A deadly epidemic is on the loose in America. It’s not an Ebola epidemic. It’s an epidemic of fear. In this must-see FIREWALL, Bill Whittle tells us not only that we should be optimistic, but WHY we should be optimistic, as well as what was done right, what was done wrong, and what needs to be done in the future. See the video and transcript below:
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.
There’s an epidemic breaking out in America – a deadly and destructive epidemic that can do catastrophic damage to our country and its people. It’s not an Ebola epidemic. It’s an epidemic of fear. It’s an epidemic of fear caused not only by the presence of a terrible disease, but by the sense that no one is in charge, no one is taking decisive action, and that the people charged with defending us against this kind of threat were asleep at the wheel and continue to flounder, lie to us, and cover their mistakes. When you get right down to it, this fear epidemic is caused by the belief that in this battle with Ebola, it’s the virus that has the initiative.
And it doesn’t have to be this way. All the American people need is a little honesty, and a little leadership, and if the Federal government cannot be counted on to tell you the politically incorrect truth, then that job falls to the states, or to the people themselves.
So let me try to tell you what there is to fear, why there is cause for optimism, and what actions need to be taken.
EVD, the Ebola Virus Disease, is a pretty simple, single strand of RNA that produces hemmoragic fever — in its later stages it destroys the walls of blood vessels and causes a host of horrific symptoms. The critical number — in terms of our ability to contain an outbreak — is the Basic Reproduction Number, R sub zero, usually spoken as “R Naught.” R naught is an estimate of how many people an infected person will pass the disease on to.
If R naught is less than one, the disease dies out over time. If greater than one, it will grow, and the bigger the number, the faster it will grow.
The deadly 1918 outbreak of influenza, spread easily by airborne droplets from sneezing, had an R naught of 2-3: every infected person infected two to three more. Measles, which is completely airborne, is extremely infections with an R naught of 12-18.
Ebola, in its present form, has an R naught of only 1-2. That number is very low, because Ebola is not transmitted either through the air or even through droplets, like measles or the flu. To contract Ebola, you need to be in direct physical contact, with a visibly symptomatic carrier, and even then the virus cannot pass through healthy skin but has to enter through the mouth, eyes, cuts, etc.
But that’s still a positive number, if a low one, and that means the disease spreads. But the one thing that we need to keep in mind is that the existing reproductive rate of 1-2 for Ebola is artificially much, much higher than it would be here in America, because it is derived from conditions in Central and now West Africa, where sanitary conditions are appalling and effective isolation virtually impossible. Ebola’s relatively low infection index is as high as it is almost exclusively because of burial customs in African culture, where tradition dictates that relatives wash the blood off the infected bodies by hand – blood that in the case of Ebola is extremely contagious, and there are not a lot a lot of rubber gloves or surgical masts in West Africa.
And there’s another factor: Ebola is not just spread by contact. It is also spread by fear. And in Africa that fear also drives these numbers much higher than they would normally be.
On September 18th, 2014 at least eight government health workers and journalists were found hacked to death in a latrine in Guinea, murdered in cold blood by villagers who thought they were in fact spreading the disease intentionally. There are reports of relatives breaking into hospitals in West Africa, assaulting the medical staff and removing, by force, extremely infectious individuals while shouting “There is no Ebola!” Riots broke out in the Guinean city of Neh-zeh Reh-KOH-ree, when health workers spraying disinfectant were thought to be spreading the disease. When a population attacks health workers, doctors and hospitals, instead of heeding them — well that R naught of 1-2 reflects all of that. We will not see that here.
Now despite these positive factors, this outbreak is in fact a very serious condition. Ebola, unlike most viruses, which can survive outside of a living body for only a few seconds or at most a few minutes, appears to be able to remain viable four up to three or fours days. So it’s a very persistent agent; hence the biohazard suits you so often see. And, of course, once contracted the disease is extremely lethal: fatality rates as high as 90% untreated and at least 50% under good conditions. So this is, in fact, a very serious problem but not an unmanageable one — especially if you live in the West. I suspect more people are going to die before we get this contained. But I do not see it breaking out into our population the way it has in Africa.
Now of course, that’s assuming we have a competent government. However: Federal authorities didn’t seem to give a second thought when large numbers of illegal aliens carrying various serious infections were simply tightly packed together and then distributed across the country. And, as usual, we seem to be critically short on test kits and anti-viral medications — especially vaccines. Why? We have known about this deadly disease since 1976. We have 11 carrier strike groups, fully armed and staffed, fully trained, with most of them operational at all times in order to defend the American people. Why are we so perpetually unprepared in the face of this serious and well-known threat? Is it because the present administration is so commited to the idea of open borders?
We’re also told that shutting off air travel to West Africa will hamper medical access and health care workers. Really? Really? You’re telling me that we can’t shut off civilian air traffic to these highly contagious areas without being smart enough to get medical personnel in and out of there, on military transports, with personnel who are presumably trained in chemical, biological and nuclear contamination protocols?
Some shameless Democrats are blaming budget cuts for this outbreak, but when the President spends $500 million of your tax dollars on Solyndra to make solar cells and then immediately goes bankrupt, taking that money with it; or when Obamacare is spending two thousand six hundred billion dollars in ten years, and they still can’t be prepared, then maybe the answer isn’t more money for the government. Maybe the answer is a government that gets its priorities straight when it comes to defending the American people.
And where’s the President on all this? Why does a private citizen have to stand here and make the case when this is in fact precisely the reason we have a chief executive in the first place?
Maybe he’s out fundraising. Maybe he’s playing golf. Maybe he just doesn’t care. But, as usual, he sure as hell is not out in front of this issue – this one above all others – telling us why all we really have to fear is fear itself.
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