstly, I would think that common sense would say that if you have been in West Africa and been actively treating Ebola patients that volunarily limiting one's contact with the general public and travelling by subway should be limited for 21 days and that this should not be an unreasonble request. However, I am not sure exactly how state governors have the authority to mandate a quarantine since I would think that our airports fall under federal jurisdiction. [I mean, if Gov. Perry is condemned for being forced to activate his National Guard to protect his southern border, how is it that Govs Christie and Cuomo do not face the same criticism?] Though I understand that in election year, one with a political agenda must appear to be proactive and it may be politcal advantageous. But seriously, can't we do better than this?

A tent with no runnng water, no shower facility, and no other electronic capabilty other than a cellphone to communicate. What was Gov. Christie thinking? Is there anyone with a functioning brain actually in charge?

Oh, yeah, no one has brought this up, but I will. The CDC, that government body that is tasked with spending the taxpayers money to developing a solid protocol for combating real biological threats to humanity, would actually spend their time and valuable resources on issues other than fantasy threats like - Zombie preparedness And we wonder why our confidence in our goverment agencies is at an all time low and we are unprepared for any solid protocol for a real-life contagion. How much did this cost the taxpayers? I just wonder how much we paid for this? Is there any wonder why we have lost confidence in our government agencies and their preparedness?

To be accurate, both Governors have backed off their mandate to forcibly mandate a quarantine at the behest of President Obama. However, who is really in charge of the message? My panic is only that no one is willing to present a clear message.

Any thoughts?

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Idiocy and Ebola... Huffpo Style

So I found myself following a link which promised an educational article about Ebola. Sadly, it turns out the article was at HuffPo, so the chances of learning much fell to zero. Ultimately, the article told me nothing except that some woman thinks protective clothing is hard to wear. That's it. Well, actually, the article also told me again how poorly leftists “reason”... it’s just not natural to them.

I don’t remember the name of the woman who wrote the article and I don’t really care, but she spent several pages whining about how hard it is to put on, wear and then remove the protective suits that hazmat teams wear. None of that was particular shocking. Finally, she came to her conclusion. This is where it got stupid. First, she began her conclusion by claiming that our response to Ebola has “drawn out the true vulnerabilities in the health care system.” Interesting. Up to this point, the article has not addressed this issue in any way, so this conclusion comes from out of the blue and you should take it with a grain of salt.

So what does she tell us? Well, she begins by noting that we spend trillions of dollars on healthcare, but we spend it all wrong. Oh no! See, we don’t spend it on “population health.” Sadly, she never tells us what that means or how we misspend the money. So her point is lost at best.

Next, she proclaims that Ebola “should not be a threat to American citizen.” Heck, I agree! And if we kept it from entering the country, then it wouldn't be. But that's not her point. Instead, she says it shouldn't be a threat because we have clean water, information, a means to educate ourselves, proper hand-washing procedures and protective suits.

Ok, hold the phone. Apparently, our little airhead doesn’t realize that this single case of Ebola came from Africa via a man who lied to get on an airplane. It didn’t spring up in the US because we let our water get dirty, because we failed to educate the population about the safe handling of anything, or even from a dirty American toilet seat. So how does any of the above change what happened, much less cause it? It can't, so she's wrong... again. The only reason Americans are facing a possible Ebola problem is because no one has bothered to contain the disease by quarantining the carriers. Funny how she never mentions that. In fact, see how she continues:

“We have the technology, and we certainly have the money to keep Ebola at bay. What we don’t have is communication. What we don’t have is a health care system that values preventative care...”

“Preventative care”? WTF?! Is she really saying that the reason that two or three Americans have Ebola is not because they were infected by the man from Africa but because our insurance-based system doesn’t pay for people to engage in preventative care to prevent Ebola? Would Ebola screening and mammograms have done anything to change this result? Hardly. Again, she's a moron.

It gets worse:

“... What we don’t have is an equal playing field between nurses and physicians and allied health professionals and patients.”

Huh? How does that matter? This is union bullship and has nothing to do with how the Ebola virus works. The lack of communication that failed in this instance was the CDC failing to provide proper guidance to basically everyone who asked them, and that’s on Obama and his team... not some made up lack of unionization of nurses or socialization of hospital structures. If you want to make that kind of claim, you damn well better have at least a grain of evidence.

She continues blathering:

“What we don’t have is a culture of health where we work symbiotically with one another and with the technology that was created specifically to bridge communication gaps.”

Really? It’s interesting that every doctor I’ve ever visited has worked symbiotically with their nurses and staff. Where isn't this true? Again, the real problem here was the CDC and Team Obama politicizing this issue, not some phantom lack of communication among the hospital staff.

“What we don’t have is the social culture of transparency, what we don’t have is a stopgap against mounting hysteria and hypochondria, what we don’t have is nation[sic] of health literate individuals.”

This is so typical of the left. First, note that her position would be entirely flipped around if Bush had been president. Then she would talk about the failure of the evil Bush Team to protect the poor stupid public. But with Obama in charge, she goes the other way and blames the public for making a big deal about what's been done to them. That's calling blaming the victim. And keep in mind, this woman is herself making a big deal about this. In fact, she’s taken an isolated incident which has affected only a handful of people and would have been far less if the CDC had done their jobs, and she’s using that to recommend an unrelated wholesale restructure of the health care industry. That's called exploitation. That's called generating hysteria.

Also, isn’t the word “hysteria” sexist? The left has made this claim in the past.

Finally, our politicized ditship says the following:

“We don’t even have health-literate professionals. Most doctors are specialists and are well versed only in their field. Ask your orthopedist a general question about your health -- see if they can comfortably answer it.”

Wow. First, every specialist I’ve ever met also has basic medical knowledge. Secondly, it’s so painfully obvious that queen ditship doesn’t understand the concept of specialization. Specialization is a way to improve the breadth and depth of skills available. By letting people specialize, you let them focus on areas that a GP simply wouldn’t have the time or skill to do. There is nothing at all wrong with this. In fact, only a retard would say that a cancer doctor must also know how to perform plastic surgery or set bones or handle pediatric indigestion. Humans specialize so that everyone can cover manageable areas and together create a much stronger healthcare system, a system that covers more areas and in greater depth than would be possible without specialization... every field does this. A system that didn’t have specialization is a system that wastes training, wastes skills, and results in lower quality service. And pointing at a plastic surgeon and saying, “He’s not skilled at fighting Ebola” is as stupid as pointing at a waiter and saying, “He’s not skilled at writing computer code!” But ditship doesn’t realize that because her mind is weak and politicized and she's anti-doctor.

And you know what? Even if she was right about any of this, and she isn't, the cost of changing all of this is astronomical compared to quarantining the 2-3 people with the disease... "quarantine" is a word she never uses, by the way. Think about it. Putting 3 people in a hospital isolation ward for a month will cost a fraction of the trillions it would cost to remake the system as she wants it... and which changes aren't in any way justified by this Ebola event.

Sadly, articles like this will continue to get the mouth-breathers at Huffpo to rail against the parts of the healthcare system that work while hypocritically excusing the failures of their God Obama and his politicized, incompetent CDC team. Leftists suck.

Thoughts?

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New York State of Mind and other Ebola-related stuff...

It has been awhile since I have reported on the state of New York. Like so many other states, we are well into the 2014 midterm election cycle. We will be either re-electing Andrew Cuomo or moving in another direction with Rob Astorino (R).

So far, Cuomo is leading by double digits, so I do not expect Astorino to win. But then again, Cuomo won't talk or debate anyone, but he is pushing a new party - the Women's Equality Party...yeah. Hey, his three daughters and current mistress Sandra Lee (Food Network star) are advertising a new political party in New York. Yeah, I feel better now.

But in other news, we have a new mayor. Oh, I know you think that Bill DeBlasio has been our mayor since January 1, 2014, but you'd be wrong. Actually he is being held hostage by Al Sharpton. Ugh. It's not it wasn't predictable. So here's the poop. Mayor Bill decided he wanted his wife to be an important part of his administration. Yey. So he appointed his wife, Chirlane to head (unpaid) the Mayor's Fund To Advance New York. So far, so good. But then she appointed as her highly paid assistant at $170K a year to be Rachel Noedlinger. Okay, not bad...well except that Noedlinger was Al Sharpton's second in command at his National Action Network. Okay, still not so bad.

But then, it has come to the attention of the press and everyone else that Ms. Noedlinger has some issues. [Surprise, surprise] As a potential highly paid employee of the city of New York one has to fill out a full disclosure form. And as always it is not what is disclose that is the problem. It is what is NOT disclosed.

First, when one applies for a city government position, one must reside in New York City. So, Noedlinger, who, like Al Sharpton, lives in New Jersey. She received a special waiver because of her son who she claimed had been in a so damaged in a car accident that he couldn't be moved. Well, he apparently was injured yet played on his high school football team. Strike One.

Next it was revealed that she forgot to inform anyone that she lived with her boyfriend who is a convicted felon - attempted murder. Now, he's served his time...but then he punched out a cop in a routine traffic violation. Oops. Then it was reported that he was stopped for another minor traffic violation while driving without a valid driver's licence (her car) and while driving under the influence of...well, a herbal substance...with Noedlinger's son. Strike two and three

Oh, that's not all. Noedlinger forgot to reveal that she has a tax lien and owes $800 worth of parking violations in NYC. Strike four and five.

Now anyone who fills out these forms and was hired by the City of New York would face immediate dismissal for any one of these disclosure failures. But not Noedlinger. The Mayor is standing by his man...Al Sharpton. Deblasio has proclaimed that there is nothing to see here and refuses to talk to the press. Deblasio has declared that there will be no other discussion and the new age of Al Sharpton has begun. Where is Mayor Bloomberg when we need him. Oh, he is back in control of Bloomberg, Inc. It turns out he really, really likes being a billionaire! Who knew?

In other news - Ebola...the saga continues.

It has been reported that a second nurse who was exposed while administering to Michael Duncan in Dallas has been diagnosed with Ebola. Now this is somewhat different because she just took a little round-trip plane trip to Cleveland with the blessing of the CDC. Now, one would think that any reasonable person who had been exposed to a highly contagious disease would self-quarantine or maybe the CDC would require them to be quarantined. But apparently these times are not reasonable. To her credit, she did seek clearance from the CDC who okayed her travel. Yet, as has been revealed, she travelled with a low-grade fever to and from Cleveland...on an airplane with the blessing of CDC. Because she is now not in good shape, she has been moved to Emory in Atlanta. And Frontier Airlines is scrambling to inform the people who flew, crewed and clean out the plane that made seven flights after she flew on it. By the way, no one has stated how long the Ebola virus hangs around on surfaces after exposure. I am SO glad the CDC is on top of this stuff.

I was recently asked what my greatest fear is. Without thinking, I immediately answered "irony". When asked what that meant, I really couldn't respond coherently. I sputtered for a few minutes and then responded that it was those "knock on wood" statements that we make. The "I could/would/should nwver" or "it could/would/should NEVER happen. But, after thinking for a few weeks, I finally can respond coherently. It is those moments when we proclaim that this could never happen and then it does. Like right now. The President has claimed for months along with the CDC that we have nothing to fear from Ebola because it...could/would/should...NEVER...happen here. Oh, the sad irony.

As an aside - I finally realized that my fear of irony was born during 9/11. The early morning of September 11, 2001, the weatherman on my radio station proclaimed "...there is no other way to say it, folks. It's gonna be a PERFECT day!" I can't recall a more imperfect day in my life...

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Ebola

Let's just get this out of the way. Ebola is a scary disease with a 10% to 75% survival rate (or for those with a "glass half empty" attitude - 25% to 90% death rate). The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or other bodily fluids of an infected human or other animal* and the incubation period is 2 to 21 days.

The typical symptoms with known exposure are "sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat". This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. There is no specific treatment for Ebola and though it is still in the experimental stages, there is no vaccine available. -Info from www.WHO.int

The virus was identified in 1976 and I have casually followed various Ebola outbreaks since I read "The Hot Zone" in the early'90's (weird hobby, I know). The current vast and wide outbreak in West Africa has been growing exponentially for months and statistics state that nearly 9000 have been effected and over 4000 have died so far and it does not seem to be letting up. From what I have observed over the years, past outbreaks have been detected and quarantined/isolated quickly with usually about 300 people dead by the time it burns out. Why this has gotten so out of control is mind-boggling.

Now for the bad news - Unless you have been living off the grid for the last few weeks, you no doubt know that the US had it first domestic death from an Ebola infection in Dallas. The victim was a Liberian national travelling to the US after known exposure for which he did not disclose when leaving Liberia. And now, one of the nurses who cared for him has now been diagnosed and has the dubious honor of being our first domestic infection with at least 70 others at risk. There is a lot of speculation and a lot of accusations as to how the emergency room personnel screwed up by not recognizing his symptoms as Ebola. Let's be honest. What were the odds that a man walking into a hospital in the US - ANY hospital - would have been immediately identified as a patient with Ebola. Some of the other accusations are just ridiculous, so I won't even go there.

But what is the most disturbing is that, even though the epidemic was growing in West Africa, the CDC had no plan until Dallas. I guess I have always assumed that they operated like the team in "Criminal Minds" where they activate their special units of experts trained in highly infectious diseases who would swoop in, set up perimeters, create quarantine centers and issue mandated (and proven) protocols. You know, the special government agents in hazmat suits would know exactly how to handle and disinfect the victim's living quarters and isolate those who had been exposed. I guess I was wrong. Since they are among the same goverment agencies who allowed someone to run around the WH because they forgot to lock the front door, I'm guessing expecting them to secure our borders from potential pandemics would be too much of a stretch.

All that being said, now is not the time to lay blame, or to become hysterical. This really isn't the time that we root for our leadership to fail even though the likelihood of being exposed to Ebola are very low. But on the bright side, there will be time to lay blame for the upcoming 2016 election cycle...if we survive.

*Interesting fact - Fruit bats are natural carriers of the Ebola virus. So if you see a fruit bat wearing a cowboy hat...run.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, it was reported that there were three suspected Ebola patients who were taken to or showed up at Belleview Hospital in NYC...

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