Thread: Obama Doing Nothing to Protect America from Ebola Outbreak

Great interview from smart Ron Paul, too bad he is not a president now.


Ron Paul: Ebola panic is much more dangerous than the disease itself

President Obama Already Has An Ebola Czar. Where Is She?



By Mollie Hemingway October 14, 2014


As the Ebola situation in West Africa continues to deteriorate, some U.S. officials are claiming that they would have been able to better deal with the public health threat if only they had more money.

Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told The Huffington Post, “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.” Hillary Clinton also claimed that funding restrictions were to blame for inability to combat Ebola.



Conservative critics have pointed out that the federal government has spent billions upon billions of dollars on unnecessary programs promoting a political agenda rather than targeting those funds to the fight against health threats.

Other limited government types point to the Progressive utopian foolishness seen in opposing political factions, both sides of which seem to agree humanity could somehow escape calamity if only we had a properly functioning government. People who don’t want an all-powerful government shouldn’t blame it for not having competence when crisis strikes.

What’s particularly interesting about this discussion, then, is that nobody has even discussed the fact that the federal government not ten years ago created and funded a brand new office in the Health and Human Services Department specifically to coordinate preparation for and response to public health threats like Ebola. The woman who heads that office, and reports directly to the HHS secretary, has been mysteriously invisible from the public handling of this threat. And she’s still on the job even though three years ago she was embroiled in a huge scandal of funneling a major stream of funding to a company with ties to a Democratic donor—and away from a company that was developing a treatment now being used on Ebola patients.

Before the media swallow implausible claims of funding problems, perhaps they could be more skeptical of the idea that government is responsible for solving all of humanity’s problems. Barring that, perhaps the media could at least look at the roles that waste, fraud, mismanagement, and general incompetence play in the repeated failures to solve the problems the feds unrealistically claim they will address. In a world where a $12.5 billion slush fund at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is used to fight the privatization of liquor stores, perhaps we should complain more about mission creep and Progressive faith in the habitually unrealized magic of increased government funding.

Lay of the Land

Collins’ NIH is part of the Health and Human Services Department. Real spending at that agency has increased nine-fold since 1970 and now tops $900 billion. Oh, if we could all endure such “funding slides,” eh?

Whether or not Dr. Collins’ effort to get more funding for NIH will be successful—if the past is prologue, we’ll throw more money at him—the fact is that Congress passed legislation with billions of dollars in funding specifically to coordinate preparation for public health threats like Ebola not 10 years ago. And yet the results of such funding have been hard to evaluate.

See, in 2004, Congress passed The Project Bioshield Act. The text of that legislation authorized up to $5,593,000,000 in new spending by NIH for the purpose of purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack. A major part of the plan was to allow stockpiling and distribution of vaccines.

Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”

Last year, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013 which keep the programs in effect for another five years.

If you look at any of the information about these pieces of legislation or the office and authorities that were created, this brand new expansion of the federal government was sold to us specifically as a means to fight public health threats like Ebola. That was the entire point of why the office and authorities were created.

In fact, when Sen. Bob Casey was asked if he agreed the U.S. needed an Ebola czar, which some legislators are demanding, he responded: “I don’t, because under the bill we have such a person in HHS already.”

The Invisible Dr. Lurie

So, we have an office for public health threat preparedness and response. And one of HHS’ eight assistant secretaries is the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, whose job it is to “lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters, ranging from hurricanes to bioterrorism.”

In the video below, the woman who heads that office, Dr. Nicole Lurie, explains that the responsibilities of her office are “to help our country prepare for, respond to and recover from public health threats.” She says her major priority is to help the country prepare for emergencies and to “have the countermeasures—the medicines or vaccines that people might need to use in a public health emergency. So a large part of my office also is responsible for developing those countermeasures.”

Or, as National Journal rather glowingly puts it, “Lurie’s job is to plan for the unthinkable. A global flu pandemic? She has a plan. A bioterror attack? She’s on it. Massive earthquake? Yep. Her responsibilities as assistant secretary span public health, global health, and homeland security.” A profile of Lurie quoted her as saying, “I have responsibility for getting the nation prepared for public health emergencies—whether naturally occurring disasters or man-made, as well as for helping it respond and recover. It’s a pretty significant undertaking.” Still another refers to her as “the highest-ranking federal official in charge of preparing the nation to face such health crises as earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and pandemic influenza.”


Now, you might be wondering why the person in charge of all this is a name you’re not familiar with. Apart from a discussion of Casey’s comments on how we don’t need an Ebola czar because we already have one, a Google News search for Lurie’s name at the time of writing brings up nothing in the last hour, the last 24 hours, not even the last week! You have to get back to mid-September for a few brief mentions of her name in minor publications. Not a single one of those links is confidence building.

So why has the top official for public health threats been sidelined in the midst of the Ebola crisis? Only the not-known-for-transparency Obama administration knows for sure. But maybe taxpayers and voters should force Congress to do a better job with its oversight rather than get away with the far easier passing of legislation that grants additional funds before finding out what we got for all that money we allocated to this task over the last decade. And then maybe taxpayers should begin to puzzle out whether their really bad return on tax investment dollars is related to some sort of inherent problem with the administrative state.

The Ron Perelman Scandal

There are a few interesting things about the scandal Lurie was embroiled in years ago. You can—and should—read all about it in the Los Angeles Times‘ excellent front-page expose from November 2011, headlined: “Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal: A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.” This Forbes piece is also interesting.

The donor is billionaire Ron Perelman, who was controlling shareholder of Siga. He’s a huge Democratic donor but he also gets Republicans to play for his team, of course. Siga was under scrutiny even back in October 2010 when The Huffington Post reported that it had named labor leader Andy Stern to its board and “compensated him with stock options that would become dramatically more valuable if the company managed to win the contract it sought with HHS—an agency where Stern has deep connections, having helped lead the year-plus fight for health care reform as then head of the Service Employees International Union.”

The award was controversial from almost every angle—including disputes about need, efficacy, and extremely high costs. There were also complaints about awarding a company of its size and structure a small business award as well as the negotiations involved in granting the award. It was so controversial that even Democrats in tight election races were calling for investigations.

Last month, Siga filed for bankruptcy after it was found liable for breaching a licensing contract. The drug it’s been trying to develop, which was projected to have limited utility, has not really panned out—yet the feds have continued to give valuable funds to the company even though the law would permit them to recoup some of their costs or to simply stop any further funding.

The Los Angeles Times revealed that, during the fight over the grant, Lurie wrote to Siga’s chief executive, Dr. Eric A. Rose, to tell him that someone new would be taking over the negotiations with the company. She wrote, “I trust this will be satisfactory to you.” Later she denied that she’d had any contact with Rose regarding the contract, saying such contact would have been inappropriate.

The company that most fought the peculiar sole-source contract award to Siga was Chimerix, which argued that its drug had far more promise than Siga’s. And, in fact, Chimerix’s Brincidofovir is an antiviral medication being developed for treatment of smallpox but also Ebola and adenovirus. In animal trials, it’s shown some success against adenoviruses, smallpox, and herpes—and preliminary tests show some promise against Ebola. On Oct. 6, the FDA authorized its use for some Ebola patients.

It was given to Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died, and Ashoka Mukpo, who doctors said had improved. Mukpo even tweeted that he was on the road to recovery.

Back to that Budget

Consider again how The Huffington Post parroted Collins’ claims:

Money, or rather the lack of it, is a big part of the problem. NIH’s purchasing power is down 23 percent from what it was a decade ago, and its budget has remained almost static. In fiscal year 2004, the agency’s budget was $28.03 billion. In FY 2013, it was $29.31 billion—barely a change, even before adjusting for inflation.

Of course, between the fiscal years 2000 and 2004, NIH’s budget jumped a whopping 58 percent. HHS’s 70,000 workers will spend a total of $958 billion this year, or about $7,789 for every U.S. household. A 2012 report on federal spending including the following nuggets about how NIH spends its supposedly tight funds:

• a $702,558 grant for the study of the impact of televisions and gas generators on villages in Vietnam.
• $175,587 to the University of Kentucky to study the impact of cocaine on the sex drive of Japanese quail.
• $55,382 to study hookah smoking in Jordan.
• $592,527 to study why chimpanzees throw objects.

Last year there were news reports about a $509,840 grant from NIH to pay for a study that will send text messages in “gay lingo” to meth-heads. There are many other shake-your-head examples of misguided spending that are easy to find.

And we’re not even getting into the problems at the CDC or the confusing mixed messages on Ebola from the administration. CDC director Tom Frieden noted:


Dr. Tom Frieden ✔ @DrFriedenCDC Follow The enemy is a virus and there is no blame to place on anyone on the frontlines of the #Ebola fight.
11:01 AM - 13 Oct 2014


Indeed. The Progressive belief that a powerful government can stop all calamity is misguided. In the last 10 years we passed multiple pieces of legislation to create funding streams, offices, and management authorities precisely for this moment. That we have nothing to show for it is not good reason to put even more faith in government without learning anything from our repeated mistakes. Responding to the missing Ebola Czar and her office’s corruption by throwing still more money, more management changes, and more bureaucratic complexity in her general direction is madness.


Follow Mollie on Twitter.




http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/14/...EcjgM.facebook

Students Pledge To House Ebola Patients In Their Homes





TheAlexJonesChannel


Published on Oct 17, 2014
With the information about Ebola in the news and on the web it is amazing that local college students would pledge to host ebola patients in their homes. Infowars.com reporter Joe Biggs said he talked to 30 people out of that 17 signed a petition to support the Ebola Equality Act of 2014 which states it will allow Ebola patients into the US for treatment. Out of those 17 who signed the petition, 11 initialed the box indicating they would house Ebola patients. Mind boggling.

http://www.infowars.com/video-student...

http://www.infowars.com/announced-750...

http://www.infowars.com/quarantine-th...


Stupid is as stupid does..and they are!!!!

Humans Are the Virus, Ebola Is The Cure




TheAlexJonesChannel

Published on Oct 18, 2014
For 50 years environmentalists have been promoting “The Gaia Theory” — the idea that the earth is a living organism and humans are a virus. Radical environmentalists have argued that as a virus or cancer, humans should be wiped out, preferably by a bio-engineered virus like Ebola.


Follow Alex on TWITTER - https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones
Infowars on G+ - https://plus.google.com/+infowars/
Like Alex on FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/AlexanderEme...

SOURCE OF CURRENT EBOLA EPIDEMIC IDENTIFIED: Bat-Eating Family in Guinea Village

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, October 19, 2014, 9:39 AM

Despite warnings from health officials, villagers in West Africa continue to purchase and eat bats, rodents and bush meat.

Bush meat in Nigeria. (World Biking)
The current Ebola epidemic was traced back to a bat-eating family in the village of Gueckedou in south-eastern Guinea.
The BBC reported:

Bushmeat is believed to be the origin of the current Ebola outbreak. The first victim’s family hunted bats, which carry the virus. Could the practice of eating bushmeat, which is popular across Africa, be responsible for the current crisis?
The origin has been traced to a two-year-old child from the village of Gueckedou in south-eastern Guinea, an area where batmeat is frequently hunted and eaten.
The infant, dubbed Child Zero, died on 6 December 2013. The child’s family stated they had hunted two species of bat which carry the Ebola virus.
Bushmeat or wild animal meat covers any animal that is killed for consumption, principally chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats and monkeys. It can even include porcupines, rats and snakes.
In some remote areas it is a necessary source of food – in others it has become a delicacy.
In Africa’s Congo Basin, people eat an estimated five million tonnes of bushmeat per year, according to the Centre of International Forestry Research.

Doctors Without Borders has more on the bat-eating family.

The epidemic seems to have originated in a village near Guéckédou in Guinea, from where the disease then spread out. It is a place where people do a significant amount of bat hunting. Just as many other families living in that area, the first family in the village to be infected with the disease admitted to having hunted two species of bat. These were Hypsignatus monstrosus and Epomops franqueti, which both carry the Ebola virus.
Bat colonies migrate across vast distances and we think that they first pass the virus amongst themselves, thereby passing it from the east to the west of Africa. The Ebola virus is then introduced into the population if they come into contact with infected animals.

The black market demand for monkey meat could see Ebola spread in the UK and Europe.
Scientists report that Ebola may be present in more animals than previously thought.

So far, it has been detected in chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, antelopes, porcupines, rodents, dogs, pigs and humans.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014...uinea-village/

White House PR Machine, Lawyers Attend Obama’s Urgent Saturday Night Ebola Meeting

Posted by Kristinn Taylor on Sunday, October 19, 2014, 12:29 AM

Are more Ebola cases on the horizon?
President Barack Obama convened a surprise meeting Saturday night on Ebola. The White House meeting of top officials and advisors took place after Obama played golf in the afternoon at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia with ESPN host Tony Kornheiser.

The urgent Ebola meeting came as Obama chided Americans in his weekly Saturday address for being concerned over three cases of Ebola when thousands are killed by the flu every year.
In a ‘who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes’ moment, Obama told the nation there is not an Ebola outbreak in Dallas, but that there may be more “isolated cases.”

“First, what we’re seeing now is not an “outbreak” or an “epidemic” of Ebola in America. We’re a nation of more than 300 million people. To date, we’ve seen three cases of Ebola diagnosed here-the man who contracted the disease in Liberia, came here and sadly died; the two courageous nurses who were infected while they were treating him. Our thoughts and our prayers are with them, and we’re doing everything we can to give them the best care possible. Now, even one infection is too many. At the same time, we have to keep this in perspective. As our public health experts point out, every year thousands of Americans die from the flu.”
…” As I’ve said before, fighting this disease will take time. Before this is over, we may see more isolated cases here in America. But we know how to wage this fight. And if we take the steps that are necessary, if we’re guided by the science-the facts, not fear-then I am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak here in the United States, and we can continue to lead the world in this urgent effort.”

Obama also said Ebola cannot be caught riding on a plane or bus. Obama did not say why the CDC is tracking down hundreds of passengers who flew on two flights with Amber Vinson, one of the two Dallas nurses to come down with Ebola after treating Liberian national Thomas Duncan before he died of Ebola.

“Second, Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu. You cannot get it from just riding on a plane or a bus…”

Attending the not-an-Ebola outbreak meeting were public relations staffers and Obama’s legal team. The official readout of the meeting with a list of attendees was sent out to reporters following the meeting.
Attending were Jennifer Palmieri, Director of Communications and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.
Also in attendance were Neil Eggleston, Counselor to the President and Brian Egan, Deputy Counsel to the President.
Katie Beirne Fallon, Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs was also listed as participating in the meeting.
Notably absent from the meeting list was new Ebola czar Ron Klain. The White House said Klain met earlier in the day with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and that he has not yet officially taken office.
The readout says in part that the meeting was held to make sure Dallas has the tools needed to handle additional Ebola cases.
The Ebola outbreak has come at a bad time for Obama. With just weeks to go until the midterm elections the Dallas Ebola not-an-outbreak hit two young single minority women—a key election demographic for Obama and the Democrats.

The Obama PR machine planted a story in Saturday’s New York Times designed to make it look like Obama was angry at the government for lapses in preventing the Ebola not-an-outbreak—the Limbaugh Theorem in action.
An Ebola info box has been placed at the top of the White House home page. It links to Obama’s weekly Saturday address about the not-an-Ebola outbreak and an explainer on the administration’s response at home and abroad. While the explainer mentions the military’s involvement it does not mention Obama ordering up to 4,000 troops and reservists to West Africa to help fight the outbreak.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014...break-meeting/

What I find interesting is no one is talking about money as a form of transmitting disease. A sick person could handle it and get some sort of bodily fluid on it and pass it right on to the cashier who passes it on to several people before the ebola virus is no longer alive on money. This is not paranoia this is common sense. Just because it is not airborne does not mean it cannot spread like wild fire....or course we will have the useful idiots and government pushing the propaganda that we will be fine no matter what................the government you can expect lies from, the useful idiots should have more common sense.