Sorry, I couldn’t take more than a couple minutes of asshat Jonathan Leibowitz. He can be funny, but not this time. The news outlets he’s castigating for hyping Ebola are – this time – actually better than the official CDC blather because the media and the blogosphere are noting the wild incongruities between the “move along, nothing to see here” message from the CDC and what’s transpiring in the real world. Since Leibowitz aired that unfunny propaganda last night, another infected nurse came to light and she’d traveled round-trip from Dallas to Cleveland on a commercial airliner, adding at least another 132 (on the return trip alone) to the watch list. Nina Pham’s boyfriend is suspected of having contracted Ebola. This proposition that we’re safe because only 8 official ebola patients are in the US is illogical. It’s like being the kid in Stand By Me who had his foot stuck in the railroad tracks. The fact that the train is a mile away is small comfort because the train is coming. The ebola train may or may not be unstoppable, but this is unlike all known ebola outbreaks in the past. As yet, we have no reason whatsoever for optimism that it can be contained or will burn out. The number of victims is already way too high, they’re not limited to tiny remote jungle villages and worldwide air travel continues almost completely unabated. I hope I’m wrong, but I see no reason to think I am. I put a lot more stock in comments from Hope@ZeroKelvin than from Jon Leibowitz or anyone in the US government.
MIA
October 15, 2014 10:57 pm
With the possibility of the Ebola virus going viral and with close to 100% of the US population of 340M being susceptible to contracting that virus, the results could be catastrophic. The CDC $ WHO calculated a third world country mortality rate at 50% for this virus in West Africa. Developed countries would fare much better at maybe something around 25%. Even at a mortality rate of only 10% the US could lose up to 35M people or more to this disease.
The medical / healthcare industry and the US government would be quickly become overloaded and ineffectual. Commerce [financial transportation produce energy industries] could slow down considerably, become intermittent, or come to a complete standstill. If infected or not, most in this country would have to find a way to survive on their own. Once this very dangerous Ebola virus goes viral and out of control the results will be devastating to many millions of Americans on all fronts.
Billy
October 15, 2014 11:26 pm
MIA
Okay, HOW did the WHO and CDC calculate that we’d have a much better survival rate? Because we have flush toilets and running water?
Ebola is supposed to behave differently because it’s in the US? It knows to play nice and not kill half of everyone who gets it? The science doesn’t change because it’s here and not in West Africa…
Best of my knowledge, 50% of everyone who gets it will die horribly despite the treatment they receive. That is, unless they get that shot of Unobtanium that’s super difficult to make and takes forever…
Sorry…
Iska Waran
October 16, 2014 12:06 am
Seems to me we have a lot in our favor compared to Guinea, Sierra Leon & Liberia. We have flush toilets and (so far) easy access to the internet, clean water & bleach, etc. Most notably, even most of the dumbest people here have at least a rudimentary understanding of germ theory – that little things you can’t see can kill you, that you might need to wash your hands with bleach and you’re probably not going to get sick because your neighbor put a curse on you. On the other hand…most of our food is trucked across country and/or flown across the world (after having been picked by god-knows-who), our world-class medical care could easily be swamped (especially as nurses & doctors are dropping dead) and we have 1/4 million people per day who go careening though the sky across the country in metal tubes, potentially spreading it at lightning speed – versus rural Liberia where transportation is rudimentary. Bottom line to me is that Billy is right – we don’t really know whether our superior technology will keep us safer or just spread the virus more quickly.
Albrecht
October 16, 2014 7:43 am
The only thing funny about this monologue is the way Stewart never mentions the fact that “Ebola Man” should never have been allowed entry in the first place. News outlets are stupid for wondering how the nurse got it? How about the fact that virtually our entire government/media complex are pretending that banning travel from Ebola-affected regions is somehow unthinkable? Forget that. Just go for the Ebola jokes. Funny!
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Sorry, I couldn’t take more than a couple minutes of asshat Jonathan Leibowitz. He can be funny, but not this time. The news outlets he’s castigating for hyping Ebola are – this time – actually better than the official CDC blather because the media and the blogosphere are noting the wild incongruities between the “move along, nothing to see here” message from the CDC and what’s transpiring in the real world. Since Leibowitz aired that unfunny propaganda last night, another infected nurse came to light and she’d traveled round-trip from Dallas to Cleveland on a commercial airliner, adding at least another 132 (on the return trip alone) to the watch list. Nina Pham’s boyfriend is suspected of having contracted Ebola. This proposition that we’re safe because only 8 official ebola patients are in the US is illogical. It’s like being the kid in Stand By Me who had his foot stuck in the railroad tracks. The fact that the train is a mile away is small comfort because the train is coming. The ebola train may or may not be unstoppable, but this is unlike all known ebola outbreaks in the past. As yet, we have no reason whatsoever for optimism that it can be contained or will burn out. The number of victims is already way too high, they’re not limited to tiny remote jungle villages and worldwide air travel continues almost completely unabated. I hope I’m wrong, but I see no reason to think I am. I put a lot more stock in comments from Hope@ZeroKelvin than from Jon Leibowitz or anyone in the US government.
With the possibility of the Ebola virus going viral and with close to 100% of the US population of 340M being susceptible to contracting that virus, the results could be catastrophic. The CDC $ WHO calculated a third world country mortality rate at 50% for this virus in West Africa. Developed countries would fare much better at maybe something around 25%. Even at a mortality rate of only 10% the US could lose up to 35M people or more to this disease.
The medical / healthcare industry and the US government would be quickly become overloaded and ineffectual. Commerce [financial transportation produce energy industries] could slow down considerably, become intermittent, or come to a complete standstill. If infected or not, most in this country would have to find a way to survive on their own. Once this very dangerous Ebola virus goes viral and out of control the results will be devastating to many millions of Americans on all fronts.
MIA
Okay, HOW did the WHO and CDC calculate that we’d have a much better survival rate? Because we have flush toilets and running water?
Ebola is supposed to behave differently because it’s in the US? It knows to play nice and not kill half of everyone who gets it? The science doesn’t change because it’s here and not in West Africa…
Best of my knowledge, 50% of everyone who gets it will die horribly despite the treatment they receive. That is, unless they get that shot of Unobtanium that’s super difficult to make and takes forever…
Sorry…
Seems to me we have a lot in our favor compared to Guinea, Sierra Leon & Liberia. We have flush toilets and (so far) easy access to the internet, clean water & bleach, etc. Most notably, even most of the dumbest people here have at least a rudimentary understanding of germ theory – that little things you can’t see can kill you, that you might need to wash your hands with bleach and you’re probably not going to get sick because your neighbor put a curse on you. On the other hand…most of our food is trucked across country and/or flown across the world (after having been picked by god-knows-who), our world-class medical care could easily be swamped (especially as nurses & doctors are dropping dead) and we have 1/4 million people per day who go careening though the sky across the country in metal tubes, potentially spreading it at lightning speed – versus rural Liberia where transportation is rudimentary. Bottom line to me is that Billy is right – we don’t really know whether our superior technology will keep us safer or just spread the virus more quickly.
The only thing funny about this monologue is the way Stewart never mentions the fact that “Ebola Man” should never have been allowed entry in the first place. News outlets are stupid for wondering how the nurse got it? How about the fact that virtually our entire government/media complex are pretending that banning travel from Ebola-affected regions is somehow unthinkable? Forget that. Just go for the Ebola jokes. Funny!