“Health and Safety Moms” Could Swing 2014 Elections
In fact, their impact may reach into 2016.
I am going to go out on a limb and project that there are going to be historic election results on November 4th that would have been unimaginable until this August, when reports on Ebola coming to this country began filling the news.
This has transformed the women that Democrats have historically relied on, “soccer moms”, into “health and safety moms”.
Because I am both a mother and an environmental health and safety professional, other mothers question me on the latest news related to both Ebola and the potentially deadly Enterovirus D-68. Every last one of those women say that we should have had travel bans, mandatory quarantines, and that the administration isn’t being completely candid in its reports related to these pathogens.
For example, there is news that the New Jersey nurse quarantined after returning from work with Ebola patients in Africa was just released:
A nurse who was quarantined at a hospital in New Jersey after returning from West Africa was released Monday, her attorney said.
Kaci Hickox, who told CNN the quarantine was violating her rights, was discharged after testing negative for Ebola.
Hickox was put in isolation Friday after returning to New Jersey from a month in Sierra Leone.
Her quarantine, part of a days-old policy the governors of New York and New Jersey instituted for all health care workers who’ve had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, has been criticized widely by health care experts.
On Sunday, she spoke by phone with CNN’s Candy Crowley and Elizabeth Cohen.
“This is an extreme that is really unacceptable, and I feel like my basic human rights have been violated,” Hickox said. She said she was flummoxed as to how New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has no medical training, could describe her as “obviously ill.”
This video summarizes the story from CNN:
California mom and citizen activist, Sarah B., is angry at the Hickox release and feels that it seems to be a violation of her family’s rights: “I cannot believe the arrogance of these nurses, who keep on saying Ebola is hard to get. Nobody really knows how Ebola is transmitted, and five of the authors on a paper about this virus died of the disease before it was published. I am sure the workers who have gotten infected think they were doing everything right, too.”
Sarah noted that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s willingness to initiate a quarantine procedure elevated her opinion of him, in terms of the 2016 Presidential cycle. “Even though Christie released her after two tests came back negative, the fact that he recognized that viruses don’t pay attention to political scripts, and that he needed to protect his state’s citizens more than cater to the administration, meant a lot to me. He was showing the kind of leadership I expect from someone serious about really governing.”
She indicated that her husband, who works with a local police agency, could potentially be exposed to Ebola as part of his first responder duties. Her family has discussed a plan to implement a proactive self-quarantine program, should it be necessary. I, on the other hand, have not taken on certain work-related commitments because for the sake of my family I do not want to assume health risks of this magnitude.
Neither of us is complaining about our “human rights”.
In a nutshell: If you want to go to Africa and save the sick, then commit to some time in isolation; as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate on their website for this family of viruses, “application of viral hemorrhagic fever isolation precautions is currently the centerpiece of Filovirus control.” American lives are no less valuable.
In terms of Enterovirus D-68, I find it interesting that women have been most proactive in covering the nationwide epidemic, including Sharyl Attkisson, Tammy Bruce, and yours truly. This pathogen is now in almost every state, and officials are now running tests to see if it took the life of a Tennessee student. The CDC has just confirmed 2 cases in Spokane, Washington.
Dawn Wildman, President of the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition, says she has been fielding some phone calls from new independents who are mostly women. “I had one lady tell me that the immigration protesters in Murrieta were prescient, as a big complaint that the demonstrators had was the potential for spreading disease. It turns out that one of her relatives has a kid who was hospitalized with the enterovirus, and wants to get involved so something like this doesn’t happen again.”
Viruses do not care about party politics. In about a week, some politicians are going to learn the hard way that today’s “health and safety moms” don’t either.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Yeeeeeeup.
It isn’t really (or just) the threats themselves. Those are something all of us can perform the calculus on.
What really raises our perception of threat is being told stuff that we know isn’t true by people in authority.
THAT raises the risk assessment levels off the scales. Uncertainty is a killer in that regard.
There ARE real threats in our environment, but it’s being lied to that people won’t put up with.
From Nieman Reports (dot org) “Press Lessons From the 1918 Pandemic Flu”, some very pertinent stuff from a century ago, echo-wise. Dread echoes, that is.
That was a report from Spring 2007. Different President. Different take on the truth. HHS is not “planning the need for candor”, I’d bet, today. Not in this regime.
Similar restrictions were in place across Europe. This led to the ironic situation where although the virus had first been reported in Kansas and spread from there, it began to be known as the Spanish Influenza. Since Spain wasn’t a combatant nation, the Spanish press were free to make accurate reports on the lethality of the influenza.
Obola coming to a town near you courtesy of President Obama and the Democrat Party.
That’s how many women will see it. It is a primal fear. It is part of the atavistic urge that makes mothers protect children.
Have the Democrats finally “jumped the shark”?
What boggles my mind is that there are laws on the books, they have been there for decades, which require the government to screen incoming immigrants for communicable diseases. There are similar laws that say incoming immigrants cannot be a drain on our national resources… i.e. they cannot come in an go on the public dole.
And yet this lawless prick openly flouts these laws, pandering to illegal and future public-teat-sucking voters.
It seems like we have a serious flaw in our system of governance when such a criminal cannot be readily thrown into jail where he belongs.
I suggest that whoever down-voted my comment read up here:
http://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/laws-regulations.html
and here:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/immigration/restrictions-sum.shtml
I’m pretty sure people have been shredding these laws because they used to be used against AIDS sufferers.
Typical progressive drivel. Laws that protect the masses by isolating and quarantining the sick are not *cist. Only a twisted progressive mind would make that turn. And how did the failure to contain AIDS turn out for the homosexuals?
It steered a lot of money to certain drug companies certainly.
Yeah, and our government spends almost twice as much fighting HIV as it does all other diseases combined. And this level of “investment” was largely driven by Bush and Cheney.
So what’s your point?
Bullsh!t.
I had a ringside seat for that one, and I saw bad public policy implemented at the behest of “gay activists” that led to failure to curtail the activities of known predators. Further, the effort to identify contacts was hampered because “privacy,” which resulted in much larger numbers of infections, primarily amongst gays and more recently amongst blacks.
I do not think that the lives of gays and blacks are worth less than those of other people.
Very true. But it IS the activists who pretend to speak FOR either of those groups who hold individual lives…in fact…cheap.
Their agenda is what’s important, and individual people be damned. This is the evil of “group identity” politics.
I suggest that you check the websites of your state, city and local hospitals to see what statements they have on their sites. If they are doing something, there should be an explanation of what they are doing. If no activity, then call them and ask what they are doing. And you can ask about several viruses, not just Ebola.
In my state, the West Nile Virus season should be coming to an end, but there is the enterovirus and influenza is coming soon. Ebola is the big unknown.
For example, OK.gov has a section on the main page that links to this page. There are daily updates.
http://www.ok.gov/health/Organization/Office_of_Communications/News_Releases/Situation_Updates/Surveillance_and_Preparedness_for_Ebola_Virus_Disease/
My city’s emergency director described what the city was doing (911 operators, police and fire departments as well as coordination with the state). But, he hadn’t thought about describing the preparation on the website, so he’ll ask for the change.
One local hospital has the Ebola link button on main page and you’ll eventually land on this page which describes what they are doing, system wide.
http://integrisok.com/ebola-virus-disease/preparedness
I called the other local hospital. While they are doing something, they haven’t put something up on their website. I told them to look at the competition’s site. Until then, I know which hospital and ER I’m going to utilize.
I wasn’t nervous about getting any disease, but I was nervous about the idea of how fast our system could be overwhelmed. I thought it would be better to ask now and not when we are in the middle of a pandemic.
“If you want to go to Africa and save the sick, then commit to some time in isolation”
Bingo. She signed up for it, she has to deal with all the consequences, both the good and the unpleasant.
Setting aside the technical difference between “quarantine” and “isolation” (isolation is for those already sick, quarantine for those who might get sick), a reasonable internment after treating Ebola-infected patients in an Ebola-stricken area is (or should be) standard procedure. You volunteer for the former, you get the latter. Period.
I’ll bet she also had to be vaccinated against malaria and smallpox (among other things) before she could leave, too. Standard procedure, right? We don’t hear her making any complaints of human rights violations or pressing assault charges for being “forcibly” pricked with those needles, do we?
I hope this bitch gets Lois-Lernered and experiences a REAL taste of isolation when she returns to her neighborhood.
ANOTHER reason for the quarantine to be served OVER THERE.
You won’t have any legal bs such as we’ve seen here.
Now, SHOULD there be good VERY HIGH confidence Ebola tests that become available, a lot of this becomes much less problematic.
Right now, however, this is just common sense and MANDATORY.
I wouldn’t trust any tests for Ebola. Ever.
Let me explain: any test (for anything) requires a certain concentration of whatever they’re testing for. A negative result does not necessarily mean “zero”; it merely means “below the threshold”.
(For an every-day example, look at pregnancy tests. They’re testing for the hCG hormone in the urine stream. The threshold is 5 mlU/ml; below that is considered “not pregnant”. It cannot be zero, because a woman who’s EVER been pregnant will ALWAYS have some hCG in her system.)
The trouble is that when the sensitivity of the test is increased to make the threshold lower, you start getting false positives (see pregnancy test example above). In Ebola’s case, an overly-sensitive test will start mistaking other viruses for Ebola. You could test for Ebola antibodies (like the test for HIV/AIDS), but that can only tell you if a person has had Ebola, not whether they’re coming down with it, or are recovering or have recovered from it.
Until there’s a vaccine and an anti-virus (a.k.a. a cure), quarantine and isolation are still the best and most practical options. Humans (and other species) have used them for thousands of years for one reason: they work.
However, I would be okay with the troops being returned to a base stateside.
Ft. Sill in OK was used to house illegal children who were streaming in. Let’s use that space to accommodate the troops. They could fly into Tinker AFB in OKC, be transferred to Ft. Sill. IF they get ill, then send them to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio or send the special military Ebola Response Team to Ft. Sill.
We are told by the administration that health workers who are ready to risk their lives to lend a hand to try to control the outbreak in afflicted regions will somehow be disincentivized if they are asked to spend three weeks in quarantine upon their return. They must think that we are all stupid.
Sorry – I may have given you a down vote – tablet is too small and doesn’t give much space for fingers!
I think that the faith based health care workers are the ones paying attention to quarantines and they seem to be quiet and humble about their service. I think there is a TN doc who honored the quarantine. These docs are also the ones donating blood to others.
The libs who go over seem to be the ones who are more vocal about being isolated without all of the comforts.
Twenty years ago, I worked for an international development agency (NGO). I accepted taking the meds before, during and after. I accepted living as the people we helped lived, even though seeing the women segregated from the men was unsettling. On the other hand, I could talk to them about improving their lives without interference from the men.
I suspect that the soldiers being quarantined are not complaining about protecting their loved ones.
They quite clearly think we are stupid. And collectively “we” are stupid. Look at the moron we elected as POTUS… twice!
I agree with you, Leslie. When screening and quarantine procedures for disease are subordinated to political needs they have gone too far for many women. I am not a critical care nurse or emergency worker, so I don’t fear getting Ebola, but I care about the people who are being placed at risk. And I know mothers of asthmatic children who are very, very worried about the enterovirus D68. Children have died.
I have noticed that the Christian medical missionaries have been much more careful about quarantines. They understand that the three-week down time is part of the deal.