Sixty to seventy years ago we had a better pandemic control system in place than we do now. The difference between then and now is several trillion dollars spent by a very liberal government on drugs and systems that only serve to line the pockets of their political friends. I have personal experience with the system of sixty years ago. At the time polio was the scourge that swept the country. There was no cure, there was no vaccine, and the virus spread like wildfire. The government did have some guidance for places to avoid, like crowds, public beaches, and people with the disease. In spite of offering that wisdom, people still go the disease. I was one of them. Polio was not new when I got it. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of our most popular presidents got polio in the thirties. The government did have time to react in ways it knew how. Because of FDR’s affliction the public had an awareness of the virus and the consequences.
One day in August of nineteen fifty-three I couldn’t get out of bed because I was sick with a high fever, my throat was on fire, and my neck was stiff and hurt too. Mom did the best she could, she called the family doctor. He came to the house in the late afternoon. Yes folks, he came to the house. That was long before people had Obama Care and even longer before there was such a thing as medical insurance. Doctor Horner examined me and told my mom that I had polio. He didn’t ask, he went to the phone and called for an ambulance. He shipped my sorry ass to a special place for quarantine. You see, folks, back then people had something called common sense. They figured that if a person had a catchy disease keep him away from other people. My family was also under quarantine within the house. Thankfully, my baby sister, or my parents did not come down with it.
The place where I served my time was the Cook County Contagious Disease Hospital at 26th and California in Chicago, right across the street from the County Jail. They designed the building specifically to treat and quarantine people with highly contagious diseases. The staff who cared for us were highly trained in basic hygienic techniques of the time. Patients who were still contagious had private cells. Parents and friends were not allowed direct contact with me. Outsiders came into a space walled off from the patient space with walls and glass. I won’t bore you with more of the sordid details of my illness, but if you search this blog for polio you will find a series of about eight stories I wrote to describe my experience.
When I watch the news about the Ebola debacle I get a chill up my spine that tells me to dig a hole and go hide inside. I watched an interview with the head of the Center for Disease Control and lost all faith in his ability to use modern medicine to stop this credible bio-terror from taking out a tenth of the population (one tenth is thirty-three million people). The President, who has taken a solemn oath to protect the United States from harm acts as though this is a take an aspirin and drink lots of fluids kind of problem. So far, he has not shown any concern for allowing this scourge to reach our country. It is within his power to deny VISA’s to anyone who is from or has been in the source countries. Wouldn’t the simplest control be to keep the virus out, and not to have to quarantine and treat millions? I read an article this week about how a private company called Firestone Tire handles Ebola. This famous tire company is in Liberia and employs up to eighty thousand people to harvest rubber. If a single person gets the virus they quarantine the person and treat him in a caring way. The workers who treat the victim follow strict rules to prevent the spread from themselves and others. Firestone has a very good record of stopping the spread while they continue business in the middle of the affected area. They don’t have a PhD in awful disease control, nor a trillion dollars for development of staff and control measures. They use common sense.
Here is what I believe will happen. There will be a pandemic in the United States, and the outcome will be this: we will learn that the money designated to the CDC got channeled to crony companies who spent it, pocketed it, banked it, and then declared bankruptcy. Remember Solyndra? If you do just think of it happening all over again only this time with money designated to take care of you.
Today, there is a great article about the machinations of the Ebola Czar within the system in The Federalist. Go there and read, then ask yourself if you are safer from bio-terror than you were ten years ago?
I have never called the White House before, but this is different. If we want the Ebola virus stopped in its tracks we have to wake up the main resident living there. I’ll have one word of advice for the guy in the sporty outfit, baseball cap, and golf shoes: QUARANTINE.
Filed under: Biography, Conservative, Government, health care | Tagged: Contagious Disease, Ebola, Ebola Czar, Pandemic, Quarantine | 9 Comments »
