Ebola and the Midterm Elections: Is the Threat Over?
According to reports from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), America has had no new Ebola cases this past week. So, what does this mean for We the People? Does it mean our initial concerns were overblown, that the threat of an Ebola crisis in America is over, or that we should trust the CDC and return to life as normal? The answer in all three cases is an emphatic No!
We must be cautious about everything being reported about Ebola between now and the mid-term elections. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself, or so they tell us. If Ebola is not a real threat to Americans, the CDC and the Obama Administration’s handling of the situation should be feared. So far, all we’ve seen and heard is an astonishing level of incompetence. In some reported cases there has been a careless lack of full-body protection for healthcare workers treating Ebola patients. Other seemingly common sense precautions have been ignored in dealing with diseases like Ebola. Despite months of warnings and billions of dollars being (mis)spent by the CDC, our nation found itself unprepared for an outbreak of the deadly disease.
Ebola is highly contagious and often fatal. Its symptoms include fever and internal bleeding or hemorrhaging as it liquefies organs in the body. We the People should not relax our guard while our backdoor is open. The fact that Ebola has made its way to America, even when contained to a tiny portion of the populace, highlights the need for us to elect leaders who will be serious about our national security. This includes the borders as well as the health and well-being of the people.
The Obama Administration has done nothing to inspire confidence. The president has appointed an Ebola czar with zero medical experience. Do you get this? The president picked a political operative to coordinate this important mission. In addition, the Pentagon has appointed a 30-member Ebola team to travel around domestically to investigate and coordinate treatment of new cases. Meanwhile, the office of Surgeon General remains vacant, while the vast majority of hospitals around the country aren’t properly equipped to fight Ebola. We the People are witnessing incompetence, finger pointing, and posturing rather than true leadership on this important issue.
If America is to lead on this issue, it must follow the example of nations such as Senegal, South Africa, and even tiny St. Lucia, where travel bans have enabled the government to successfully prevent outbreaks of the disease. It’s outrageous that third world nations such as Senegal have a better grasp of how to contain Ebola via a travel ban than we do in the United States. The administration argues that a travel ban from countries where the Ebola virus is most prevalent would prevent them from getting trained personnel and medical equipment into those countries. This makes no sense: travel from and taking aid to these nations are in no way related. To say that the U.S. government would be unable to get aid to the restricted nations because of a civilian travel ban from these countries flunks the laughter test. Once again we seem to have a case in which the administration hopes it can keep its bumbling handling of this latest crisis under wraps, at least until after the mid–term elections.
