By: Dale Weckbacher
Proverbs 12:15
The way of a fool is
right in his own eyes,
But he who heeds
counsel is wise.
NKJV
A leader is only as good as the people with which he or she
surrounds him or herself. A wise leader
has wise advisors surrounding them, enabling them to make wise decisions. A foolish leader surrounds him or herself
with yes men and woman who just go along with the leaders plans, never
questioning them even when the facts prove they are wrong. History is often the best advisor for making
wise decisions but, unfortunately, leaders often fail to learn lessons from the
past.
The threat of an Ebola outbreak in the United States has
been front and center in the minds of many in our country. Usually with less than three weeks before an
election, one would think the election would be front and center in people’s
minds but with a real threat to people’s health, Ebola has the spotlight at
this time. However, Ebola is not the
first time our nation has faced a serious health epidemic for our nation also
faced a serious epidemic of influenza in 1918 providing us with an opportunity
to learn how to handle a potential Ebola epidemic.
According to a paper appearing in the 2010 issue of Public
Health Reports, the city of New York approached the 1918 influenza epidemic by
making use of its existing public health infrastructure. The city developed this infrastructure during
previous campaigns against tuberculosis.
(1) Health officials worked to prevent the spread
of the contagion by
1)
Distancing healthy New Yorkers from those
infected
2)
Increasing disease surveillance
3)
Mounting a large-scale health education campaign
4)
Regulation of public places such as schools and
theaters.
5)
Mandatory and voluntary control measures such as
those used for spitting. (1)
Implementation of these measures was effective for even
though 100 million people died worldwide from influenza, the excess death rate
for New York was only 4.7 as compared to 6.5 in Boston and 7.3 in
Philadelphia. (1) The epidemic did take many New Yorker’s lives
but the implementation of these measures may have saved potentially thousands
of lives. However, we must ask if the
CDC is willing or even able to learn from the past and implement similar measures.
Today’s society is much more mobile than the society of 1918
so separating healthy from unhealthy people will be more difficult. However, as of this time, only two people
have contracted the disease in the country and they are being isolated from the
rest of us. We still have time to keep
the numbers of those contracting Ebola small so they can easily be isolated
from the general public.
However, if people from infected countries continue to
freely enter our country, exposing more people, the numbers could expand
exponentially into a full-blown epidemic.
We therefore must ban entry into the country from nations already experiencing
an epidemic. Even though this sounds
logical our society is not only more mobile than the society of 1918, it is
also more political.
In a recent interview on CNN, David Quammen, an Ebola expert
and author of Ebola Spillover said the following:
“You can’t isolate neighborhoods,
you can’t isolate nations. It doesn’t
work. And people talk about, “Well, we
shouldn’t allow any flights from Liberia.”
I mean, we in America, how dare we turn our backs on Liberia given the
fact that this is a country that was founded in the 1820s, 1830s because of
American slavery. We have a
responsibility to stay connected to them and help them see this through,” (2)
In other words, our nation’s history of slavery from back in
the 1820s and 1830s, something we ended after the Civil War, and something
nobody alive today participated in, means we must now expose innocent citizens
of the United States to a deadly disease as some form of politically correct
punishment. This form of perverted warped
logic can only exist in a PC liberal world.
I am sure we could come up with examples of where
implementing the other four parts of New York’s strategy would be difficult or
even impossible in the current politically correct environment. Once again, we see how political correctness
is now placing the lives of all citizens in jeopardy. I imagine the ACLU will be right there
claiming some temporary measure designed to protect the public infringes on
civil liberties and must be stopped. In
abnormal circumstances like a potential Ebola outbreak, we may need to temporarily
sacrifice some civil liberties in the interest of our safety. (3)
While the number of those infected in the United States is
low, the President must use his beloved phone and pen. He can use his phone to call the FAA and ban
flights from affected countries. He can
also use his phone to ban ships coming from these countries. He can then use his pen to sign an executive
order banning entry into the country by people from these countries to make it
official. I normally do not support
executive orders from this President but with the potential of a serious epidemic,
I believe an executive order is called for at this time.
If the President refuses to use his pen and phone for this
purpose, Speaker Boehner needs to call Congress back for an emergency session
to pass legislation banning flights from the affected countries and close our wide-open
southern border. This will force the
Senate to vote on the legislation for failing to do so would mean a sure loss
for incumbents currently running for reelection. This will force the President to sign or veto
the legislation, and with his approval ratings at historic lows, he will most
likely sign the legislation so as not to risk a voter backlash in the mid-term
elections.
It is time for my fellow political avengers to take action
by calling and emailing the White House and ask the President to issue an
executive order banning flights and securing the borders. We also must flood the phone lines of the
House and Senate urging them to take a break from campaigning and do their job
of protecting the citizens of the country.
New York got it right in 1918 and
was able to save thousands of lives. We
still have time to learn from them and prevent an Ebola outbreak that could
cause thousands or even millions to lose their lives.
1. Alimone, Francesco. The 1918 Influenza
Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response. www.ncbi.nim.gov.
[Online] National Institutes of Health, 2010. [Cited: October 16, 2014.]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862336/.
2. Allen, Elizabeth.
You Won’t Believe Why This Ebola Expert Told CNN US Cannot Ban Flights From
West Africa. www.thefederalistpapers.org. [Online] The Federalist
Papers, October 3, 2014. [Cited: October 16, 2014.]
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/you-wont-believe-why-this-ebola-expert-told-cnn-us-cannot-ban-flights-from-west-africa.
3. Krauthammer,
Charles. Ebola vs. Civil Liberties. www.nationalreview.com. [Online]
The National Review, October 16, 2014. [Cited: October 16, 2014.]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390529/ebola-vs-civil-liberties-charles-krauthammer.
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