The dreaded ebola virus, that insidiously lethal disease that has many African countries operating on lockdown and in a state-of-emergency, has finally made U.S. landfall.
This from CBS DFW, Dallas:
“Officials with the Centers for Disease Control have confirmed that a person in Dallas definitely has the Ebola virus. Tuesday’s official determination makes the Dallas patient the first diagnosed Ebola case in the United States.”
“On Monday, a patient in a Dallas hospital was being tested for the Ebola virus and was being kept in strict isolation with test results pending, hospital officials said Monday.”
This news is not very suprising but it is utterly alarming. We don’t know much about the patient yet, but we do know this from CBSDFW:
“CDC Director Thomas Frieden related the information that the individual who tested positive had traveled to Liberia. The person left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the United States on September 20 with no virus symptoms. Frieden said it was four or five days later that the patient, who is believed to be male, began developing symptoms and was ultimately admitted to Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sunday, September 28.”
The first American to contract Ebola was Dr. Kent Brantly who barely survived the deadly illness, largely being due to intervention from American health care, had this to say to NationalJournal:
“It’s time to think outside the box” for ways to combat the virus’s worst outbreak in history, which continues to ravage West Africa.”
The physician was treating Ebola patients in Liberia when he tested positive for the disease on July 26. He is one of four American aid workers flown back to the United States for treatment.
Dr. Brantley issued a very dire warning:
“Many have used the analogy of a fire burning out of control to describe this unprecedented Ebola outbreak,” Brantley said. “Indeed it is a fire–it is a fire from the pit of hell. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that the vast moat of the Atlantic Ocean will protect us from the flames of this fire. Instead we must mobilize the resources…to keep entire nations from being reduced to ashes.”
I think maybe it’s time to restrict travel to and from these African countries that are plaqued with this disease. I also think it’s time we shore up that porous unsecured southern border of ours as I emphatically wrote about here and quoted Texan rancher Cuban “Rusty” Monsees as saying about the border:
“We get kids. We get adults. The cartel is bringing across, importing people from as far away as the Mediterranean. I’ve talked to agents and they picked up some characters from Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria… anything that you can think of these agents are having to deal with.”
Yes, I believe it’s crucial beyond measure we start taking our borders, our immigration policies, and the threats to our country far more seriously. This first case of Ebola in our general population should be a wake-up call of the highest magnitude. Something wicked this way comes.
Updates will be frequent as this situation unfolds.
Kim Quade says: On Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer (who is a physician) recommended that flights between the affected African nations and the US be suspended, which apparently what British Air has done.
Why in the world we didn’t do that in the first place I’ll never understand.
Then again, we’re dealing with the Obama administration, so there’s that. . .
J. Marie Wilder says: Yes, well all the fumbling and bumbling about has its consequences. Unfortunately for us. God only knows how many people this patient has had contact with, not to mention all those on the plane. And there seems to be no definitive agreement about whether this virus can (or has) become airborn.
Xavier says: My understanding of the virus is that an infected person is not contagious until symptoms appear; however, a person who survives Ebola can remain contagious for several weeks after recovering. According to the news (whatever that’s worth) the patient in Dallas didn’t show symptoms on the plane. Apparently he was here visiting family, so many people were probably in contact with him – but exposure doesn’t necessarily mean transmission.
The only thing I think we can say definitively is that any precautions the administration is taking are totally for PR and to protect the political elite. Given the situation on the southern border, it would be surprising if terrorists didn’t infect a group – either willingly or as unsuspecting victims – and let the Border Patrol scatter them across the country. One or two contagious people on a bus trip to their new Obama-homes could turn into thousands in a week or two.
And you know about crises and letting them go to waste.
Nina says: The problem is… we have the unfortunate soul who traveled to Liberia and back. It wasn’t until he/she? was back in the US for a couple of days, that the symptoms appeared.
Unless I’m sorely mistaken, that tells me, as you point out in a way above, that there is an incubation period. So when symptoms appear… who among that person’s family in the Texas area are potentially infected and who else have they come in contact with.
No, exposure doesn’t necessarily mean transmission but boy howdy, that’s quite the roll of the dice at the poker table wouldn’t you think?
Xavier says: Hopefully, anyone exposed by the Dallas patient (rumored to be a male) was quarantined before they became symptomatic. Ebola is regarded by health care professionals as an unsuccessful disease because of its need for direct body fluid contact and non-infectious incubation period. I do realize many people will take issue with that statement, but if Ebola were really successful, most of Africa would already be dead. For those reasons, unless something changes dramatically, we’re probably not looking at a civilization ending event like the Black Plague. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic – certainly, people will die and that’s terrible. But right now, we aren’t looking at a wave of death coming onto our shores to wipe out America.
My concern is that it manages to establish a toehold in a hidden animal population in the U.S. much like hantavirus does already. That would allow the virus to mutate and spread silently without any warning to health providers until an outbreak occurred. A new strain with an infectious incubation period (like measles has) could be far worse than one that became airborn, making every food service worker, housewife, lover, and sniffling school child a potential Typhoid Mary.
Anyone who studies disasters will tell you that the aftermath is usually worse than the event itself; in this case, those dangers could be at least partly deliberate. As I alluded to before, any event will be become an opportunity to further the progressive agenda; even a minimal amount of fatalities will be used by the government to seize more power and control, and further subdue citizens ostensibly for their own safety. That scares me a lot more than Ebola.
J.Marie says: Precisely, Xavier. Your comment is spot on.
The patient in question was showing symptoms for a few days before being admitted to a hospital. This illness starts out so flu like…and this right befor flu season here.
I hope you’re right about the patient being symptom free in the airports and on the airplane. But he was more than likely around family, friends, coworkers, the public in general etc. after symptoms started. Also, he was around the medical establishments and other patients before being quarantined.
Piroko says: “entire nations being reduced to ashes”
We can do that.
Sounds like it’d be pretty damn effective too.
J.Marie says: One has to wonder what the individual who had the Georgia Guidestones created with its “sustainable earth message” reference to needing to reduce the population to 500,000,000 million (from the current 7+ billion) is thinking right now. Many elitists seem to think this way.
CombatMissionary says: If Ebola were to get out of control in the US, it would be chaos, absolute Hell. However, the people most affected would be where the most people are confined to the tightest geographical areas: in other words, heavily, heavily blue cities that vote Democrat in huge margins and suck welfare dollars like crazy.
Nobody wants this to happen, but you have to think about things like this.
J.Marie says: The most affected areas would be the cities and they would become nightmare zones.
Those of us out-in-the-sticks would not be unaffected, by any means. Aside from the disease itself, such mass pandemonium of millions of people in the cities would spill over from them into the surrounding countryside.
If I am correct, the graphic of the US map I posted with this article is the CDC quarantine zones and how they have divided up the US in case of such an emergency.
Xavier says: Crowded places, like sporting events, concerts, public transportation, etc, are always disease vectors – but the worst by far are schools. Country or city, the law requires everyone under 16 to attend school. One kid gets the flu, and 3 days later 70% of the school has it – and they bring it home to the rest of us.
I’m not convinced we’re looking at a pandemic like the 1918 flu or the Black Plague, but I will admit that it is not out of the realm of possibility. If that were to happen, cities might fare worse initially – as they did in the 1918 epidemic – but almost no areas would be untouched.
Another factor is if Mexico becomes infected – illegal immigrants could infect and reinfect every town, berg, and city near the border, overwhelming medical facilities and essentially closing down entire regions.
Thank God our medical professionals are more competent than our political officials.
J.Marie says: Xavier, see my new article regarding your comment:
“Thank God our medical professionals are more competent than our political officials.”
Unfortunately, our medical professionals as a whole seem no more proficient than our political officials.
J.Marie says: As far as the bubonic plague, some scientists believe it was an Ebola-like virus that killed 60% of Europe’s population: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117310
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