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The Centers for Disease Control Loses Its Grip
I have lived long enough, now, to have seen it again and again. Something goes badly wrong involving a corporation, a university, a religious denomination, or a branch of government, and the executive in charge or a designated minion goes before the press to engage in what is euphemistically called “damage control.” The spokesman does not level with the public. He or she tries to be reassuring and — more often than not — by lying, succeeds in undermining confidence in the institution he or she represents.
This is what is now going on with the Centers for Disease Control. In recent years, this well-respected outfit has branched out, opining in a politically correct manner on one issue after another outside its proper remit. Now it is faced with a matter absolutely central to its responsibilities — actual disease control — and it flips and flops and flounders because the ultimate boss, the President of the United States, cannot bring himself to put limits on contacts between Americans and the citizens of the countries in Africa where there is an Ebola epidemic.
There is only one way to prevent the spread of an epidemic, and that is quarantine. No medical professional with any sense would suggest that we should admit individuals from Liberia to the United States at this time, and no medical professional worth his or her salt would say that we can test for the disease when the prospective visitor arrives at Immigration and Passport Control. Like most diseases, Ebola has an incubation period. Early on, there are no symptoms: none at all. There is no reliable way to tell whether those arriving at our ports of entry have contracted the disease or not. If we do not want it coming here, for a time, we have to keep everyone out who has been in that neck of the woods.
And what are we told by the authorities? That cutting off contact would contribute to the spread of the epidemic. “Just how?” we are entitled to ask. But no explanation is given because, of course, there is none. We were also told that the disease would not come here. And, when it did come here, we were told that it could easily be contained. And, when it was not contained and a medical professional wearing all the proper gear came down with the disease, we were told that he did not follow the protocol.
Perhaps, the medical professional in question really did fail to follow the protocol, though, he apparently has no notion how he fell short. Perhaps, that is it; then again, perhaps not. Honesty would require that the director of the CDC tell the truth — which is, that he does not know how this particular individual contracted Ebola.
But this he cannot say. For that would cause us to worry, and his responsibility, as he and those above him conceive it, is to cover for the President of the United States. In fact, he works for thee and me. Our taxes make it possible for him to draw a paycheck. But this, in company with nearly everyone in the Obama administration, he has somehow forgotten; and so, in a servile fashion, he goes out in public to defend with forked tongue a policy he and every medical professional in the country knows is madness.
The truth is simple. There is an epidemic in Africa. The disease that is spreading like wildfire is horrible beyond imagination. We have suspicions as to how it spreads, but we do not know for sure. The only certain way to avoid its propagation is to avoid contact, and the President of the United States, who operates in an intellectual bubble, is unwilling to do what it is necessary to do to prevent people in the country he is sworn to serve and defend from coming into contact with contagious individuals who have the disease.
It is the duty of public servants, such as the Director of the CDC, to speak the truth in public. We are, after all, a self-governing people, and we ought not to be treated as little children who need to be reassured even when the news is anything but reassuring. But speaking the truth in all frankness and admitting ignorance seems beyond this man. Were he to do so, were he in public to say what every competent medical professional understands — that to prevent this plague from coming to North America we need to refuse for a time to accept visitors from much of Africa — he would no doubt be cashiered by the man whom, at the ballot box, we put in charge. And being cashiered he fears far more than deserving to be cashiered.
There was a time — I remember that time — when public officials and even political appointees resigned when called upon to carry out a policy they sincerely thought to be contrary to the interests of the American people. There was a time when public servants had a powerful sense of their own dignity and conducted themselves in a manner suited to free human beings. But that time appears to have passed — and those who hold high office act today as if they were the President’s slaves.
What a country we have become! We have journalists who prostitute themselves for a political party. We have civil servants who will gaily break the law for partisan purposes. We have cabinet members who do not believe in the policies they are called upon to implement, but who do not resign. We have an Attorney General who thinks that the obstruction of justice is his job. And we have a Congress unwilling to call anyone to account.
I fear for my country.
Image Credit: “CDC Headquarters PHIL 10693” by James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – http://www.cdc.gov/media/subtopic/library/building.htm. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in General
You’ve made a terrific bunch of comments in this thread.
My biggest problem with the CDC is that they don’t seem to have done all the obvious things to constrain the epidemic once it became clear that it was out of control in the host countries.
Saying “the virus may get to America” after you’ve done every reasonable thing to constrain it is a reasonable statement of caution. Saying “it’s inevitable” before doing every reasonable thing makes one think that the CDC is either careless or clueless.
Basic stuff? Really?
How many of the potentially hundreds of people the Liberian guy came into contact with contracted ebola? Apparently, only 1…who worked on him in the quarantine.
Apparently not so basic stuff.
What are the “obvious” and “reasonable” things in this case?
Things that are “obvious and reasonable” to the layman, may not be so to the people who are experts in the field.
Paul,
Absolutely so, thank you for reminding us of what integrity sounds like. However Ebola works out, the American People deserve better than these creatures.
Regards,
Jim
Sorry, AIG. No one on this thread asserted any of the things you attributed to us as “conservatives.” I did, however, charge the CDC wit not leveling with us, and I did so because what they said was contrary to common sense. Re-read my piece. It is ridiculous to say that we are made safer by admitting people from the countries where the epidemic has spread. It is also ridiculous to suppose that the disease can be diagnosed at the airport. When smart people say things that everyone can see are not true, you have to figure that they are up to the usual tricks.
Your third paragraph is ridiculous and unjust. Obama deserves a lot of blame for a lot of things. But the point is what we should do — and the answer is provided by common sense. Keep away from people with so awful a contagious disease and keep them out of this country.
You would do well to stop impugning the motives of others on this website. Those who do not like Barack Obama have reasons for their views, and here they state them. It is legitimate to contest their arguments. It is vile to attack their motives, and it suggests that something may be amiss with yours.
Huh? Infectious disease prevention IS basic enough, and it starts with quarantining, upstream from the place you want to avoid infecting. That means keeping people who may become infectious away from our shores until a waiting period has ended.
The fact that (as you rightly point out) Ebola transmission is not so obvious MAKES MY POINT. Unless and until we really understand why and how people get infected, it is best to quarantine – and to do it elsewhere.
Because some — I would argue, many — bureaucrats really do function as public servants. Others, such as those within the IRS who followed Lois Lerner’s lead, are a disgrace.
I do not think that it is as well understood as you do. Some of the literature on the subject suggests that it has evolved and that it now spreads more easily than before. The real question, which I regard as unanswered, is whether it can spread through the air. The protocols followed by the CDC presuppose that this is a possibility; those recommended and apparently followed in Dallas do not. SARS was contained, but in Toronto just barely. Had it spread more widely, the death toll would have been much, much higher; and, if the health facilities had been overwhelmed (which might well have happened), the survival rate would have gone down.
I repeat. The WHO claims suggests that this is a greater danger than the influenza epidemic of 1917. Perhaps this is a grotesque exaggeration. Perhaps not. All that I will say is that, in matters like this, one should err on the side of caution, and that is not what we are doing.
Thank you for your comments. I hope that you are right.
Yes, indeed. That was my point. But I do not get the impression that AIG is on this thread for any purpose other than to vent his wrath at what he takes conservatives to be.
As I figured.
I hope that he is right. But I have my doubts. Previous Ebola outbreaks went nowhere. This one is spreading rapidly. Diseases evolve.
As you may remember, that was my fate as well.
Amen.
If said experts did not appear to be lying, sure. However, the left has trotted out experts on many things, from global warming to DDT to Salt and Carbs in my diet.
Why should I believe these government experts over any others.
Further, if I should believe experts, what about WHO?
I’d like to think that I am that way. Perhaps as a 22 year government employee I am no good.
And here we go again…
Yep. Nothing to do with the “CDC loses grip”, “I fear for my country” sort of hysterical over-reactions based on “common sense” stuff that apparently everyone knows…except for the experts who are the ones dealing with these cases and actually risking their lives on.
So let me get this straight: people who are the ones who actually come into contact with the infected person, and who are the ones in greatest danger of being infected…are incompetent AND liers…and don’t know the “basic stuff” on how to protect themselves. But people on the internet, and classics professors, get the “basic stuff”…apparently all learned from Leviticus.
Got it. Nope. Must be my “wrath” at what “I think conservatives are”.
Now, none of this surprises me. After 6 years of hysterical over-reaction, one couldn’t really expect certain segments of the “conservative” movement not to tie this to Obama. What surprises me is that no one has yet mentioned the MSM or the Fed yet. Surely, the Fed must have something to do with this.
PS: I’m sorry, but there’s just no way to take this sort of reaction seriously. It’s just way too Newsmax-y.
Let’s set aside, for a moment, factual disagreement as to the communicability of ebola and look just at the government’s response. Compared to other purported health hazards, the response can only be characterized as tepid. Think of all the heavy-handed “zero tolerances” and “lockdowns” to which we are subjected over far more trivial dangers. If such policies are ever justified, surely zero entry of infected individuals from affected areas should head the list.
The only semi cogent reason given for not blocking travel from affected areas is that it would prevent help from being sent. Surely, such experts could discover the existence of one-way flights. Any wonder so few of us trust government agencies, even the CDC?
BTW – what would be the attitude of those so certain that coughs and sneezes (which inevitably contain body fluids) cannot transmit ebola, were an infected individual to cough or sneeze in the vicinity their child?
In case, you have forgotten, AIG, here is the gist of what common sense teaches:
There is only one way to prevent the spread of an epidemic, and that is quarantine. No medical professional with any sense would suggest that we should admit individuals from Liberia to the United States at this time, and no medical professional worth his or her salt would say that we can test for the disease when the prospective visitor arrives at Immigration and Passport Control. Like most diseases, Ebola has an incubation period. Early on, there are no symptoms: none at all. There is no reliable way to tell whether those arriving at our ports of entry have contracted the disease or not. If we do not want it coming here, for a time, we have to keep everyone out who has been in that neck of the woods.
No politically-connected expert who departs from common sense of this sort deserves trust. The climate experts who have been pushing the global warming scam for the last twenty years have shown us just how easy it is for scientists to abuse the claim to expertise in pursuit of a political end.
AIG,
You are dead wrong on this one. They are counting on the dead bodies cropping up after the election. Stop helping them get away with murder. If you are interested my mother worked in Jonas Salk’s laboratory in Pittsburgh. This was before he had the vaccine. There were three strains of Polio virus that had to be separated. They infected Rhesus monkeys with the virus. My mother’s job was dissecting the infected monkeys. She was pregnant with my older sister at the time. I am sure that my father said nothing. They had offered her the job without his prior knowledge or approval of her duties. She was very idealistic and would not back away from the task. My father was stoic and taciturn. Growing up I didn’t know the whole story as they didn’t talk about it. Every so often my father would make some strange joke at Jonas Salk’s expense. This seemed odd to me and very out of character as my father always gave credit where credit was due.
You see AIG when it’s your wife and your child the glorious magical aura of science wears a little thin. I think he hated Jonas Salk until the day he died.
Time to grow up.
Regards,
Jim
Not sure what your anecdote has to do with the issue at hand. People who are studying these diseases obviously HAVE to put their lives at risk to do so. The chance of being infected, is always there for them.
I don’t see where anyone there had some “magical aura” of science delusion.
What we’re expected to believe here, instead, is that the very same people from the CDC and elsewhere who are the ones who actually…purposefully…expose themselves to the diseased individuals…are more incompetent than armchair epidemiologists on the internet.
Apparently, not only are they deceiving us, lying to us…but they must also have very little regard for their own lives to be incompetent too.
Ahh!! But we’re not supposed to “trust” scientists because…insert favorite unrelated attack on Leftism, science and academia here.
Fine. I hope you don’t approach the rest of your life with that sort of mentality, given that all your doctors fall under that category too, as do the engineers who designed your car and roads and houses and toasters, and the scientists who developed the chemicals in your toothbrush.
Start applying the same logic as the one used here, to every other area of your life. Soon enough, you’d end up living in a cave starting fires with sticks, since everything else is made by “scientists”, and well, who can trust them!
So, where’s the “common sense” here?
Common sense isn’t to hyperventilate because 1 person was infected, while dealing with someone in quarantine (I thought quarantine was the solution to everything here?).
Common sense isn’t to expect a 100% guaranteed solution to the problem of…disease…and when the fantasized 100% safety guarantee doesn’t materialize, start blaming people for incompetence…because “it seems to me they’re not doing enough”.
I’m sorry, I’m going to have to repeat my question form before once more, since you didn’t answer the first time.
Are you implying that your “common sense”, as a classics professor at a small midwestern university, on matters of disease control and prevention, is more insightful than those of the people who not only are experts in the field, but also are the ones who actually put their lives in risk?
Ahh! I missed it the first time. “No politically connected expert”! Well that answers everything then. Politically-connected ones are the ones that don’t have the “common sense”, even if they also put themselves on the line by purposely exposing themselves to patients.
For what particular reason “politically connected” ones lack “common sense”, I’m not sure, given the reaction of the same “politically connected” CDC in previous global epidemics.
Either way. This argument sounds familiar. I believe the Left uses the same argument every time some scientists “paid by big oil and the Koch brothers” says something they disagree with.
But when we do it, it’s ok.
AIG,
Best I can tell, your only argument is that questioning the CDC is the same as being a truther.
Clearly, the Obama Administration has lied about item after item. They lie about the open borders, they lie about the IRS, they lie about Bengazhi, they lie about selling weapons to drug dealers, they lie about air strikes against ISIS. They lie about the Secret Service. They lie about health insurance. They lie about the VA. They lie about climate change. Over and over, lies.
When an administration lies all the time, it is not crazy to think that this time there might be lies too. Clearly the CDC’s message has been poor.
As Paul noted, the clear and obvious answer to contain a disease is to enact a quarantine, which they can not done.
Further, why refuse to track everyone that came into contact with the patient? They did not track this health care worker. In what world does that make sense.
Really, the issue here has become that the Obama Administration has a theme of incompetence. They cannot even spend billions and get a webpage to work right. But in this one area, if anyone questions the competency of the CDC (who spent money on things like Gun Control), then we are nuts.
Here is a challenge:
Instead of attacking us, please explain why the CDC is different than the VA or Secret Service, and that this organization, which clearly has a political agenda for the left (AKA working on Gun Control), is somehow more trustworthy and competent than the other organizations.
Instead of saying I am a loon, how about making an argument other than “Hey man, back off, they are scientists!”
AIG, you just don’t get it — or, rather, you deliberately obfuscate. It is the politically-conected director of the CDC who speaks — a man who does not risk his own life. He sends other people to risk theirs. It is not the CDC that speaks. As for common sense, I am not speaking of any common sense I possess because I am an historian at a midwestern college. I am speaking of the common sense that my fourteen-year-old daughter also possesses.
We have gotten used to being mislead by the individuals appointed to head federal agencies. They speak for the President of the United States, their master; they do not speak for the people who work in the agencies. Think about the lies told at the time of Benghazi. The folks who put their lives on the line knew about the lying. Or consider the lies told by the head of the Secret Service and consider the cover-ups. Or think about the lies being peddled by the head of the IRS. A lot of hard drives went down the tubes, didn’t they?
To the folks who’ve bought in to the myth of “experts”:
““We have to rethink the way we address Ebola infection control because even a single infection is unacceptable,” Frieden said.”
They “accepted” it when they said Ebola coming to the US was inevitable, and didn’t ban travelers with the disease, as they do and have done with other diseases.
“The CDC said it does not yet know how the Dallas nurse became infected….
“Now, every time a nurse put on or takes off protective gear used, he or she is watched by the CDC to ensure it is done safely, Frieden said.”
That will scale well.
What we saw in Africa was that the “containment” model of Ebola care quickly broke down as health-care workers became infected and died. Apparently this outbreak is harder to contain than the CDC protocols allow for.
“National Nurses United has repeatedly warned that nurses are not being adequately trained to care for Ebola patients, despite assurances from public health officials that the system is ready to cope with the virus.”
And the first-line “experts” aren’t getting the training the CDC tells us they are.
“Feds rethinking Ebola strategy”
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/220565-cdc-more-nurses-might-have-ebola
Just last month Frieden was telling us that we are “well prepared” for this. Now the model’s broken down on first contact with the enemy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/us-health-ebola-usa-idUSKCN0HP2F720140930
It is even worse than you say, Prof. Rahe. The idea that we can screen people coming from places like Liberia is insane. Forget about basic hygiene: it is a country where even the elite believe in human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. Ask any old Liberia hand about the “heartmen” and their work for the highest levels of the Liberian government.
FYI, that link is to a story from before the Liberian Civil Wars. It still goes on today.
Apologies for coming to this thread late. I want to go on record as supporting Professor Rahe and his commonsense observations, which I regard as nothing more than Public Health 101.
Researchers know little about the transmissibility of the current strain of Ebola ravaging West Africa and now establishing a toehold in the United States apart from the fact that it is much more easily transmitted than is publicly acknowledged.
This is a major factor, first of all, for the protection of the healthcare professionals on whom all others depend. While basic precautions suffice to prevent transmission of HIV, tuberculosis or most other ailments, higher-level isolation is now demonstrably inadequate to prevent transmission of a singularly lethal infectious disease.
The late Mr. Duncan contracted Ebola after helping carry a sick neighbor to the hospital. Nurse Pham, now infected after caring for Duncan despite following the full panoply of isolation requirements, is criticized by Dr. Frieden for an unspecified breach in protocol because Frieden assumes on no evidence that the protocol must be adequate based upon experience with prior Ebola strains.
I am concerned that the Obama administration’s ideological commitment to open borders–especially in the run-up to the midterm election–is trumping implementation of basic public health measures that would have been rapidly instituted under any previous government.
George,
Surely they should have kept travel restrictions on the table. If the time comes that they must institute them they will have lost credibility and are likely to create even more panic and misinformation.
Without question this is another Obamite pre-election mind bender. They aren’t concerned if there are a few extra dead people after Nov 4. Just like Benghazi.
Regards,
Jim