INCOMPETENCE, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, OR BOTH?
by Capt. Joseph R. John (Ret.), ©2014, Co-Founder, CombatVeteransForCongress
(Oct. 20, 2014) — The primary responsibility of the leader of “any” country is to safeguard the wellbeing, security, and health of the citizens of their country. Current polls indicate that the American people have lost confidence in the elected leader of the United States because the Obama administration is not taking the necessary steps to restrict potentially infected passengers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in West Africa from entering the United States, in order to safeguard the lives and security of American citizens from being infected with the Ebola virus. The occupant of the Oval Office’s responsibility is to protect the health and safety of all Americans from being infected with diseases carried by millions of infected illegal aliens flooding across the wide-open southern border.
To date, 22 countries have imposed travel bans on passengers with passports from West African countries (including the African nations of Togo, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Rwanda, Chad, South Sudan, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Botswana, Congo, Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, and Madagascar), and 14 other countries have imposed travel restrictions on passengers with passports from West Africa. Yet CDC Director Thomas Frieden and senior Obama administration officials have said restricting passengers, who may be infected with the Ebola virus, from entering the United States would be racist and can’t be done because it would negatively affect the economies of those countries. So the US Embassies in Ebola-infected countries continue to issue visas for non-US citizens so they can enter the United States. According to Judicial Watch, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has even been “expediting” visas for the “Ebola countries.” DHS officials would not have been doing so if they had not been instructed to expedite those visas by officials in the Obama administration.
It has been one month since a 42-year-old Liberian passenger from West Africa infected with the Ebola virus arrived in Dallas. He lied while being screened on departure from West Africa and lied a second time upon being screened on entry to the US. He was then permitted to enter the United States without being quarantined (his lies are proof that screening does not work). He eventually came down with Ebola, and after prolonged treatment, succumbed. Subsequently two highly-trained infectious disease health care nurses who had been following the inept CDC guidelines while treating the infected passenger also became infected with the Ebola virus; 75 people who came in contact with the deceased passenger and the two nurses are being monitored for Ebola. In addition, hundreds of passengers who were on a Frontier Airlines flight with one of the infected nurses, after the CDC allowed her to fly on a commercial airline, are also being monitored.
Just one infected airline passenger has resulted in a requirement for health officials to monitor over 300 Americans because they have the possibility of coming down with Ebola. Despite the massive health care controls and costs that have resulted from only one Ebola-infected incoming passenger from a West African country who entered the United States, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, who was a community organizer following his graduation from Oberlin College in 1982 and who is recognized as an extreme social justice advocate, is firmly against a travel ban. Even though Frieden knows that the U.S. Health Care system does not have the capacity to isolate and treat more than four Ebola-infected patients at any one time, he continues to vigorously oppose a travel ban on arriving passengers with passports from West Africa or by quarantining them.
Obama has refused to put a procedure in place to either restrict the entry of passengers from West Africa or quarantine them. We know that 150 passengers from West Africa are being allowed to enter the United States every day. The American people have been told that only 94% of those 150 passengers entering the US each day are being screened at five US International Airports, when passengers from West Africa are flying into nine US International airports (and we know that screening does not work). So the screening procedures that do not work, and established up by CDC Director Frieden to control a killer disease, are so poorly established that they still allow 3,285 passengers from Ebola-infected West African countries to avoid the screening measures Frieden set up (we know screening has not work, because passengers lie).
The polls indicate the American people are very concerned about the transmission of the Ebola virus and that 66% of them want a travel ban imposed on all passengers arriving in the United States from West Africa. Yesterday The Washington Times reported that experts in infectious disease control point to an experiment 25 years ago that proved one Ebola strain in monkeys had the potential for becoming airborne. Yet Judicial Watch, the government watchdog group, alleged on Friday that Obama is formulating plans to admit Ebola-infected non-US citizens into the US for treatment—we are finding it hard to believe that report is accurate, because it would be an insane indefensible new Obama administration policy if it were true.
From the turn of the century until illegal immigrants from Mexico were allowed to violate federal immigration laws, no immigrants were ever allowed to set foot on the US mainland unless they were first landed on an island in New York Harbor, Ellis Island, so they could be screened to determine if they were carriers of infectious and communicable diseases. For the last six years, CDC Director Frieden has not done his job and looked the other way while millions of illegal aliens have flooded across the wide-open southern border, with the knowledge that many have been carriers of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, whooping cough, smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, plague, yellow fever, measles, leprosy, pertussis, enterovirus D-68, etc.
Most recently, 90,000 illegal aliens up to age 18 from Central America, improperly referred to as “children” by the Obama administration and the left-of-center liberal media establishment, flooded across the southern border along with illegal alien adults masquerading as their chaperones. Yet CDC Director Frieden did not insist that those illegal alien children be medically screened for infectious diseases, nor did he quarantine any of them, before they were immediately transported to all 50 states. After the illegal-alien children entered the United States, the Obama administration acted as human smugglers and flew them all over the country, forcing their enrollment in public grammar schools.
Hospitals across the nation began reporting the sudden appearance of a severe respiratory illness affecting children, the enterovirus (referred to as either D-68 or EV-D68). That enterovirus epidemic occurred only after the surge of illegal-alien children flooded across the wide open southern border from Central America, a region where the D-68 is prevalent among young children. Up until the surge there was no enterovirus epidemic in the US and D-68 was rare. Writes Simpson, “Between 1970 and 2005, only 26 cases of D-68 were reported in the US.” Citing HHS statistics, Simpson wrote that 27,876 cases of D-68 in 46 states have been reported to the CDC since August 18th, but those cases have been covered up. Six children and two adults have died to date from the epidemic. CDC Director Frieden refuses to explain where the epidemic that infected more than 27,000 children came from and has been spreading misleading information about the epidemic.
Children’s Hospital Colorado treated 3,600 children between August 18 and September 24 and at least 692 since then. On September 5th, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital saw a one-day record of 540 children. The emergency room was filled to capacity in USA Children’s & Women’s Hospital in Mobile, Alabama that reported 340 cases by September 12th. In the below-listed article, James Simpson wrote, “Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri had seen 450 patients as of September 7th, 60 of whom required intensive care. At least six Chicago area hospitals were so overwhelmed that they stopped admitting patients under 18 ‘until further notice.’ Many infected children across the nation are experiencing some form of paralysis.”
Obama administration officials and CDC Director Frieden have been telling the press and the American people that deploying 4,000 (the number has increased from 3,000) improperly-trained members of the US Armed Forces and Reserves into an Ebola-plagued and infectious environment will not result in their being infected with the Ebola virus. Yet we know that 277 doctors, nurses, and health care professionals in Western Africa who took every conceivable precaution to avoid contracting Ebola are now dead. So when CDC Director Frieden blamed the poor nurses who contracted Ebola and said they “breached protocol” and repeated the Obama administration mantra that it is extremely hard to contract Ebola—he wasn’t telling the truth, but the American people are now becoming very familiar with Obama’s politically-appointed officials lying to the American public.
Because of how the Obama administration has handled this very serious Ebola crisis resulting from just one Ebola infected case, and because medical professionals in infectious disease control have warned that there is a very serious risk in deploying 4,000 untrained military personnel from the 101st Airborne Division and military Reservists to West Africa’s Ebola-infested environment, the American people have a high degree of concern for their safety. Americans have watched while Obama has disregarded warnings about the health and safety of military personnel being improperly trained and then deployed to an infectious disease environment. We have been informed that members of the US Armed Forces and Reserve personnel will only receive four hours of training before being deployed to Ebola-infested West Africa.
Common sense and sound judgment should have dictated that Obama send only highly-trained civilian contractors with in-depth medical experience who knew how to deal with infectious disease control. To order military personnel who have been involved in combat for 13 years, are suffering mentally from the prolonged combat, and are not able to resist an order to be deployed to fight an infectious killer disease; to take military personnel away from their families and expose them to the incredible risk of contracting Ebola, is unconscionable. It is another example of a string of extremely poor judgment calls by Obama in his handling of this health crisis. The mission for the US Military is not to deploy throughout the world to fight dangerous infectious disease; the mission of the US Armed Forces is to combat enemies of the Republic, to combat terrorists throughout the world, and to secure the borders of the United States..
Health care professionals and civilian contractors who are professionally-trained in infectious disease prevention should have been sent to West Africa; common sense dictates that doctors, nurses, and lab technicians who are properly trained are the personnel who should deal with Ebola. CDC Director Frieden is now telling the broader medical community in the US that all hospital and medical personnel in the US must be “retrained” because they haven’t seemed to be able to handle the medical procedures designed to prevent them from contracting Ebola. If that is true, then members of the 101st Airborne Division and Reservists, with four hours of training, who have never been involved in controlling infectious diseases, can’t possibly be expected to protect themselves from the Ebola disease.
If the occupant of the Oval Office ordered the CDC to quarantine all arriving passengers with passports from Ebola-infected countries in West Africa, he would also have had to require the quarantining of illegal aliens flooding across the border. It would not be politically correct to close the border—-so political correctness is hazarding the health of the nation. For one month, the American people have heard representatives of the Obama administration and CDC Director Frieden present poor and inept augments about why the United States should not restrict the entry of passengers with visas from West Africa or quarantine them for the 21- day incubation period. Yet 22 countries have already imposed a travel ban and restricted all travel, and 14 other countries are imposing other controls on passengers with passports from West Africa.
Because the Secretary of Health and Human Services, CDC Director Frieden, and the occupant of the Oval Office haven’t been able to properly deal with this health care crisis, the Occupant of the Oval Office decided to appoint someone to deal with the problems he is faced with. Instead of appointing a public health medically-trained professional in infectious disease control, Obama appointed another Czar who is an attorney (which is nonsense on the face of it), and has him reporting to Susan Rice (a further indication of extremely poor management). The new Ebola Czar is simply a political appointment to take the pressure off himself and Frieden, who has proven to be incompetent in his handling of the epidemic affecting over 27,000 children and the Ebola crisis.
There is no reason why for the next six months Obama should not order the State Department to instruct the Consular Service to cease issuing visas to all travelers from West Africa; that action would permit health care medical teams and hospitals throughout the nation with the required time to be properly trained to deal with the potential of an Ebola epidemic. Once that is accomplished, and for the health and safety of all Americans, all immigrants with the potential risk of carrying infectious disease, whether entering the nation as airline passengers or across the southern border, must be quarantined as they once were on Ellis Island (and just as CBP Inspectors currently quarantines dogs and cats). That can only be accomplished if Obama will deploy 4,000 US Military personnel to the southern border to secure it once and for all.
We encourage you to support the election of the 31 endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress listed in the attachment; they will work to close the border.
Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Capt USN(Ret)
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184
San Diego, CA 92108
Fax: (619) 220-0109
http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” -Isaiah 6:8
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/how-an-obama-administration-policy-is-destroying-lives/
The only true and sure thing that wafts out of Obama is guaranteed to be a lie and the exact wrong thing for this country.
To add insult to injury, congress will do absolutely nothing about it.