Updated
Continuing the rant...
Just heard some audio of Cuomo saying, "I'm old enough to remember HIV—we didn't know how HIV was communicated," implying that we're in the same situation (somewhat imaginary, because it was almost from the beginning clear that gay men were not passing HIV to their many female and straight male friends and relatives and associates whereas among straight people afflicted by AIDS, especially in Africa, the transmission was strictly between male and female sex partners and their children) in regard to Ebola.
Oh, right, HIV comes from darkest Africa too, just like those killer bees.
Which is why he and Tweedle-Christie feel obliged to "err on the side of caution" (he pronounces "err" to rhyme with "spare" rather than "spur", too, which makes me irrationally angry, though I recognize that the pronunciation battle there was lost quite a while ago) and put anybody with the chutzpah to think they can travel to West Africa to help people with impunity under hospital arrest—How dare they! Lock 'em up!
As a matter of fact Ebola has been known longer than HIV, having been identified during the first big outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa) in 1976 (151 and 280 deaths respectively), whereas the AIDS virus was not identified until 1983-86; and the person-to-person transmission of Ebola has been very well understood for almost 20 years, according to the CDC's review of the literature, since the second, third, and fourth outbreaks in Congo-Kinshasa (254 deaths) in 1995, Uganda (224 deaths) in 2000, and Congo-Brazzaville (120 deaths) in 2003.
The current outbreak which began last December in Guinea and has since spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone is catastrophically worse than any of its predecessors, with over 4,000 deaths so far, and the reasons are complex, but they certainly include the kind of panicky paranoia we expect from Republicans:
(He suddenly announced during the debate on Wednesday that he would be listening to the scientists, in contrast, on the subject of fracking, and revealed for the first time that he knows when their final report is coming out, in December, i.e. just after the election, for whatever that's worth—hope it's worth more than the curiously delayed and possibly censored report on methane in the water table, which seems to have been edited by the politicians to make fracking look less dangerous than it is.)
I truly can't see why he's doing it, except that it presumably has something to do with the upcoming election (which he knows very well he's not going to lose, though) and perhaps to distinguish himself still more clearly from our scientifically literate mayor, but in suggesting the scientists don't really know, Cuomo is encouraging the development of that fatal ignorant mistrust, just the way climate change denialists encourage burning carbon without a thought of the consequences. Like the the original rightwing proposals for trying to put a cordon around West Africa to stop people from leaving altogether (which foundered, I guess, when they finally found out there were no direct flights from Monrovia and Freetown to the US), the only effects this proposal is likely to have will be bad ones, keeping health care workers from doing their jobs while allowing anybody who wants to lie his way into New York.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the US political establishment did not exactly cover itself in glory, and has been justly criticized for a lot of willful ignorance, lethal mistakes, and unnecessary cruelty, but they never did give in to the idea of herding gay men into quarantine camps. In effectively doing that with the MSF volunteers coming back from West Africa, the very people who know the most about protection from Ebola, even if it's only for three weeks, Cuomo and Christie are deliberately fostering misinformed panic, and it's just unconscionable.
Howie Hawkins for Governor, and I'm not even kidding.
Glad to see the White House agrees with me (not on Howie Hawkins, maybe, but on the Stupid Governor plan):
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| Image from Brotha Wolf. |
Just heard some audio of Cuomo saying, "I'm old enough to remember HIV—we didn't know how HIV was communicated," implying that we're in the same situation (somewhat imaginary, because it was almost from the beginning clear that gay men were not passing HIV to their many female and straight male friends and relatives and associates whereas among straight people afflicted by AIDS, especially in Africa, the transmission was strictly between male and female sex partners and their children) in regard to Ebola.
Oh, right, HIV comes from darkest Africa too, just like those killer bees.
Which is why he and Tweedle-Christie feel obliged to "err on the side of caution" (he pronounces "err" to rhyme with "spare" rather than "spur", too, which makes me irrationally angry, though I recognize that the pronunciation battle there was lost quite a while ago) and put anybody with the chutzpah to think they can travel to West Africa to help people with impunity under hospital arrest—How dare they! Lock 'em up!
As a matter of fact Ebola has been known longer than HIV, having been identified during the first big outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa) in 1976 (151 and 280 deaths respectively), whereas the AIDS virus was not identified until 1983-86; and the person-to-person transmission of Ebola has been very well understood for almost 20 years, according to the CDC's review of the literature, since the second, third, and fourth outbreaks in Congo-Kinshasa (254 deaths) in 1995, Uganda (224 deaths) in 2000, and Congo-Brazzaville (120 deaths) in 2003.
The current outbreak which began last December in Guinea and has since spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone is catastrophically worse than any of its predecessors, with over 4,000 deaths so far, and the reasons are complex, but they certainly include the kind of panicky paranoia we expect from Republicans:
In some areas, people have become suspicious of both the government and hospitals, some of which have been attacked by angry protesters who believe either that the disease is a hoax or that the hospitals are responsible for the disease. Many of the areas seriously affected by the outbreak are areas of extreme poverty with limited access to the soap and running water needed to help control the spread of disease.[24] Other factors include reliance on traditional medicine and cultural practices that involve physical contact with the deceased, especially death customs such as washing and kissing[25] the body of the deceased.[26][27][28] Some hospitals lack basic supplies and are understaffed, increasing the chance of staff catching the virus themselves.They do not include the virus being in some way different from what scientists think. The transmission of Ebola happens exactly the way scientists have thought it did for the past two decades. It's just harder to stop people from transmitting it in some situations than others, most of which do not even somewhat apply in the United States (and for that matter not as significantly to Sudan, the Congos, or Uganda as they did to Liberia) though there's certainly some of that suspicion of government around. Wonder why that is, Governor?
(He suddenly announced during the debate on Wednesday that he would be listening to the scientists, in contrast, on the subject of fracking, and revealed for the first time that he knows when their final report is coming out, in December, i.e. just after the election, for whatever that's worth—hope it's worth more than the curiously delayed and possibly censored report on methane in the water table, which seems to have been edited by the politicians to make fracking look less dangerous than it is.)
I truly can't see why he's doing it, except that it presumably has something to do with the upcoming election (which he knows very well he's not going to lose, though) and perhaps to distinguish himself still more clearly from our scientifically literate mayor, but in suggesting the scientists don't really know, Cuomo is encouraging the development of that fatal ignorant mistrust, just the way climate change denialists encourage burning carbon without a thought of the consequences. Like the the original rightwing proposals for trying to put a cordon around West Africa to stop people from leaving altogether (which foundered, I guess, when they finally found out there were no direct flights from Monrovia and Freetown to the US), the only effects this proposal is likely to have will be bad ones, keeping health care workers from doing their jobs while allowing anybody who wants to lie his way into New York.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the US political establishment did not exactly cover itself in glory, and has been justly criticized for a lot of willful ignorance, lethal mistakes, and unnecessary cruelty, but they never did give in to the idea of herding gay men into quarantine camps. In effectively doing that with the MSF volunteers coming back from West Africa, the very people who know the most about protection from Ebola, even if it's only for three weeks, Cuomo and Christie are deliberately fostering misinformed panic, and it's just unconscionable.
Howie Hawkins for Governor, and I'm not even kidding.
.@NYGovCuomo wrong to impose quarantine on #Ebola healthcare workers w/o consulting NYC Health Dept. Shame on you for attacking doctor.
— Howie Hawkins (@HowieHawkins) October 25, 2014
Update:Glad to see the White House agrees with me (not on Howie Hawkins, maybe, but on the Stupid Governor plan):
The Obama administration has been pushing the governors of New York and New Jersey to reverse their decision ordering all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be quarantined, an administration official said.Also, I fixed some errors in the discussion of Cuomo's obstruction with the fracking study. Turns out, by the way, from some new research in Texas and North Dakota, that the methane-in-the-water problem is quite a bit worse than was thought at the time.
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