Well, it was a package deal when we elected the least qualified president in American history.

The NY Times begins to suspect that maybe Obama isn't the greatest thing ever.

Ebola is his presidency in a petri dish. It’s an example already of his tendency to talk too loosely at the outset of things, so that his words come back to haunt him. There was the doctor you could keep under his health plan until, well, you couldn’t. There was the red line for Syria that he didn’t have to draw and later erased.

With Ebola, he said almost two weeks ago that “we’re doing everything that we can” with an “all-hands-on-deck approach.” But on Wednesday and Thursday he announced that there were additional hands to be put on deck and that we could and would do more. The shift fit his pattern: not getting worked up in the early stages, rallying in the later ones.

It’s more understandable in this case than in others, because when it comes to statements about public health, the line between adequately expressed concern and a license for hysteria is thin and not easily determined. Still, he has to make Americans feel that he understands their alarm, no matter how irrational he deems it, and that they’re being leveled with, not talked down to, not handled. And he has a ways to go.

“If you were his parent, you’d want to shake him,” said one Democratic strategist, who questioned where Obama’s passion was and whether, even this deep into his presidency, he appreciated one of the office’s most vital functions: deploying language, bearing, symbols and ceremony to endow Americans with confidence in who’s leading them and in how they’re being led.

Right now in this country there’s a crisis of confidence, and of competence, and that’s the fertile ground in which the Ebola terror flowers. That’s the backdrop for whatever steps Obama and Frieden take from here. With the right ones, they can go a long way toward calming people who are anxious not just about Ebola but about America. I don’t even want to think about the wrong ones.//

Why America exposed itself to Ebola...

...because protecting "fledgling democracies" is a medical issue.

Thursday at a congressional subcommittee hearing on Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden was asked to respond to a claim he had allegedly made that a travel ban would hurt “fledgling democracies” and therefore hurt any effort to contain Ebola at the source.

Subcommittee chairman Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) pushed Frieden on offering an explanation, however, the CDC skirted a direct answer.

Partial transcript as follows:

MURPHY: Dr. Frieden, when we spoke on the phone the other day, you said you remain opposed to travel restrictions because in your words you said, “Cutting commercial ties -- it would hurt fledgling democracies.” Now is this the opinion of CDC? Is this your opinion, or did someone also advise you within the administration, any other agencies, where did the opinion come from that that is of high importance?

FRIEDEN: My sole concern is to protect Americans. We can do that by continuing to take the steps we are taking here and --

MURPHY: Did someone advise you of that – someone outside of yourself that is the position to protect fledgling democracies?

FRIEDEN: My recollection of that conversation is that discussion was in the context of our ability to stop the epidemic at the source.

MURPHY: Well, we can get supplies and medical personnel into the Ebola hot zones and so stopping planes, and I heard you say this in multiple occasions that we have a thousand-plus persons a week coming to the United States from hot zones, am I correct on that -- coming from those areas?

FRIEDEN: There are approximately 100 to 150 per day.

MURPHY: Thank you. OK, and the Duncan case has seriously impacted Dallas and northern Ohio. But what I don’t understand is if the administration insists on granting -- bringing Ebola cases into the United States, clearly you have determined how many Ebola infection cases the U.S. public they can handle. The NIH can handle two of these beds. Do you know that number overall in this country -- how many we can handle?

FRIEDEN: Our goal is no patients.

MURPHY: I understand, but as long as we don’t restrict travel and quarantining people and we’re not limiting their travel, we have a risk. And so the issues of surveillance and containment – I don’t understand it. And this is the question the American public is asking -- why are we folks still allowing folks to come over here and why once they’re over here is there no quarantine?

FRIEDEN: Our fundamental mission is to protect Americans. Right now, we’re able to track everyone who comes in --

MURPHY: But you’re not stopping them from being around other people, doctor. I understand that, and I have a high respect for you. But even though they are not limited from travel. They’re not quarantined for 21 days. And they could show up with symptoms. They could bypass other questions Mr. Wagner referred to in the thermometers on there and this is what happened with the nurse that went to Cleveland. So I’m concerned here -- is this the position of the administration that there will be no travel restrictions?

FRIEDEN: We will consider any options to better protect Americans. 

Mission creep.

Not that stopping travel from Ebola infected regions would have stopped this from happening...

...oh, wait...

...it would have.

But, really, isn't plague in the United States totally worth avoiding being called racist?

The CDC is now asking that passengers of Oct. 10 Frontier Airlines flight 1142 contact the agency in light of new information that suggests Amber Vinson may have been symptomatic when she boarded the first aircraft from Dallas to Cleveland.

This is where that plane has traveled since the Oct. 10 flight that Vinson was on:

 

Post by The Kelly File.

Let's pray we escape the stupidity and venality that our PC-obsessed ruling class has inflicted on us.

Why should we be surprised?....

... "President" is the longest job he's ever had.

//It was only a matter of time.

President Obama, a short-term college professor and failed community organizer who became a mostly absentee state senator and then an all-but-invisible U.S. senator, has Petered out. Per the Peter Principle, he has risen to his level of incompetence — some would argue far beyond it.

The president — and the president alone — let Ebola into America. He could have made one phone call (even on Saturday, when playing his 200th round of golf as president) and said one sentence to protect all Americans from the usually fatal disease: “No one from West Africa gets into the country.”//

OK...we get it.  Racism is bad and we're sorry.

Can we elect someone competent next time?

Mission Creep.

The mission of the American government used to be protecting the American people; now it so much more.

Obama is risking Ebola outbreak in US for his own ambitions.  

Not good.

16 members of Doctors without Border infected with Ebola; 9 dead.

Why the government doesn't work - mission creep problem.

If the CDC seems slow to respond, realize that it has its hands full managing obesity and children's nutrition, rather than focusing on, you know, deadly communicable diseases.

The former is important to the First Lady; the latter is important to everyone else.

“It Has A Mission Creep Problem,” argues David Harsanyi, noting that large chunks of the Centers for Disease Control’s budget and attention now go “to temporary health scares and trendy crusades that often go well beyond any mission it should be pursuing.” Glenn Reynolds has more at USA Today on how the agency has far more on its plate than communicable disease these days, “having involved itself in everything from playground safety to smoking in subsidized housing.” (And binge drinking, and obesity, and suburban zoning, and….)

It seems that as government has gotten bigger, and accumulated more and more of its own ancillary responsibilities, it has gotten worse at its primary tasks. It can supervise snacks at elementary schools, but not defend the borders; it can tax people to subsidize others’ health-care plans but not build roads or bridges; and it can go after football team names but can’t seem to deal with the Islamic State terror group.

Earlier on the Centers for Disease Control and on director Thomas Frieden, who of course won fame before his CDC appointment for his activism as NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s health commissioner, crusading against salt, sugar, guns, and so forth.//

We need a smaller, more focused government.

This is not good.

Second Ebola case involves Dallas health care worker.

The CDC Director is explaining that there was a breach of protocol, but what he is really describing is not reassuring since people on the streets or in airplanes are hardly likely to have worn any protective clothing.

Can we really be too overprotective?

EMT who transported first US Ebola patient - who is dead now - is showing Ebola symptoms.

It's a good thing we have that brainy Nobel Prize Winner as president instead of that stupid cowboy.

Obama blames Bush for Avian Flu, but does nothing to prevent Ebola.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Response To Ebola Not Confidence-Inspiring:

Now that Ebola has arrived in the U.S., Americans should ask why. After all, our government knew that the outbreak in Africa was severe but has done little to keep the disease from reaching our shores.

Sure, the medical professionals involved — doctors, nurses and epidemiologists — are working hard and bravely to contain an outbreak, which so far includes a Liberian man in Dallas and as many as 100 people he came in contact with.

But the government’s response, as is too often the case, has been far less than competent and remains so. . . .

Given the clear danger to the U.S., why hasn’t the White House imposed travel limits on those flying in from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and other nations in West Africa where the disease has broken out?

That would seem a minimal response to containing this deadly hemorrhagic fever that causes many victims to suffer a horrible, lingering death.

Both France and Britain immediately halted flights from the afflicted countries in West Africa. Why not us?

We’re not counseling panic here. The U.S. should be able to control an outbreak. But the White House’s blase and even lackadaisical response isn’t reassuring.

Well, to be fair, that’s the White House response to pretty much anything that isn’t about fundraising or golf.

UPDATE: Flashback: Senator Obama rips Bush for being unprepared for avian flu epidemic. That Senator Obama fellow seemed a lot more on top of things than this President Obama fellow does.//

Because one of them causes a complete bleed out and the other is, you know, the flue.

Doctors risking their lives for "not stamp collecting" or the "flying spaghetti monster"....

But they aren't.

They are risking their lives in difficult situations for no temporal reward for Christ.

An atheist looks at his bias against missionary medicine.

And yet, truth be told, these valid critiques don’t fully explain my discomfort with missionary medicine. If we had thousands of secular doctors doing exactly the same work, I would probably excuse most of these flaws. “They’re doing work no one else will,” I would say. “You can’t expect perfection.”

I’m not altogether proud of this bias—I’m just trying to be honest. In his Lancet article, Lowenberg quotes a missionary who insists he does not proselytize, even though he tells his patients, “I’m treating you because of what God has given me and his love for me.” That statement—which strikes me as obvious proselytizing— suggests that some missionaries are incapable of separating their religious work from their medical work. Whether implicitly or explicitly, some missionaries pressure their patients, at moments of maximum vulnerability and desperation, to convert. That troubles me. I suspect that many others have the same visceral discomfort with the mingling of religion and health care.

Like it or not, though, we are deeply reliant on missionary doctors and nurses. The 2008 ARHAP report found that in some sub-Saharan African countries 30 percent of health care facilities are run by religious entities. That system is crumbling due to declining funding, possibly motivated in part by growing Western suspicion of missionary medicine. We have a choice: Swallow our objections and support these facilities, spend vast sums of money to build up Africa’s secular health care capacity immediately, or watch the continent drown in Ebola, HIV, and countless other disease outbreaks.

As an atheist, I try to make choices based on evidence and reason. So until we’re finally ready to invest heavily in secular medicine for Africa, I suggest we stand aside and let God do His work.//

Elite liberals really do not like you...

...if you don't live in New York or coastal California.