I’ve never been a fan of Obama, but I fully admit to thinking he would turn out to be harmless. I expected a more pussified version of Clinton with a bigger dose of self-regard. He would fiddle around the edges here and there, maybe raise taxes a bit, get out of the Bush wars and that’s about it. I never imagined he would be so clownishly incompetent. I fully assumed the adults would keep him from breaking anything important for fear he would be a one term president.
Boy was I wrong.
We now have a second Ebola case. This one is vastly worse the first one. The poor Vietnamese girl could be explained as a mistake and an isolated one. This second one is not. Worse yet, the woman was allowed on a plane and now we may have hundreds of unknown people exposed to the virus. All of this is due to the administrations unwillingness to block all flight from Ebola countries. We know why too. If the Ebola outbreak had occurred in Scandinavia or Israel, Obama would have closed the airports immediately.
Lion of the Blogosphere has an interesting question. How much is this going to cost?
One or two in one location is probably a few million. Thousands spread across the nation moves into the billions category quickly. The whole country has to stop and re-engineer public health just because President Ebola let one of his tribesmen in from Liberia.
Carter came to be defined by Iran. The public concluded that he was simply not up to the task. They could forgive a lot, but the cumulative effect of his failures eventually collapsed his presidency. Bush the Smaller was undone by Katrina. It was not fair and most people were sane enough to get that, but it still came to symbolize the problems of his presidency.
Obama, on the other hand, has made his own mess. He will be remembered as President Ebola, the man who willingly imported a plague into the United States.
It isn’t just ebola. We’re seeing a lot of EV-D68 in children and that is coming from the wide open southern border, illegal immigrant children, and the feds sending them all around the country.
I can remember when AIDS started to get attention back in the 80’s, being told by the smarter set that there was an epidemic, you would either die of AIDS or surely have many family members and friends dying from it. Contrast that to Ebola, that infects the same way as AIDS, through contact with body fluids. “Can’t happen here. No need to worry. Stop making a fuss.”
Politics, indifference, or imcompetence…
I, too, thought similar to your opening paragraph, that there would be enough decent people in the Democrat party to keep his inexperience in check. While I appreciate Panetta and others coming out lately to criticize, it seems to late to prevent further consequences of this presidency. And it also has some political scent to it, trying to make Hillary seem good.
I’ve had Obama’s Number since day 1, and have been filled with a combination of dread and foreboding since his election, and then total disbelief that so many gullible and/or stupid people are allowed the privilege of voting and REELECTED this empty suit, this cypher. Now, some people are recovering from their Kool-aid hangover and express dismay and regret. Too little, too late. President Prevaricator has 2 more years in which to inflict more damage on the country. That is, unless he gets Ebola.
Consider this: what is going to happen when much of the country’s health care system is overrun with the care of Ebola patients? Not just the costs, which of course will be enormous, but simply providing care. The hazmat suits, the safety protocols, the isolation of the patients, etc. Even if the country gets lucky and is spared an epidemic, think of the enormity of caring for just 10 of theses patients in one hospital. Then consider that we haven’t hit flu season yet. Or stomach bug season. Both are just around the corner. What happens when hundreds, if not thousands all over the country show up at their closest emergency room with flu or stomach bug symptoms? Lots of people will imagine they’ve contracted Ebola. This has a real potential of completely overwhelming the health care system.
I don’t have any doubt that the world will experience a Black Death style plague that wipes out a good chunk of its people in this century. The demographic conditions are just right for this, and health experts have been predicting a pandemic for years now (its one of the many facts about the modern world that are not discussed much because they are too depressing).
I’m not persuaded that Ebola is IT, however. From what I’ve seen, it just doesn’t appear to be that contagious.
Its interesting that the US has now had three two term presidents in a row, and all three were pretty terrible. The only other period in American history where there were three two term presidents in the role was the Virginia Dynasty of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (there is also FDRs four terms, followed by Truman, but nothing else comes close). And the only period that comes close for having successive bad presidential administrations is the mid-nineteenth century, but then of course you get Lincoln interrupting that sequence. The 24 years between 1909 and 1933 might be another candidate, but its very arguable.
One aspect of the Ebola scare/outbreak/plague (you decide which) or even a similar disease is that hospitals can only deal with so many cases at a time. Very quickly healthcare providers will not be able to cope. If doctors and nurses get infected there are rapidly fewer of them to deal with more ‘eruptions’ and very soon the whole system — approved insurance policy or not — breaks down.
Once it gets to that tipping point the spread cannot be contained and the number of infected simply explodes. People will retreat from contact and untold numbers will probably die in isolation because no one will know, or care.
The issue with hospitals coping has been highlighted in various ‘end of the world’ movies. Just dragging oneself to a hospital, thinking people will care when they simply cannot and where everyone is dying, won’t help.
“hospitals can only deal with so many cases at a time”
Apparently that number is 1. When the hospital in Dallas took in Patient Zero, they emptied their ICU of every other patient of theirs and distributed them around Dallas to other hospitals. The CDC had one job to do, prevent and prepare the country for the spread of communicable disease, and failed miserably at it. The Left blamed Bush personally for FEMA’s failure to handle Katrina (although there are reasons for that since FEMA was mostly a small reinsurance agency at the time and had fewer than 2000 employees including office clerks and typists, and many fewer disaster experts working in the field). I’m sure the Left will treat Obama, The Perfect One, a lot more kindly than they treated W.
I believe the quote from Shrub II that the Leftist swill used to excoritate him was “Helluva job there, Brownie!” in reference to the Federal response to Katrina.
It works now in more ways than one…
I agree. More “clownish incompetence”…
http://rightreactions.blogspot.com/2014/10/obamas-new-ebola-experts.html