What’s interesting in the news today?
1. “The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic.”
From MSN “Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number 1.5 to two.
Ebola cases in West Africa have been doubling about every three weeks, and no data suggests a major change in that trendline.
“The speed at which things are moving on the ground, it’s hard for people to get their minds around. People don’t understand the concept of exponential growth,” said Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Exponential growth in the context of three weeks means, ‘If I know that X needs to be done, and I work my butt off and get it done in three weeks, it’s now half as good as it needs to be.’ ”
Frieden warned Thursday that without immediate, concerted, bold action, the Ebola virus could become a global calamity on the scale of HIV. He spoke at a gathering of global health officials and government leaders at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. The president of Guinea was at the table and the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone joined by video link. Amid much bureaucratic talk and table-thumping was an emerging theme: The virus is still outpacing the efforts to contain it.
“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the people [who become infected] are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, told the group.”
______________________________________________
2. Common sense or overreaction?
From NBCNews “A majority of Americans support banning all flights to the United States from countries experiencing an Ebola outbreak, an exclusive NBC News online survey reveals.
The survey, which was conducted by SurveyMonkey and then weighted for age, race, sex, education and region to match U.S. Census data, found that 58 percent of Americans want a ban on incoming flights from West African countries hardest hit by the virus, such as Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Twenty percent of respondents opposed a travel ban, and the rest said they didn’t know. The survey was conducted a day before the first person diagnosed with Ebola inside the U.S. died Wednesday.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday announced new screening procedures at five American airports that see the most travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone: New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare and Atlanta. Staff will question and take the temperature of everyone coming from those countries and screen for signs of the illness. Approximately 150 passengers come to the U.S. from those countries each day, officials said.”
______________________________________________
3. Of course.
From TownHall “HealthCare.gov, the online portal where millions of Americans must by health insurance, will not display premiums for 2015 until after the 2014 elections, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Obama administration officials told the AP that Americans will not be able to find out if their health insurance premiums are going up “until the second week of November,” which conveniently falls after Americans will go to the polls November 4th.
“Insurers say one big challenge for next year will involve millions of returning customers,” the AP reports. “It’s not really a technology issue, but a time crunch that also coincides with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.”
“Existing customers who do nothing will be automatically re-enrolled in their current plan as of Jan. 1,” the AP continues. “But they will receive this year’s subsidy amount, which could be lower than what they’d be entitled to for 2015. And that could mean sticker shock over their new monthly premiums.””
Cowards.
______________________________________________
4. They can’t hide from all the consequences of this disaster.
From FoxNews “More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of people just before the midterm elections.
“It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so.
In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to cancel such policies, which generally fall out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act because they don’t offer the level of coverage the law requires.”
Vote accordingly.
______________________________________________
5. Fraud is all they have left.
From TheFreeBeacon “A network of union-funded groups from Little Rock to Washington, D.C., working to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas have been implicated in a lawsuit alleging that operatives in the state forged notary signatures in order to get the question on November’s ballot.
The lawsuit, which has reached the Arkansas Supreme Court, is challenging the validity of a ballot question to raise the state’s minimum wage. Details in the complaint provide a window into connections between the seemingly disparate organizations.
Those organizations are ostensibly run by Arkansans, but public records suggest that they are part of a coordinated political effort with ties to a network of Washington-based Democratic groups supportive of Hillary Clinton.”
“Beyond deadline issues, Stephens alleges numerous defects that he says should invalidate tens of thousands of petition signatures. They include allegations that canvassers forged a notary’s signature on thousands of petition pages.”
______________________________________________
6. They’re getting desperate. Public opinion is turning, and they know it.
From TheCollegeFix “The University of California – San Francisco will launch an online abortion course this Monday, an Internet class being hailed as the first of its kind. The course will delve into “clinical aspects of medication abortion, aspiration abortion, post-abortion contraception, and pain management for abortion,” as well as topics such as the history of abortion, “abortion stigma,” complications and counseling, its outline states.
“I think that if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful,” Dr. Jody Steinauer, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California – San Francisco, told The Daily Beast, which first reported on the class, noting an estimated 3,000 people have signed up so far.”
““Each week’s lectures will incorporate the stories of women who seek abortion in order to better portray abortion significance and rationale,” its outline states. “Other topics will include a brief history of abortion, the clinical aspects of medication and procedural abortions in and after the first trimester, an overview of patient-centered abortion-care, the basics of abortion counseling, the professional obligations of health care practitioners to ensure that women have access to safe abortion care, and the maze of restrictions that make safe abortion care inaccessible to many women.”
“In response to news of the course, Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told WORLD magazine that “obstetricians and gynecologists refuse to do abortions because they choose to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, not because their education didn’t cover abortions.”
And National Right To Life’s Randall O’Bannon, its director of education and research, stated the reason most medical schools and med students shun learning how to perform abortions is because they “recognize that abortion is the killing of human beings.””
______________________________________________
Wandering Views 
Regarding abortion: What a sad development. I know a number of women who had abortions in college. They were all negatively impacted by this choice, many having regrets twenty years later. I’m so grateful to God for sparing me from this, as I probably would’ve had an abortion myself had I become pregnant before my conversion at 26. I bought into the lie that it was my choice, my body. As a mother, I can’t imagine knowing I’d killed one of my children–one of the purest gifts God gives us.
LikeLike
We’d like to think that those who backed Obamacare would “see the light” as premiums increase. However, in my circle of liberal acquaintances, that’s not the case. My ultra-liberal sister now says, “I was never in favor of it; it is a horrible plan that was written by the Republicans and the insurance lobby and it was forced on Obama.”
LikeLike
Regarding the travel ban: I think a lot of people fail to understand the logistics of such a ban. For example, none of Canada’s airports have a direct flight to West Africa. In order to go where I needed to go, I had to take three flights, landing and taking off four times: the first a regional flight to an international airport, the second a trans-Atlantic flight to a European airport; the third, a flight down to West Africa where we first landed in Conakry, Guinea’s capital – where they had cleaners come on board – and then went on to my destination. On the way home it was the reverse, except we landed in Dakar, Senegal, to pick up passengers before going on to Europe.
On every flight and in every airport, I was surrounded by people from all different places, going to all different destinations. Going to West Africa, on the three succeeding flights, I sat next to a Canadian businessman, a European traveler, and finally, a Gambian Catholic priest returning from a pilgrimage to Israel. Returning home, on the trans-Atlantic flight from Brussels to Chicago, I found myself sitting next to a Kenyan. As all these West African countries are small and cross border travel is frequent – I encountered Guineans more than once in Gambia and the one case of Ebola in Senegal was from a traveler from Guinea – so even if all flights were banned from these countries (which would make it hard for aid workers to reach them) there is no guarantee that a Guinean or Liberian would not embark from another airport. At least now, the Guinean, Liberian and Sierra Leonean governments are screening passengers before flight; now they will be screened at the port of entry as well. That is really all that can be done.
LikeLike
It appears to me that the main problem with ebola is how long the virus can remain dormant.
LikeLike
Chas, dormant in humans or dormant on surfaces? A few days really isn’t so long for an organism to survive outside the human body, and it really varies as to how long Ebola can survive depending on the environment: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php
Influenza can survive for a few days outside the body too, given the right conditions. (up to 30 days in cold water). By comparison the Clostridium bacterial family (responsible for tetanus, C. difficile, botulism, gas gangrene, etc.) can survive for years in spore form on surfaces, even in soil..
As for the incubation in humans, a person is not infectious until symptoms develop. This is evidenced in Duncan’s case – it has now been 20 days since he landed in the U.S., only a day shy of the maximum incubation period, and there has been nobody who flew with him coming forward with symptoms.
LikeLike
Thanks roscure. I’m not sure I understand all of that.
But it isn’t encouraging.
LikeLike