Email: oldickeastman@q.com
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November 1, 2014
The Best Way to Fight Ebola in America Is to Vote Out All Incumbents on Election Day, November 4. Entrenched corruption – the incumbents are re-elected 95% of the time. Polls show 56% of Americans would like all incumbents defeated, but 95 percent of them are always re-elected. The problem is that the idea of voting out all incumbents never spreads: it is a good idea that stays just an idea. But the concept is so simple, and what it demands of you is so little: just vote for the mainstream candidate running against the incumbent Congressman or Senator.
The election is on Tuesday. Have you shared the idea with anybody?
Answering Scott Gottlieb's defense of CDC Director Thomas Frieden, and exposing Medical Disaster Capitalism's role in the Ebola Epidemic
Dr. Scott Gottlieb
Dr. Thomas Frieden
Ebola is Medical Disaster Capitalism. Quarantine was prevented so that vaccines could prosper and political enemies can be purged, under the guise of isolating anyone and everyone these rogues choose to suspect has Ebola.
And so Dr. Frieden ruled out the intelligent and appropriate quarantine when such would be timely (it is still timely!) and told people, backing his assertion with lies, that quarantines were unnecessary – until such time as Ebola has come in through the wide open door and taken hold among our general population, perhaps three or four weeks from now. Then will be imposed the full military-enforced grab-and-isolate quarantine that was written up as a protocol during the panic afforded by 9-11.
Drs. Frieden and Gottlieb are part of a criminal conspiracy that will result in the loss of millions of lives unnecessarily, which could have been prevented – which Frieden, in his capacity as the nation's top disease control official, had the responsibility of preventing, choosing instead to take actions and make statements that helped the Ebola virus towards a successful invasion of this population.
First, who published the Scott Gottlieb article in defense of CDC Director Thomas Frieden?
Forbes magazine, which sells its detailed knowledge of the richest people in the world – whose chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes, who was a leading advisor to John McCain during his presidential campaign, and who was one of the biggest campaign supporters of Rudolph Giuliani and Ron Paul (gold standard, and cure debt crisis with austerity and liquidation candidate, who thinks too much money in the hands of people causes depressions). Steve Forbes is a neocon: he was one of the signers of the Statement of Principles of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) on June 3, 1997, and is a regular commentator on the Fox News television program Forbes on Fox. Forbes magazine's CEO Mike Perlis is the former publisher of the Playboy pornography empire, succeeding Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.
To defend Dr. Frieden (and his investments?), Steve Forbes picked Dr. Scott Gottlieb.
Here is Gottlieb's article – answered paragraph by paragraph:
In the Ebola fight, a defense of embattled CDC Chief Thomas Frieden
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.
October 17, 2014 (Forbes)
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: The response by public health officials and local providers to the first case of Ebola diagnosed on U.S. soil has been marked by some tragic missteps. Mistakes have resulted in the avoidable secondary spread of the infection to healthcare workers. This is an appalling outcome to a crisis that we expected. But, sadly, it should neither be surprising, nor foretell a future marked by continued blunders. Nor does the blame rest with CDC chief Thomas Frieden. The bottom line is this: there is a lot we don't know when it comes to Ebola. We have never dealt with an outbreak of Ebola virus in a modern, urban setting. All of the past outbreaks were in rural villages where residents were more easily sequestered, and the virus contained while it burned itself out in these remote locales. We have never dealt with an outbreak in an advanced healthcare system. Our sophisticated medical care offers some additional protections and opportunities. But our style of invasive critical medicine also creates additional risks to providers.
We don't fully understand this Ebola strain. There is speculation from top experts that the virus might have drifted in ways that could make it spread more easily – for example, mounting higher loads of viral particles earlier in the course of illness. In short, we are treading on uncharted ground.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: It is just because Ebola is spreading to what you call a "modern, urban setting", where transportation mixing of people is so fast and fluid; because "we are treading on uncharted ground"; and because, as you say, "there is speculation from top experts" that the virus is "mounting higher loads of viral particles earlier in the course of the illness" – that Thomas Frieden's defense strategy for containing is so unmistakably wrong, irresponsible, negligent, and – given his and your conflict of interest – more than just suspicious: it's almost certain to lead to many more deaths, perhaps millions more deaths.
Thomas Frieden was faced with something new, something unpredictable – you and he have said it – and what did he do? He, for no reason, ruled out the first and greatest defense against epidemic and pandemic – the quarantine – and he closed the discussion. Not only did he assert, contrary to what you call "top experts", that the virus is not contagious before the hemorrhagic fever symptoms appear; but in a crisis that threatens the nation with a pandemic, he cut us off from one avenue of defense, from any form of quarantine (and there are many types of quarantine, some more suited to stopping Ebola than others – more on this later), while at the same time denying that the virus in the blood between initial viral infection and disease symptoms – a period that lasts, on average, 11 days, and which can last 21 days, and in a few cases up to six weeks. He used known falsehoods to justify the elimination of our best defense.
Isolation and tracing of individuals have their place; but when carriers cannot be recognized, and the virus in the blood at that time is even more contagious than AIDS, then what Frieden has done is open the door to an invasion, fail to give the proper warning, conceal the true nature of the threat. There is no medical or scientific research journal that reports any study – and no textbook in microbiology, virology, or epidemiology that maintains – that the blood infected with Ebola virions is not contagious, is not a platform by which the disease can spread before symptoms appear. The WTO made the outrageous statement on its information webpage – but with no documentation to support it, and without the name of any doctor taking responsibility for that false claim.
Dr. Frieden has ties to the pharmaceutical industry – as you do, Dr. Gottlieb – but he doesn't have your reputation as a Wall Street insider, with ties to Goldman Sachs and the Rockefeller-backed anti-population American Enterprise Institute, or to VaxGen, or your experience as writer of the biotechnology investment newsletter the Gilder Biotech Report and editor of the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor. Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, got it right when he said, "Gottlieb has an orientation which belies the goal of the FDA."
No one before had ever moved so quickly from Wall Street to such a high public health position. You, Gottlieb, wrote an article for doctors and medical researchers called "Moving Your Career from Wall Street to Main Street", in which you were clearly selling doctors on the benefits of their providing (leaking) details of their drug research to biotech investment firms. Frieden is not as pro-vaccine a careerist as your career indicates you to be – and Wall Street makes no money from effective quarantines that stop epidemics, that stop perhaps millions or tens of millions of people from being consumers of vaccines that Wall Street companies have already invested in. But Frieden did tell an ABC morning anchor that one reason for not quarantining West Africa by travel restrictions was that it would "destabilize those emerging democracies" – a very odd priority for the man charged with containing a virus that kills more than 50 percent of those it infects and may be carried in the blood of its hosts weeks before symptoms disclose that their blood has contained the active Ebola filovirus all that time.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: There is no dogma when it comes to Ebola. Indeed, if our political leaders had shown more humility on describing the risk, and our ability to contain it, public confidence might not be so badly shaken. If only they had not been so absolute in declaring that there is zero risk of airborne transmission (when we know that there is a risk of 'droplet' spread). If only they had not been so outright in arguing that there is zero risk of transmission before someone gets a fever (we know some patients present with other symptoms first, even after they are viremic, and don't mount high fevers). If only President Obama hadn't taped a weird video for Liberians declaring that you can't get Ebola by sitting next to an infected person on a bus; at the same time U.S. hazmat teams were wrapping a building in plastic over a suspected Ebola case. Enter CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden. And listen closely. His public comments in all of these regards, while too bold in hindsight, have been far more nuanced than other leaders', including those of his boss, the President of the United States. And his dominion over this fight is far more restricted than most appreciate.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: What are you trying to pull? It was the WTO that first made the claim – and Thomas Frieden repeated it again and again with immunologist Anthony S. Fauci (head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) right beside him, backing him up. You dare blame this misinformation about the most critical aspects of the Ebola epidemic issue on the lack of humility of politicians – when these two men stood before Congress who asked them about dangers of contagion, and they themselves provided this misinformation.
Frieden and Fauci are the experts in whom the country's defense against a viral pandemic is entrusted. They lied, misinforming the public about the most basic information needed to devise a proper quarantine defense. Then they used their lie to justify rejecting the use of any quarantine, relying instead on isolating known infecteds, and tracing and watching people the known infecteds have come in contact with. This in itself is a serious crime, but of equal importance is the answer to the question: Why did they systematically lie and deliberately rule out our first line of defense?
Perhaps the fact that Scott Gottlieb is the only man rushing to Frieden's defense gives us a clue. You talk about Frieden's statements being too bold, but what they really are is false and lethal – he said the disease could not spread in the U.S. because of our modern facilities – I directly contradict your claim above. He ventured, on his own authority and position, that no quarantine was necessary and that the Ebola virus was not contagious between the moment of infection and the first symptoms coming, on average, 11 days later, and up to 21 days later.
Where was Frieden taking risks into account? He ruled out quarantine when quarantine was most needed, and here you are – with a background at Wall Street of recommending vaccine corporations to investors – backing Frieden up in this horrible betrayal of trust, and opening up millions of people to risks of hemorrhagic fever they need not have been exposed to.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: Don’t get me wrong. The CDC plays a critical role. But the assets that are key to responding to a public health emergency of this magnitude aren't under his control.
Many belong to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while other assets and authorities fall under the direction of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response. As for the heavy resources and personnel on the ground in West Africa, they belong to the Pentagon. The CDC plays a very specialized role in monitoring and advising on outbreaks. But it doesn't own the containment tools. Many of those belong to local authorities, and DHS. And Frieden, after all, is playing with a thin bench. In an unprecedented mobilization for the agency, the CDC has forward-deployed about 200 of its best people to West Africa to stop the epidemic where it, quite literally, threatens to spread in an almost apocalyptic proportion that could eventually threaten a global pandemic.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: Frieden has been given charge of the Centers for Disease Control, a corporation which has an official status and, in most organizational charts in civics textbooks, has charge of protecting the country against epidemics, especially viral epidemics where the disease resulting from infection kills over 50 percent of all who are infected (90% for the Zaire strain of Ebola, 70% for the Sudan strain). Whether we are confronted with a new strain has not been determined; but if it is a new strain, then how could Frieden possibly have made his confident assertion about the virus being non-infectious before the symptoms appear?!
And here you are defending this man – saying that he doesn't have the resources at his command. If he were competent, he would make the right decisions – he is not doing so – and he would demand that all other agencies step aside to provide what is needed – and he has not done so. And here you are, Scott Gottlieb, defending this man at a time when every minute Frieden is in command at the CDC, the virus is being given a free pass. And don't talk about "unprecedented mobilization": Frieden has mobilized soldiers and sent them to West Africa; here, he has done nothing but isolate cases after they show symptoms. He lets in those who have been close to carriers in West Africa – lets them come here and move around freely, simply because they are not manifesting the symptoms that can come more than two weeks after the host's blood has become infected. Frieden is an enemy of humanity as bad as Ebola itself, and you are his accomplice in giving him cover.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: And before one begrudges the CDC the decision of putting its people in the field in Africa while we face risks at home, our eventual fate rests on what happens in West Africa. If we don't break the virus there, it will arrive on our shores with a vengeance. To be sure, Frieden is the Obama Administration's spokesperson on this issue. But he has not been made their quarterback. The White House is still holding the ball, or better yet, hiding it in some kind [of] trick play while the defense chases after Frieden. And even now, the CDC is learning from their mistakes in a prompt fashion – not on government bureaucracy time. On private sector time, on Google GOOGL +0.98% time. The CDC has changed the protocols for how they will treat patients. They are moving toward a strategy of creating "centers of excellence" to manage cases, so they can assert more control over the clinical parameters of how patients are cared for.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: That would be a lunatic statement if you believed it yourself. But I know that you know that the soldiers are in Africa to become carriers – carriers who will come home with the virus, and carriers who will join their military unit in places overseas when their tour of West African Ebola duty is over. Soldiers know nothing of the protocols of safety. The best thing to do for Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is send them plastic tents, plastic containers for waste, food, money; and instructions on both isolation, tracing, and proper quarantine procedures. Anything they need, they can do themselves if given equipment and provided good instructions – honest and complete instructions, with no holding back for the sake of bigger vaccine profits later on.
And if Frieden is not the quarterback, then isn't it the height of irresponsibility for him not to say so – for him not to declare what quarterback moves and passes he should make, and why they are necessary – and raise hell until all resources to execute his strategy are made? But he is not doing that. He is, in fact, making calls that amount to fumbling the ball, and even tossing the ball to the other team – to the Ebola filovirus team. And you, Gottlieb, are here laying down a set of excuses that Frieden can fall back on when his epic tragic failure is finally understood, when Ebola makes its killing, and when the investors you have been advising, Gottlieb, make theirs.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: The CDC has changed the protocols for how they will treat patients. They are moving toward a strategy of creating "centers of excellence" to manage cases, so they can assert more control over the clinical parameters of how patients are cared for.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: Yes, and when the nurse in Dallas contracted Ebola, Frieden blamed her and the hospital for not following the protocols. Those protocols already existed, and that was what he was trusting – he had cut out quarantine possibilities. But this is a new virus in a new environment.
Frieden cut out a quarantine option – just went with isolation and tracing of contacts instead, and relied on hospital treatment protocols to protect – even as he leaves carriers of transmissible contagion to enter the country freely and wander where they like. Their Ebola-infected blood has hundreds of ways it can migrate from a host to another person: just brush your finger where there is blood or feces (which contains blood cells); or blood from menstruation gets on a faucet, door handle, or grasp bar in a toilet stall in a public restroom, then it transfers onto someone's hand, then the person later touches their finger to their lips, an eye, or some open skin from an insect bite that they have been scratching, or even a paper cut. The possibilities are endless – but each one ends with a new person contracting a disease which has a better than 50% chance of killing them, and a chance well above zero of infecting one or more people before they even know they have caught Ebola.
So what the hell is this about CDC creating "centers of excellence"? What is the CDC – efficiency experts for an automobile assembly line? Are you asking us to trust Frieden because he has started a program called "centers of excellence"?
Gottlieb, you must be meshuga!
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: This is no easy feat. Compare the CDC's real-time learning and situational awareness with the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA told Bloomberg this week that it would likely require placebo-controlled trials for the testing of Ebola therapeutics, despite the urgency of expediting access to promising drugs, the well-understood lethality of the disease, and the grim fate faced by those obligated to placebo. The CDC is adjusting to match the scope of the threat. The FDA is reaching for its traditional toolbox.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: The job of defending a country and helping other countries defend themselves against Ebola requires deployment of the right strategy immediately. And where it is uncertain which strategy is most effective, then take the best steps you know, and learn as you go. But what has Frieden done? Not knowing what works, he has shut down the whole collection of quarantine protection systems, using none of them. He has different lines of defense. One is containment. One is quarantine. When you are unsure of one, is it smart to rule out the use of the other – especially when common sense and the nature of the virus (the facts that are known to us) tell us that there is a long period when carriers can be infecting people before it becomes known that they are carriers? Only quarantines address and solve that problem. Frieden has ruled it out – and you, Gottlieb, are defending him, knowing very well what he has done. No one should trust Frieden or you. You both should be investigated to discover the full extent of your involvement in fostering an Ebola epidemic, through doing exactly the opposite of what should be done to keep it from spreading death across the country.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: Finally, there is the issue of leadership. And here Frieden deserves more benefit of our many doubts. If we manage to get the Ebola epidemic under control in West Africa, and stave off larger outbreaks in the U.S., a lot of the credit will go to this man. When we look back, the turning point, or at least the start of the beginning of the turning point, may well be the trip Frieden took to West Africa earlier last month. When he returned, he had a grim report that clearly instigated the White House to begin a more robust relief effort. His dire warnings and outspoken portents were unusually frightening, and exceptional rhetoric for a public health leader to use. It was perhaps unprecedented for a CDC head in modern times.
Frieden got well in front of his boss, The President of the United States. He forced the White House to action. This is not an easy task for a subordinate leader in a political system, and seems to be an even harder task in Obama's Washington.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: What an outrageous claim. Nigeria is Ebola-free because it early banned, by quarantine, persons from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea from entering the country. They adopted a nationwide program where everyone would protect themsleves and their families by acting as if everyone could be carrying the contagion in their blood. This worked. They did not have Thomas Frieden giving them orders. It is madness that the person charged with our protection from Ebola has permitted the president to send thousands of troops to the infected regions where they can contract the disease. The disease can spread easily from contact with blood escaping the body of an Ebola-infected victim – even one not yet showing symptoms. Thomas Frieden has done nothing about that – and has denied before Congress, and on countless news programs, that such a thing is even possible.
Frieden's going to Africa earns no credit. His job is to find the proper strategy. Photo ops in Africa – going where our troops are – is no substitute for knowing the enemy, how the enemy is attacking, and what the best defense should be. There is no way that Frieden decided to send ignorant troops – with no training and no experience with the protocols that have already failed again and again – into Ebola country to actually stop the epidemic. Frieden has opened the doors to the invaders. And here you are, Gottlieb – a man who has spent years getting investors into biotech industries, and recommending pharmaceutical companies for their portfolios; a man who has written, for the Rockefeller-funded American Enterprise Institute, an article called "Public Roulette and the Public Health"; a man who joined NEA as a Venture Partner in 2007, specializing in medical research investments; and who has been a director of American Pathology Partners, Medavante, and Aptiv Solutions, a member of GlaxoSmithKline's Product Investment Board, and previously a director of Bravo Health and of Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals (MIPI). Yes, Scott Gottlieb, you are exactly the kind of man I would expect to be picked by Steve Forbes to write a defense of Thomas Frieden, who is so obviously working very hard to keep quarantines from denying certain pharmaceutical companies, and the billionaires who invest in them, the very big revenues they will receive from the sale of vaccines in a world pandemic of Ebola filovirus.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: Frieden is being scapegoated in the media. He might have earned some of the scorn by taking so many turns at the podium. My hunch? A White House that didn't want to own another evolving debacle abandoned him on the lectern and forced him to the microphone. Lots of tests still remain for the CDC. When the outbreaks in the U.S. grow in scope and frequency, how will the CDC use its expansive quarantine authority, which it has failed to fully define? Out of a sense of urgency, or panic, will it implement this broad authority with no frills, trampling people's rights? Will the CDC be able to manage a growing volume of cases with their current pool of epidemiologists? Will the CDC adapt its advice and protocols should the virus evolve its biology? And are the agency's scientists poised to understand this evolution in time to modify their policies?
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: This last statement of yours is a truly amazing piece of work. You say Frieden is being scapegoated by the media. They asked him questions and he anwered them. He told falsehoods about when the infected carrier becomes a source of contagion – hiding from the public up to three weeks of vulnerability that he denied and still denies exists. He needed to be before the media telling the truth, and he needed to be in his office issuing directives to provide the quarantine and isolation procedures that would stop this virus. He did not. And you are saying that somehow the guilt is on the news media, and that they are passing their sins onto the innocent scapegoat – the head of the CDC. And you, his loyal admirer Gottlieb, say it wasn't his fault.
But then you say here something that is very interesting and important for the citizen to note. You say, "When the outbreaks in the U.S. grow in scope and frequency, how will the CDC use its expansive quarantine authority?" What an admission is here! Here is the man, Frieden, who denied the need for quarantines and said he was almost certain that Ebola would not reach epidemic proportions here. And here you are, Gottlieb, defending him. You yourself are saying that you expect the outbreaks to "grow in scope and frequency" (i.e., an epidemic). Now that the virus has entered the country and been scattered all around the country by carriers who are contagious – but without symptoms for weeks before they are spotted and identified – you know the carriers are there and that nothing will stop them from growing in numbers, because Frieden did not give us the right quarantine at the right time.
But now you are looking ahead with full expectation that quarantine will be employed INSIDE THE USA – now that you and Frieden have let Ebola in. And THIS kind of quarantine will be entirely different from the quarantine that was actually needed to stop the virus from entering. This quarantine – which Frieden will authorize and defend with all of the certainly and authority he used to kill the notion of a quarantine before – will be a quarantine very attractive to organized crime in control of government. This will be a military quarantine, where people are arrested and taken away because they are suspected of having Ebola virus – just as our soldiers are practicing doing in Africa right now, I suspect, and as is happening in Sierra Leone and Liberia: people taken away are simply disappearing, without being heard from again. The families of these people just have the word of the authorities that their family member died of Ebola. A perfect way to conduct a Stalinist political purge without being accused of being a totalitarian dictator – after all, you are just protecting the people in an epidemic with a quarantine, right?
Clearly, that is the move this government has been planning, long before Dr. Frieden told Congress that he did not expect an outbreak in the U.S., and that the disease cannot be caught from people before they show the symptoms that come, on average, 11 days after infection. You knew, Gottlieb. The government knew, and Frieden had his deceiver role to play to make this possible – possible for government by organized crime that wants to purge itself of enemies, under the cover of taking Ebola carriers and "suspected" carriers to quarantine centers where, if they die, no one gets to see the body because "it is infected". But of course there is the reward for the success of this operation: the fat profits to be earned by investors who knew to bet on corporations making certain vaccines that millions – billions around the world – will soon be buying.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: We stand at a precarious moment – with the virus accelerating its spread in West Africa. If that contagion continues, and grows, the virus will move to more populous nations like Nigeria, and then eventually emerging markets – where it may well become epidemic. India and Latin America are at grave risk in this circumstance.
If that happens, we will be battling here in the U.S. increasingly larger and more frequent outbreaks. We will be in this fight for a long time. Absent a drug or vaccine that can thwart Ebola, at that point the virus could literally change human history. The stakes are that high. But the CDC is not the nexus of the problem. And so far, it has been the only agency coming up with practical solutions, and learning what it doesn't know. They are on the ground. They are adapting to the fight. We would be better prepared if our other agencies, and our President, shared their aplomb.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: The CDC has the responsibility of being the "nexus" of the solution! It should operate under the old and true principles of medicine: to save lives, to prevent the spread of disease, to take the measures necessary to protect people from infection. Frieden did just the opposite, and is still doing just the opposite. He forbade quarantine. He lied about the virus being contagious only after someone is visibly sick with hemorrhagic fever – everyone "knows" that now, thanks to him, and it is not true! They are in great danger of getting the disease weeks before the carrier shows signs of the deadly disease that comes eventually to those who carry the virus. Talk about the Nazi Dr. Mengele! Here is a monster masquerading as a doctor of medicine: anyone who kills his patients, who gives medical advice or makes administrative decisions knowing that his decision could kill millions – when another decision, a life-saving decision, was available – is certainly no doctor, regardless of title or certification. And you have demonstrated that you are one of these too, Gottlieb.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: Federal and state governments must have a factual basis to support a quarantine. There must be a plausible reason to believe that a person placed in quarantine was exposed to a suspect pathogen, or might be incubating the disease. But it's left mostly up to the government to develop that basis. And it needn't be a high bar.
The quarantine also needs to be discriminating. The government can't quarantine an entire city, for example. But the government could quarantine an entire plane if it was believed that an airborne pathogen was released inside; or an entire classroom of children if one child might have exposed others to a virus.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: There was a factual basis to support a quarantine from the very first. The Ebola disease was well understood in all of the important particulars. The fact that the virus attacks the entire body, that it moves through the bloodstream, that it can be in the bloodsteam replicating and distributing itself for up to three weeks before the disease that the virus causes appears (hemorrhagic fever). Once hemorrhagic fever begins, the victim begins to bleed from sores, to vomit, to evacuate his bowels – all of those fluids containing billions of Ebola virions, each one of which can infect and kill another human being if it reaches a portal, through their skin protection, to their system. The virus kills within two weeks of the symptoms manifesting.
THIS INFORMATION WAS ENOUGH OF A BASIS FOR A QUARANTINE. The virus can be transmitted to another person through a small leakage of blood up to three weeks before symptoms manifest; at this early time, it is even more dangerous than when the person is exhibiting full-blown hemorrhagic symptoms, because the person with the full disease is easily identified as a source of contagion and can be quickly put into isolation. But the carrier is not recognized as such; he may travel and infect another person who has no logical connection with West Africa or Ebola or whatever, other than he happened to brush against some blood from an infected, but as yet asymptomatic, Ebola carrier.
Any competent epidemiologist or public health specialist (not an imposter with a degree) would know the kind of quarantine that kind of disease would require. In fact, once the facts of the disease and of the environment – airports, screenings with thermometers, free travel, free interaction with other people misinformed about how and when the disease spreads (told that it cannot be spread by people who do not look really sick, which is what Frieden's claims amount to) – are known, any intelligent person who gave the matter thought and study could plainly see that the measures the CDC was (is) taking were exactly the wrong measures.
Even the "restriction" of forcing all people who have been in West African Ebola regions to fly into one of five big hub airports (400 to 500 planes a day) has actually increased the chances of spread of the disease by the means I mentioned above: leaving blood on a door handle, toilet seat, or sink counter; or a host rubbing a small cut or bruise onto the skin of another person, or on some object that another person will touch, bringing the virus onto their finger, and from there to a portal to his bloodstream.
THAT WAS REASON ENOUGH TO SEAL OFF AMERICANS FROM CONTACT. That was enough for a national self-quarantine and restrictions everywhere to limit contact severely, keeping contact down to what is necessary to keep people fed and healthy during a national effort to detect all carriers during a 25-day operation; so that all who are carriers can manifest their symptoms and be contained, and the country can then proceed with certainty that there are no other carriers going undetected in their midst. The right CDC head, and the President, at the same time, should have notified other countries of what we are doing, and urged them to do the same. Then, when the US population is certified carrier-free by the 25-day quarantine of this type, they would be able to open free communication with other nations that have done the same; in that way, the Ebola virus would have been eliminated from the human population.
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT FRIEDEN AND THE GOVERNMENT WERE OPPOSED TO DOING. They hid the nature of the contagion problem and they refused to take the measures that Americans knew should be taken. And here are you, Scott Gottlieb, defending Frieden and pleading for his continuance as the man in charge of protecting us from the Ebola virus.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D.: The Bush Administration attempted to set out more parameters around how quarantine would be used in a public health emergency such as a bioterrorist act, by issuing a new regulation interpreting the decades-old legal authority. But in trying to spell out some general parameters, the Bush-era rule also exposed just how absolute and intrusive the underlying legal authority is. It spooked civil libertarians.
Richard Eastman, M.S., M.A.: And so Dr. Frieden ruled out the intelligent and appropriate quarantine when such would be timely (it is still timely!) and told people, backing his assertion with lies, that quarantines were unnecessary – until such time as Ebola has come in through the wide open door and taken hold among our general population, perhaps three or four weeks from now. Then will be imposed the full military-enforced grab-and-isolate quarantine that was written up as a protocol during the panic afforded by 9-11.
Drs. Frieden and Gottlieb are part of a criminal conspiracy that will result in the loss of millions of lives unnecessarily, which could have been prevented – which Frieden, in his capacity as the nation's top disease control official, had the responsibility of preventing, choosing instead to take actions and make statements that helped the Ebola virus towards a successful invasion of this population.
Richard Eastman
Yakima, Washington
________
In the Fight Against Ebola, We May Have to Bet On a Drug
by Scott Gottlieb M.D.
September 29, 2014 (Forbes)
As the Ebola epidemic spirals on, it's becoming increasingly clear that our usual tools for combatting infectious outbreaks are failing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that, absent a seriously stepped up effort to control the spread, we could see as many as 1.4 million cases by early next year. And that estimate excludes the cases in Guinea.
The scope of the epidemic, and the lack of health resources, has outstripped the ability to track down all those exposed to the infection and isolate them. These activities form the backbone of public health techniques, and they are falling short.
What if we're too late to this battle to get ahead of it? Even now, we may be too slow and tentative in funneling enough resources to keep pace with the continued spread. If the epidemic continues to swell, it may take a drug to change the trajectory.
Yet at every turn, our public health officials say that a vaccine or therapeutic isn't going to reverse this catastrophe. That we shouldn't bet on a medicine to change our fate. They say that only our public health response will resolve this crisis. One of the key voices in this debate is the World Health Organization. They may be wrong.
Partly their position owes to necessary posturing. Public health leaders need to reinforce the primacy of public health means in order to inspire the political will to marshal those resources.
Part of it stems from a view by public health officials that place a stubborn primacy on their work in lieu of alternative redemption.
But a bigger share of the attitude reflects a calculus by public health leaders, that any therapeutic is going to arrive too late to make a difference on the ground. As the epidemic grows, and talk of endemic infection starts to mount, we may have to bet on a therapeutic to firmly reverse, and eventually snuff out the continued spread of infection. We may, sadly, be in this fight a lot longer than many are now anticipating.
The good news is that there's nothing unfamiliar or unusual about Ebola to suggest it won't be a druggable target. Moreover, there are a number of promising molecules that show activity against the virus. We need a concerted effort to get these medicines into advanced testing and to make them available in the field.
We also need a clear approach to how these drugs are going to eventually be cleared for use – and who is in charge. In this case, the World Health Organization should not be relied upon to "approve" drugs that will be supported with U.S. funds, and supplied by U.S. firms. The WHO has an unsuccessful history in similar circumstances.
When left-leaning international NGOs were advocating that funds from the "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief" (known as PEPFAR) be used to purchase cheap, counterfeit HIV medicines for Africa, the WHO created a process to sanction these medicines. The NGOs argued that the cheaper counterfeits could spread fixed dollars over more patients, allowing more infected people to be treated. But the groups also saw the precedent that would be set by using U.S. funds to buy counterfeit drugs as a strike against patent systems that they long derided.
These advocacy groups easily swayed the politically minded WHO. But it turned out that the counterfeit drugs were, in many cases, sub potent. They contained fake ingredients. In short, the drugs didn’t work. A bigger catastrophe was averted only because the U.S. (which had the bulk of the money) didn't go along with the scheme.
Right now, in the search for a therapeutic aimed at Ebola, world drug regulators are coming together under the auspices of the WHO. But the WHO is largely a policy making process. We need a functioning regulatory body to take on these tasks.
What Ebola drugs would be first up for testing, and perhaps see wider use in the field. Canadian drug maker Tekmira Pharmaceuticals TKMR -1.75% (TKMR) said last Monday that U.S. and Canadian regulators authorized the use of its Ebola treatment in patients who have confirmed or suspected infections from the deadly virus. The drug is being made available through an expanded access protocol, authorized by the U.S. FDA and Health Canada that allow drug developers to offer experimental therapies to patients with serious diseases who cannot participate in controlled clinical trials.
Among some of the other therapeutics that have cleared various amounts of preclinical testing, and could be put in the field, are a number of antiviral drugs.
BioCryst Pharmaceuticals BCRX -1.82% (BCRX) has an antiviral drug, BCX4430, which has demonstrated activity against a wide range of viruses, including Ebola, in in-vitro preclinical testing. The drug has shown a good safety record in animal testing.
Fuji Film Holdings (FUJIF) has a drug Avigan that shows a broad ability to block viral replication. This includes activity against Ebola in animal tests. The drug was approved by Japanese drug regulators in 2014 for treatment of influenza and is currently being stockpiled by Japan for use against pandemic flu.
Sarepta Therapeutics (SRPT) has a compound that targets the ability of a virus to make copies of its genetic material, a key step in viral replication. Sarepta's Ebola product, AVI-7537, works by directly binding to the viral RNA.
We could be in a long fight against Ebola. Or a bigger battle if the virus mutates in ways that makes it more contagious, and allows it to spread outside Africa.
As we start to funnel resources into West Africa, and try and snuff out Ebola's continued spread, we also need to think long term.
We didn't foresee how this epidemic would unfold, or marshal the resources to meet that challenge. Even now, we may be far more dependent on a therapeutic to save us, than we realize.
You can follow Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Twitter @ScottGottliebMD
And then there is this one by Gottlieb, showing that even as Frieden was saying that no quarantine was necessary, that he was not expecting an outbreak, and that the Ebola virus in a person's system is not communicable before hemorrhagic fever appears – the success of Ebola in taking hold here was fully expected, along with a very harsh military quarantine where booted soldiers in hazmat suits take away people suspected of having had contact with someone infected. Here is Gottlieb:
Countering the Domestic Ebola Threat
By Scott Gottlieb MD and Tevi Troy
October 13, 2014 (Forbes)
Until recently, the bulk of the Obama administration's efforts in the fight against Ebola have been on the international front. The emergence of a second Ebola case in Dallas – a nurse caring for the first patient – raises important questions of how to prevent a domestic outbreak from turning into an epidemic.
Given the pace of spread in West Africa, a broader U.S. outbreak is almost inevitable. We will see clusters of infection in major Western cities, including the U.S. Our aim must be to keep these clusters small, and to limit secondary spread.
Ebola is controllable in the U.S., but only if political officials and our public health professionals do the right things. Unfortunately, it's clear that both local and federal officials fell short in Dallas.
Immigration officials failed to detect the risk this person posed as he arrived. The hospital didn't take proper care when he first presented to doctors.
Once he fell ill, it took an emergency, federal "waiver" to give local officials the permission to clean his contaminated, infectious waste. When the decision was made to quarantine his exposed family members, there was no place for federal officials to house them, and no clear rules for how they would be held.
Finally, even though the hospital followed Centers for Disease Control protocols, a nurse still contracted the disease, calling into question the hospital's training procedures and other steps taken to protect workers.
Health care professionals at all levels are of course not perfect and will make mistakes. Hospital protocols and public health preparedness plans must leave room for human error – especially when it comes to very hot pathogens like Ebola. But the CDC must do a better job of establishing clear and accurate procedures, take appropriate measures to reduce risk, and properly calibrate its public statements, if we're going to inspire the public confidence that will be needed to prevent disruptions in the likely event of a wider, future outbreak.
First, on flights coming in from West Africa – public health officials have noted that shutting down the air routes to the U.S. can make a bad situation worse. Mostly this issue pertains to the cargo traffic that would be cut off, leaving these nations isolated at a time that their economies are already reeling. As for the passenger traffic, there are two airlines (Royal Air Morocco and Brussels Airlines) that collectively run a total of five connecting flights a week out of Liberia and to the U.S.
President Obama, under political pressure, may soon decide to stop air travel from West Africa to the U.S. In the meantime, even though the U.S. is now belatedly announcing that it will start closer screening of air passengers originating from Ebola affected countries (including routine checks for fevers) there's more that the U.S. can do, short of outright travel bans, to reduce the odds of direct spread from air travelers.
One option is to place U.S. personnel in West African airports, rather than relying on local officials to conduct the front-end exit screening. Only about 150 people a day arrive from West Africa aboard these flights. It's a small enough number to subject all of the travelers to more vigorous outbound scrutiny.
People traveling through the West African airports report that the current exit screening are not consistently – or rigorously – applied. On the margins, more vigilant checks under the supervision of U.S. personnel might discourage exposed or sick people from trying to board planes at the outset. It would also give public health workers more information on the U.S. side of those flights to better target screening efforts. U.S. officials could then follow up recent arrivals in the U.S. with phone calls to check on their health.
Second, on the snafus that plagued the case in Dallas. Hospitals must adopt procedures for flagging patients who meet criteria that put them at risk for having Ebola. That starts with establishing patient travel history. In addition, all hospitals should implement practices like those in place at institutions such as Elmhurst Hospital in Queens or Brigham and Women's in Boston which have set up special units in Emergency Rooms to handle suspected cases. Furthermore, hospitals and clinics need to be on alert, and act accordingly. More senior medical personnel should evaluate anyone who meets certain criteria for risk of Ebola infection.
CDC might also consider establishing regional centers of excellence to handle the treatment of Ebola infected patients. This would make it easier to implement the kind of intense training and procedures needed to manage these difficult cases.
Third, on the proper handling of confirmed cases, updated quarantine regulations were first proposed in 2005 during the Bush Administration amid fears of pandemic flu. The regulations spelled out in detail how CDC would exercise its broad powers to involuntarily confine sick individuals and those believed to be exposed to certain deadly pathogens. The set of regulations also included a new and controversial "provisional quarantine" rule. It would have allowed CDC to detain suspected cases involuntarily for up to three days.
Yet in laying out these proposed quarantine procedures, the CDC rule proved controversial precisely because it exposed the agency's sweeping powers. So President Obama withdrew the rule in 2010. CDC still retains such powers, only now there are no modern regulations to guide how they'd be implemented.
It's too late to issue regulations for the current crisis. But CDC can and should promulgate guidance that would clarify key gaps, including those that emerged in Dallas (such as where to house quarantine subjects, how they would be held, and what criteria would be used to obligate a person to involuntary quarantine – or allow them to exit from the restrictions).
Finally, continued reassurances in the wake of what has happened in Texas risk making further government statements on the issue lose credibility. CDC must maintain its ability to communicate public health messages to the American people, and to be listened to as a voice of authority. CDC needs to make sure that bland reassurances will not be contradicted by fast-breaking events.
The most profound Ebola risk in the U.S. isn't going to be from isolated cases. It will be a few months from now, if the epidemic continues to spread in West Africa, and larger clusters emerge in major U.S. cities. This could have disastrous effects, on both our health and our economic systems.
We can protect the U.S. from these disasters, but will need to see improved performances, at all levels of our public health system, in order to do so.
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CDC Removed Info on Coughing and Sneezing from Ebola Q&A (Huffington Post)
Outrage of the Month: CDC Director's False Assurances on Ebola (Huffington Post)
Dr. Manny: CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden should resign (Fox News)
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Finally, this – which corroborates the thesis that Medical Disaster Capitalism and a grab for the power to purge the population of their enemies has prompted international organized crime to create and deploy the Ebola filovirus bioweapon:
Thomas Frieden and Dr. Anthony Fauci, a director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH: 'Vaccinate the Whole Country' with Experimental Ebola Vaccine
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, wants to vaccinate the whole country with an experimental Ebola vaccine in light of recently Ebola cases in the U.S. He recently told The Canadian Press in an interview:
"As the epidemic gets more and more formidable and in some cases out of control it is quite conceivable, if not likely, that we may need to deploy the vaccine to the entire country to be able to shut the epidemic down. That is clearly a possibility."
How convenient for the corrupt GlaxoSmithKline who is working as fast as they can to create an experimental, fast-tracked Ebola vaccine. The company was just slapped with a record $489 million fine in China last month, after allegations surfaced in the United Arab Emirates of 'improper payments' and bribery in several Middle Eastern countries.
They have also been found guilty of reportedly dumping 45 liters of polio virus in a Belgium river, and they are the subject of numerous lawsuits, brought about by whistleblowers, for 'bad medicine.' Cheryl Eckard, for example, a former employee for the pharmaceutical giant, has exposed GlaxoSmithKline's fraudulent practices of delivering contaminated drugs – some even full of harmful bacteria – to the public.
Yet this is the company that the U.S. government wants us to trust for an Ebola vaccine? Furthermore, Jon Rappoport has revealed that the standard test for diagnosing Ebola (PCR) is 'completely misleading and useless.'
He continues: "… when the authorities report there are 6000 cases of Ebola and 3000 deaths, or when they report that two patients in the U.S. have Ebola, they’re relying on a diagnostic test that can't confirm any of these assertions is true. This is verified in spades by a Dept. of Defense manual."
The manual he refers to is "Ebola Zaire (EZ1) rRT-PCR (TaqMan®) Assay on ABI 7500 Fast Dx, LightCycler, & JBAIDS: INSTRUCTION BOOKLET," published by "Joint Project Manager Medical Countermeasures Systems," dated 14 August 2014.
He quotes from the manual: "… the EZ1 assay [the PCR test] should not be performed unless the individual has been exposed to or is at risk for exposure to Ebola Zaire virus or has signs and symptoms of infection with Ebola Zaire virus (detected in the West Africa outbreak in 2014) that meet clinical and epidemiologic criteria for testing suspect specimens."
There are numerous "Ebola" strains, however, and the Zaire test wouldn't come up positive, anyhow, if someone had a different virus.
Regardless of this inconclusive test for Ebola, Tom Frieden, the head of the CDC, gave a press conference last week concerning "the Dallas Ebola patient," in which he assured all of us that the patient had Ebola because the "very accurate" PCR test had been run. Meanwhile, Fauci is dropping nationalized vaccination comments like it's no big deal: sure, he meant it for Africa – but is the plan to force vaccinations of an untested, live-virus vaccine on the entire U.S. population next?
Interestingly, the people of West Africa have a strong disbelief in the reality of this Ebola crisis. They think that these Ebola outbreaks were caused by the United States Department of Defense, which was in the Ebola hot zones of West Africa performing biowarfare research on Ebola and other viruses. They think that Ebola is so fake, in fact, that the people are now literally drenched in an "Ebola Is Real" campaign, where they can't even take a phone call without being told that Ebola is real.
Will a vaccine soon come to us in the United States for a fake pandemic? Either way, will we all be forced to take it? Let us know what you think of this controversial issue.
http://www.healthfreedoms.org/nih-vaccinate-the-whole-country-with-experimental-ebola-vaccine/
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Eastman video readings:
Ebola virus infected blood contagious long before first symptoms
Political statement - use election to get the right kind of quarantine
CDC Ebola Strategy All Wrong - WHY IT MUST BE CHANGED
Both micro and macro quarantine procedures necessary to stop Ebola epidemic at this stage
Ebola carriers contagious yet symptomless up to three weeks
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Barack Obama, Dr. Margaret Chan and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden are all guilty of bioterrorism, crimes against humanity, genocide, and conspiracy to commit mass murder. Their crimes are more heinous than all the combined crimes of every terrorist attack that has ever occurred, both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Their crimes are greater than those that occurred on September 11, 2001 because their crimes will murder millions, whereas 9/11 killed about 3000 people. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Obama all came to power at a time of extreme instability in their countries. All took advantage of the chaos going on in their countries, to seize power and garner political support for their totalitarian causes.
Obama, Dr. Margaret Chan, and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden's crimes are crimes against humanity because they are targeting and killing millions of civilians. Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings". The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Charter) defined crimes against humanity as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated".
Obama, Dr. Margaret Chan, and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden's crimes are a deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under international law – and it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws. We're not rewriting any rules. We don't have to rewrite any rules. We have to apply the existing rules. We have to make them accountable for their crimes: that is why every law enforcement agency in the world must seek them out (Wanted!) for bioterrorism, crimes against humanity, genocide, and conspiracy to commit mass murder. Source
AEI's Scott Gottlieb, M.D. explains why Ebola 2014 is a credible threat
EBOLA ★ CDC is Lying! Dr. Gil Mobley, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Deirdre Imus
Our Jewish Ebola Control Team Issues Absurd Directives - 5 U.S. Airports Being Used as Ebola Transmission Gateways - Demand Immediate Adoption of Appropriate Quarantine Measures! - Vote Out All Incumbents - U.S. Government Bankrolling Israeli Colonization, Dispossession, and Genocide - Americans: Cut Ties With Israeli Rogues, or Suffer the Consequences (Eastman)
CDC Whistleblower: This Is the Real Smoking Gun - Major Scientific Fraud - Bioweapons Distributed via Vaccines - Vaccine Connection to Autism - Intentional Act of War on Western Civilization (Rappoport)
THE VACCINATION RACKET (Whale.to)
"Careering" - Public Image Ltd.
"Who's in Charge?" - John Cale & Bob Neuwirth
On November 4, Occupy the Voting Booths and vote all the incumbents out!
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