Category Archives: Healthcare

New Jersey and New York Move To Protect Citizens

Barack Obama, Federalism, Government, Healthcare, States' Rights

The federal behemoth rises on its hind legs whenever a state stands up for its 10th Amendment constitutional rights: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Barack Obama went to war against Arizona when the plucky governor of that state enforced immigration laws to protect her citizens. The same Strongman is trying to strong-arm New Jersey and New York leadership for taking defensive measures to protect their citizens from possible infection with Ebola, a disease that, as Jonah Goldberg put it, “liquifies your insides.”

No sooner had the Cuomo and Christie administrations announced “a new mandatory quarantine policy” for “medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa”—than Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s resolve began to crumble. Via The New York Times:

Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy … after urging calm on Thursday night, then joining Mr. Christie to highlight the risks of lax policy on Friday, Mr. Cuomo on Sunday night appeared to try to dial back his rhetoric and stake out a middle ground.

MORE.

My guess is that Christie’s decision on Ebola precautions will bolster the governor’s sagging approval numbers.

Two Plagues In New York City

Healthcare, Islam, Media, Terrorism

Poor Anderson Cooper, CNN’s Alpha Female. He rushed to Ottawa to ask his stock questions—prefaced thus: “Do you feel like, do you feel like”—of witnesses to the terrorist attack, Wed., at Canada’s National War Memorial. While the “newsman” was still in Ottawa, news broke in New York City. The last time Cooper misread—or tried to shape the news—he remained in Haiti for weeks.

In any event, two plagues have manifested themselves in New York City:

* “A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case.” (NYT)

* “A hatchet-wielding attacker charged a group of New York City police officers posing for a photograph on Thursday, wounded two, one critically, before the assailant was shot dead.” (Reuters.)

Reuters says nothing, naturally, about the call, last month, by Islamic State fighters to increase “lone wolf” attacks on members of American and Canadian law-enforcement.

Ashoka (And Mother) Mukpo’s Quest For Exotica

Africa, Canada, Critique, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism

OK, I’ll say it. He’s a lily white Canadian-American with the name Ashoka Mukpo. Mr. Mukpo loves Liberia almost more than life itself. This is how his family aggrandized Ashoka’s Liberian pursuits:

Mukpo was a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a Liberia-based nonprofit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia. And “was into the culture. … He seemed to have a lot of passion for it.”

(CBC)

Days before his infection with Ebola became public, Mukpo was hired by NBC as a cameraman in that country. (Wasn’t he a “researcher” of sorts?)

Instead of assuming the name of his “birth father, a prominent Rhode Island doctor,” Ashoka and brother “took the name of his mother’s first husband, who founded the Shambhala Buddhism community”—upon a cursory read of this Wiki entry, Shambhala seems like a cult of sort, primed to ensnare a certain type of westerner.

The quest for exotica trumps honoring thy father.

Throughout the interview this married couple gave Sean Hannity, Mother Mukpo came across as pretentious, uppity and worse. Ashoka’s stepfather, Mitchell Levy, seemed perfectly nice; an affable fellow.

Still, Ashoka’s mother was referred to as Diana Mukpo, and not Diana Levy. The infected cameraman’s sullen mom clearly preferred to take on the name of her former husband than assume the name of the man at her side: Dr. Levy, “director of intensive care at Rhode Island Hospital.”

Oh, Ashoka Mukpo is said by the faithful to be “a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist master teacher.”

“Ashoka Mukpo (center) with his mother, Diana (third from left) and birth father Mitchell Levy (far right) during a visit to Tibet in 2002. (Konchok.org)”

Sobering Look At The Threat Of Ebola

Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Science

“Six Reasons to Panic,” at the Weekly Standard, offers a sobering, scientific look at the threat of Ebola:

1. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, … this Ebola is related to, but genetically distinct from, previous known strains, and thus may have distinct mechanisms of transmission. … Not everyone is convinced that this Ebola isn’t airborne. Last month, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy published an article arguing that the current Ebola has “unclear modes of transmission” and that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles … even if this Ebola isn’t airborne right now, it might become so in the future. Viruses mutate and evolve in the wild, and the population of infected Ebola carriers is now bigger than it has been at any point in history—meaning that the pool for potential mutations is larger than it has ever been.

2. General infection rates are terrifying, too. … despite the fact that Duncan was a lone man under scrupulous, first-world care, with the eyes of the entire nation on him, his R0 [“‘reproduction number’ … how many new infections each infected person causes”] was 2, just like that of your average Liberian Ebola victim. One carrier; two infections.

4. … The worst-case scenario envisioned by the [CDC] model is anywhere from 537,000 to 1,367,000 cases by January. Just in Liberia. With the fever [is] still raging out of control. …

5. … Marine Corps General John F. Kelly talked about Ebola at the National Defense University two weeks ago and mused about what would happen if Ebola reached Haiti or Central America, which have relatively easy access to America. “If it breaks out, it’s literally ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.” …

6. … it’s a straw-man argument to say that a flight ban wouldn’t keep Ebola fully contained. No one says it would. But by definition, it would help slow the spread of the virus. If there had been a travel ban in place, Thomas Duncan would have likely reached the same sad fate—but without infecting two Americans and setting the virus loose in North America. … Ebola has the potential to reshuffle American attitudes to immigration. If you agree to seal the borders to mitigate the risks from Ebola, you’re implicitly rejecting the “open borders” mindset and admitting that there are cases in which government has a duty to protect citizens from outsiders …

It is quite something when an “elite institution” like the Weekly Standard concedes that, “We have arrived at a moment with our elite institutions where it is impossible to distinguish incompetence from willful misdirection.”