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[Baitball Blogger]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Baitball Blogger) on Thu Oct 16, 2014, 10:52 AM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. I think one of them is named "Brownie"

As evident by this, just in:

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the C.D.C., expressed regret about his agency’s initial response to the first Ebola case in Dallas.

“In retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight,” he said a few hours before his agency tightened its guidelines, “we could have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from Day 1.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/us/lax-us-guidelines-on-ebola-led-to-poor-hospital-training-experts-say.html


Turns out, one groups working in Africa tried to warn CDC:

Speaking by phone from Liberia, where he was training workers for Samaritan’s Purse, the medical charity that Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol worked for, Mr. Kaufman said he had warned the agency as recently as a week ago that its guidelines were lax.

“They kind of blew me off,” he said. “I’m happy to see they’re changing them, but it’s late.”

Welcome to Katrina 2.

[merrily]

4. What does Frieden, who became head of the CDC in 2009, have in common with Brownie?

For one thing, Brownie had no experience that qualified him for his job. For another, Brownie was a Bush appointee and a Republican.

[brentspeak]

6. For his own part, Frieden is just a book-smart incompetent

Got good enough grades to get into medical school, but probably shouldn't be a physician, let alone head of the CDC.

[FSogol]

8. Proof? Or this is just libel.

[merrily]

10. Yet, many whose profession it is to decide whether he should be a physician said he was.

But that was not my point, anyway. My point was, he is not comparable to Brownie, nor is this comparable to the Bush admin response to Katrina. Most of all, this is not about politics.

[merrily]

2. Because this is not about ebola v. all humanity on the planet?

I know some of the extremist Republicans, like Ingrim and Savage, making this a Democrats vs. America and everyone else on the planet political issue, but I hope we do not follow suit.

[FSogol]

9. "but I hope we do not follow suit" - Too late apparently.

Anything to bash Obama should be the motto here.

[merrily]

13. Everything is not about Obama! Besides, the OP's intent may have been to hang it on Bush,

thereby exonerating Obama. (Hence the comment about holdovers.)

Ingram, Savage, et al., are definitely out for Obama, though, but it's their career to be out for Democrats, of whom Obama is currently #1 and the one Republicans all over the country are trying to force Democrats to run against.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

3. is that really what the fuck you're concerned about

who APPOINTED THEM??? jesus H christ...

sP

[Baitball Blogger]

5. I'm trying to win hearts and minds on another website.

Does nothing to strengthen one's credibility when you try to defend the indefensible.

[jwirr]

28. there are a lot of departments that are not functioning as well as they should and many of us feel

that it may be because the departments are not as well staffed as they should be. If it was a bush appointee they may not think that the dems are going in the right direction. The congress has for the most part refused to let us place our own appointees in. This is not ignoring the need of the sick. It Is asking if they are getting the service they should have. The next question - regardless of who appointed him - would be to ask if he is qualified and if that Surgeon General would be of assistance?

In this case it appears that the doctor was appointed or hired in 2009 so we made the appointment. The next need is having a Surgeon General.

[FSogol]

7. Armchair quarterback much?

[Baitball Blogger]

11. This is something we need to analyze here, so that we can be

prepared to beat the expected criticism that we will face "out there."

Frankly, what the CDC does next is critical. They need to come out hard and strong and this initial response will be overcome.

[FSogol]

12. Analyze does not equal "generate criticism."

Diseases spread. Take $600 billion out of the CDC buget and let our for-profit health system decay and diseases have a better chance of spreading.

One party has been working to improve healthcare.
One party has been working to stifle improvements in healthcare.

Get on the correct side.

[Baitball Blogger]

14. I'm just trying to make our arguments better. Here we are preaching to the choir.

For example, yesterday, I asked for links to give me sources that can confirm the budget cuts so that I could use it on the other website to offset an article that claimed that Congress had given the CDC $300 million more than Obama asked for. What I got were links to ops that basically said the same thing you have stated, but no real stats.

Now, having a link from a national level paper that states that the Congress cut the CDC budget by $600 billion would be excessively helpful. Do you have one?

As for Friedan, all this will just be looked at as an initial stumble if the next move is strong and decisive, erring on the side of overly cautious.

[merrily]

15. You ask DUers to do your googling for you so that you can use the links on another website?

[Baitball Blogger]

16. I did google and what I saw was a lot of right-wing propaganda

links that basically supported what the other person was saying. It was obvious to me that something was not right in that the only real article that decisively stated our side of the position came from a DUer who had a link to an article that I remembered reading on DU a few weeks ago.

[FSogol]

19. True, the Cato Institute (with the help of HuffPost) is working overtime

to politicize it. It is a shame that some DUers are carrying water for them.

[FSogol]

18. Sorry to hear your Google is broken. Here's the best article on it I have seen:

Ebola in the U.S.—Politics and Public Health Don’t Mix
By Judy Stone in Scientific America

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/2014/10/06/ebola-in-the-u-s-politics-and-public-health-dont-mix/

And we need to take the politics out of funding for public health and research. We need to approve a strong Surgeon General like Dr. Vivek Murthy, and not have appointments like his be derailed by the NRA and their politicians. NIH’s budget was reduced by $446 million from 2010 to 2014, and subjected to inappropriate politically motivated interference in its decision making. The CDC’s discretionary funding was cut by $585 million during this same period. Shockingly, annual funding for the CDC’s public health preparedness and response efforts were $1 billion lower for 2013 fiscal year than for 2002. These funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008. Again, it is not just the Ebola that is a looming threat. We need to worry about vaccine-preventable but neglected infections like influenza, measles, and whooping cough; the serious emerging viral infections in the US like Enterovirus-D68, chikungunya and dengue, as well as overseas MERS and bird flus, and natural disasters.

Here's another good one:


Obamacare May Hold the Key to Saving the U.S. from Ebola
by Laurie Garrett in FP
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/02/obamacare_may_hold_the_key_to_saving_the_us_from_ebola


Bottom line is that public health should not be political. It is just as disgusting to see folks on the left trying to politicize it as the scum on the right.

[KittyWampus]

21. Please do us all a favor and post the snippet re: huge budget cuts. A billion dollars less than 2002

WTF?

[Baitball Blogger]

23. I pulled this from the article that he linked to:

"And we need to take the politics out of funding for public health and research. We need to approve a strong Surgeon General like Dr. Vivek Murthy, and not have appointments like his be derailed by the NRA and their politicians. NIH’s budget was reduced by $446 million from 2010 to 2014, and subjected to inappropriate politically motivated interference in its decision making. The CDC’s discretionary funding was cut by $585 million during this same period. Shockingly, annual funding for the CDC’s public health preparedness and response efforts were $1 billion lower for 2013 fiscal year than for 2002. These funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008."

Now THAT's helpful.

[Baitball Blogger]

25. I went straight to your link without reading what you wrote about it...

...and we both identified the same, crucial paragraph.

That's good stuff. Thank you for that information.

[merrily]

22. How much would it have cost for the CDC NOT to okay air travel for a nurse

who had been exposed to ebola and got the CDC's okay for traveling? How much would it have cost to have put NBC's medical consultant on quarantine, as opposed to voluntary quarantine that she felt free to violate when she get a yen for soup?


Trying to make containing a potentially global pandemic about US Republicans v. Us Democrats seems pointless and, candidly, downright distortedly bizarre to me, but if you are going to argue budget cuts to Republican partisans, you might also want to explain how they got passed without Democratic involvement.

Also, google the subject yourself and see if you can rebut the arguments against blaming Republicans that are all over the media, or you're just going to be wasting your time and that of anyone who googles for you.

Just google "Congress cut the CDC budget" and quite a few articles saying that is not the problem will come up for you.

[Baitball Blogger]

29. Well, it looks like the thread on the other website has died down.

But I have ammunition now, should the issue come up again.

[KittyWampus]

20. "out there" we can point a steady finger at budget cutting Republicans.

[Baitball Blogger]

27. I know KittyWampus.

But I was trying to counter a credible link with another credible link.

[jwirr]

17. I also wondered that.

[merrily]

24. The head of CDC is an Obama appointee. Lower level people are in civil service jobs.

If you want to call those holdovers.

Some may be "holdovers" from Carter, some from Reagan, some from Poppy, some from Bubba, etc. I'll bet you the deed to my home none of them wants to fuck this up, though.

If there is anyone, other than the top guy, who not in a civil service post whom this administration could have let go at some point during the past five years (almost), but chose not to let go, who should take the responsibility at this point for their continued employment, Bushco or Obamaco?

How is ebola even a partisan issue?

[Baitball Blogger]

26. I'm sure the next move from the CDC will turn this around to everyone's

satisfaction. I have no doubt about it.