On July 7th, I blogged about the smug assurance given us about a possible ebola outbreak. from Laurie Garrett, a Senior Fellow on global health at the Council of Foreign Relations who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for chronicling an ebola outbreak in the Congo.
Here is what Ms. Garrett had to say at that time:
“I think the last thing we need to be concerned about is \’oh, will ebola come to America\’. So let\’s just take that off the table for now and get real.
“Getting real is, we have an unprecedented situation that\’s very hard to forecast, because we\’ve never had urban ebola before as well as rural. We\’ve never had a situation where ebola\’s coming out of the rainforest, and the rainforest happens to cut across all three of the countries. So we don\’t actually know how many of these cases are reintroductions from the wild bats and monkeys that usually are the transmitters of this really rare virus in humans. The third thing is, it\’s cross-border we\’ve never had that situation before…”
My reaction at the time was:
Am I missing something here? How can Ms. Garrett first tell us it is ridiculous to consider the possibility that ebola will come to America – “…let\’s just take that off the table for now and get real”….
….and then, her very next words are that we have an unprecedented situation (i.e. one we\’ve never seen play out before) in which ebola is in urban areas (i.e. places where business people might travel to, and then travel to America)”.
If that isn\’t self-contradictory, I\’d love to know what is.
Well now, two months later, as the ebola outbreak has become so widespread and so intense that there are predictions millions of people will die because of it, we have this, excerpted from Al Weaver\’s article at dailycaller.com – and please pay special attention to the part I\’ve put in bold print:
Accordingto an Ebola expert, the porous U.S.-Mexico border is creating issuesthat could lead to widespread contraction of Ebola, tuberculosis anda mystery respiratory disease.
Dr.Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of AmericanPhysicians and Surgeons, told Laura Ingraham\’s radio showWednesday that children who have crossed the border and are now inAmerican schools, could spread the trio of viruses as the illegalchildren may not have been screened or quarantined thoroughly.
Accordingto Orient, the current situation America faces is a “public healthnightmare” and that almost all cases of tuberculosis in America arebrought to the country via “foreign born individuals.”
Orientalso warned against the possibility of Ebola being spread in America,stating that illegal children “could be” infecting otherstudents, and that “it only takes one infected child.”
“Wedon\’t know for sure the government is being real tight-lipped aboutthis. It only takes one infected child to infect the whole classroom.[…] One infected child can infect somebody else and eventually youhave thousands of cases being admitted to the hospital,” Orienttold the radio host.
Asking Laurie Garrett: are you still as smugly self-assured as you were in early July? Is ebola still the last thing we have to worry about? Do you still think we should “get real” and forget about the possibility of it hitting our shores?
I suggest Ms. Garrett rethink those comments.
And I insist that – if, God forbid, ebola becomes a domestic horror show because President Obama allowed illegals to enter the USA and be distributed around the country at taxpayer expense, while congresspeople who wanted to inspect where they were being held were prevented from doing so – he be made to answer for his actions…
…along with his Accomplice Media, which have looked the other way, thus allowing him to do it.
