Cliff Kincaid
Feds scramble for risky vaccine
By Cliff Kincaid
By failing to impose a travel ban, the Obama administration allowed a carrier of Ebola from Liberia into the United States, where he infected two nurses, one of whom was allowed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to travel on a plane. But don't worry. The publication Politico says the system "is working."
The "experts" say they still don't know how or why two nurses treating the Ebola carrier contracted the disease. So-called "revised guidelines" for handling Ebola have now been issued by the CDC. The pressure is on for an Ebola vaccine.
This is an old story that deserves investigation and comment. Was the "system" working back in the 1970s when hundreds of people got neurological disorders and some died from a swine flu vaccine before it was withdrawn?
The Politico author, Harold Pollack, is a self-described "liberal health-policy wonk" who believes that Obamacare "will save many thousands of lives every year." Perhaps that colors his thinking on how the Obama administration has put our lives at risk.
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, is not a policy wonk, but she knows a lot about flying in and out of countries and the risks that go with air travel. She notes that just one Ebola case in the U.S. resulted in almost a thousand people being monitored for possible exposure to the virus.
Speaking common sense, she added, "If we leave our borders [open] and don't have any restrictions on non-essential travel from Ebola countries to the United States, obviously, we will be a country of choice for that, and if one person causes us to hunt for a thousand, just think of those numbers, as they multiply."
But Harold Pollack, writing in Politico, tells us that the system is working now and was even working during the swine flu scandal of the 1970s.
Here's how he puts it: "Almost 40 years ago, the CDC suffered public humiliation when it was perceived as having bungled a massive vaccination campaign for a Swine Flu epidemic that didn't materialize."
So this was just a "perception," not something having to do with reality. It was just bungling.
I decided to go back in time and investigate this "perception" about bungling.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the CDC's swine flu vaccination campaign resulted in more than 500 people developing Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the vaccine, while 25 people died.
The CDC says Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare disorder in which a person's own immune system damages their nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.
The New York Times reported the number of dead at 30.
The Washington Post said the federal government ultimately paid more than $90 million to hundreds of victims.
But there is just a "perception" that the CDC blew it, according to Pollack.
Pollack, in the same piece, praises Fox News anchor Shepard Smith for using his show to denounce "irresponsible" coverage of Ebola.
Pollack's piece is worse than irresponsible; he insists that the Ebola threat is overblown yet ignores the fact that in the swine flu controversy of 1976 the public health establishment manufactured an "epidemic" for the purpose of scaring people into getting vaccinated. Many people listened to their government and got sick or died.
In that case, the CDC Director, Dr. David J. Sencer, was fired. The CDC museum is named after him.
In the case of Ebola, CDC Director Tom Frieden keeps his job while Obama appoints a political fixer to manage the effort, in an attempt to save his political party from outrage over allowing Ebola to gain a foothold on American soil.
But Pollack protests: "Ebola is not 'Obama's Katrina.'" The record shows that the first patient ever diagnosed with Ebola on American soil came during the Obama administration, as a result of a deliberate policy to help "fledgling democracies" in West Africa, according to CDC Director Frieden.
That's politically correct language for giving black Africa special access to the U.S., and putting their interests ahead of America's.
It didn't have to happen if the administration had been making it a priority to protect the American people.
"There will be further infections, perhaps other challenges and blunders," Pollack goes on. "But America has seen worse. HIV/AIDS has killed more than 600,000 Americans, not to mention tens of millions around the world."
This is a fact that cannot be disputed.
What he neglects to point out is that AIDS was, and is, politically protected because of who it infects – mostly male homosexuals, who constitute major funders of the Democratic Party.
The CDC reports, "Men who have sex with men (MSM) remain the group most heavily affected by HIV in the United States. The CDC estimates that MSM represent approximately four percent of the male population in the United States but male-to-male sex accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of new HIV infections among men and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all new infections in 2010 (29,800)."
In Atlanta, where the CDC is based, gay bath houses still remain open and help spread the disease.
To make matters worse, The Huffington Post ran an article titled "Can We Make Gay Bathhouses Cool Again?" and asks whether more of these "sex dens" can reopen.
Rather than address this insanity, Pollack uses his Politico piece to attack "conservative politicians [who] have consistently opposed major public health efforts in HIV prevention...." What these conservatives have said is that the lifestyle that spreads the disease ought to be discouraged, in the same way the federal government argues against smoking cigarettes that shorten one's life, and kill.
Instead, the male homosexuals who finance and run the gay lobby, and who are at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and other infections, are now demanding the "right" to donate blood.
Meanwhile, showing complete disregard for public health, the Obama administration allows state experiments with "medical" and recreational marijuana to proceed, despite the documented link between marijuana and mental illness. Colorado health officials are now fearful of marijuana-infused candy, called "edibles," being dropped into kid's bags this Halloween.
Democratic Party money-bags and hedge fund operator George Soros, who finances the drug legalization movement, is largely to blame for this debacle.
But back to Harold Pollack, who is described as a regular contributor to The Washington Post's Wonkblog section, a place where intellectuals are supposed to pontificate on important issues of the day. His credentials are impressive, but he seems to lack common sense.
Now that Ebola has been allowed in, there is an additional danger that he clearly doesn't want to talk about – that the public health establishment will use the fears it has generated among the populace to try to stampede people into taking a risky Ebola vaccine.
According to the CDC, human testing of an "investigational vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease" is now beginning. The so-called "fast-tracking" process is underway. Perhaps this was the intention all along.
As Barbera Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center argues, "A logical conclusion is that some people in industry, government and the World Health Organization did not want the Ebola outbreak to be confined to several nations in Africa because that would fail to create a lucrative global market for mandated use of fast tracked Ebola vaccines by every one of the seven billion human beings living on this planet."
It looks like the CDC was much faster in approving human trials of a vaccine than in stopping Ebola from coming into the U.S. in the first place.
In addition to the 1976 swine flu debacle, there were several vaccine scandals involving children during the Clinton administration. A hepatitis B vaccine was withdrawn because it contained a toxic substance, and a vaccine against diarrhea was withdrawn because it, too, was dangerous to children.
In addition to the renewed push for an Ebola vaccine, a "crash" program to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine has been underway for decades.
An HIV/AIDS vaccine sounds like a good cause. Billions of dollars have been spent by Bill Gates – and American taxpayers – on the program. But what if they get this one wrong, too? And what if a mandatory AIDS vaccine causes HIV/AIDS in millions of healthy people, many of them children and the elderly?
Whether the mandatory vaccines work or not, they will most likely be covered under Obamacare.
© Cliff Kincaid
October 23, 2014
By failing to impose a travel ban, the Obama administration allowed a carrier of Ebola from Liberia into the United States, where he infected two nurses, one of whom was allowed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to travel on a plane. But don't worry. The publication Politico says the system "is working."
The "experts" say they still don't know how or why two nurses treating the Ebola carrier contracted the disease. So-called "revised guidelines" for handling Ebola have now been issued by the CDC. The pressure is on for an Ebola vaccine.
This is an old story that deserves investigation and comment. Was the "system" working back in the 1970s when hundreds of people got neurological disorders and some died from a swine flu vaccine before it was withdrawn?
The Politico author, Harold Pollack, is a self-described "liberal health-policy wonk" who believes that Obamacare "will save many thousands of lives every year." Perhaps that colors his thinking on how the Obama administration has put our lives at risk.
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, is not a policy wonk, but she knows a lot about flying in and out of countries and the risks that go with air travel. She notes that just one Ebola case in the U.S. resulted in almost a thousand people being monitored for possible exposure to the virus.
Speaking common sense, she added, "If we leave our borders [open] and don't have any restrictions on non-essential travel from Ebola countries to the United States, obviously, we will be a country of choice for that, and if one person causes us to hunt for a thousand, just think of those numbers, as they multiply."
But Harold Pollack, writing in Politico, tells us that the system is working now and was even working during the swine flu scandal of the 1970s.
Here's how he puts it: "Almost 40 years ago, the CDC suffered public humiliation when it was perceived as having bungled a massive vaccination campaign for a Swine Flu epidemic that didn't materialize."
So this was just a "perception," not something having to do with reality. It was just bungling.
I decided to go back in time and investigate this "perception" about bungling.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the CDC's swine flu vaccination campaign resulted in more than 500 people developing Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the vaccine, while 25 people died.
The CDC says Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare disorder in which a person's own immune system damages their nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.
The New York Times reported the number of dead at 30.
The Washington Post said the federal government ultimately paid more than $90 million to hundreds of victims.
But there is just a "perception" that the CDC blew it, according to Pollack.
Pollack, in the same piece, praises Fox News anchor Shepard Smith for using his show to denounce "irresponsible" coverage of Ebola.
Pollack's piece is worse than irresponsible; he insists that the Ebola threat is overblown yet ignores the fact that in the swine flu controversy of 1976 the public health establishment manufactured an "epidemic" for the purpose of scaring people into getting vaccinated. Many people listened to their government and got sick or died.
In that case, the CDC Director, Dr. David J. Sencer, was fired. The CDC museum is named after him.
In the case of Ebola, CDC Director Tom Frieden keeps his job while Obama appoints a political fixer to manage the effort, in an attempt to save his political party from outrage over allowing Ebola to gain a foothold on American soil.
But Pollack protests: "Ebola is not 'Obama's Katrina.'" The record shows that the first patient ever diagnosed with Ebola on American soil came during the Obama administration, as a result of a deliberate policy to help "fledgling democracies" in West Africa, according to CDC Director Frieden.
That's politically correct language for giving black Africa special access to the U.S., and putting their interests ahead of America's.
It didn't have to happen if the administration had been making it a priority to protect the American people.
"There will be further infections, perhaps other challenges and blunders," Pollack goes on. "But America has seen worse. HIV/AIDS has killed more than 600,000 Americans, not to mention tens of millions around the world."
This is a fact that cannot be disputed.
What he neglects to point out is that AIDS was, and is, politically protected because of who it infects – mostly male homosexuals, who constitute major funders of the Democratic Party.
The CDC reports, "Men who have sex with men (MSM) remain the group most heavily affected by HIV in the United States. The CDC estimates that MSM represent approximately four percent of the male population in the United States but male-to-male sex accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of new HIV infections among men and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all new infections in 2010 (29,800)."
In Atlanta, where the CDC is based, gay bath houses still remain open and help spread the disease.
To make matters worse, The Huffington Post ran an article titled "Can We Make Gay Bathhouses Cool Again?" and asks whether more of these "sex dens" can reopen.
Rather than address this insanity, Pollack uses his Politico piece to attack "conservative politicians [who] have consistently opposed major public health efforts in HIV prevention...." What these conservatives have said is that the lifestyle that spreads the disease ought to be discouraged, in the same way the federal government argues against smoking cigarettes that shorten one's life, and kill.
Instead, the male homosexuals who finance and run the gay lobby, and who are at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and other infections, are now demanding the "right" to donate blood.
Meanwhile, showing complete disregard for public health, the Obama administration allows state experiments with "medical" and recreational marijuana to proceed, despite the documented link between marijuana and mental illness. Colorado health officials are now fearful of marijuana-infused candy, called "edibles," being dropped into kid's bags this Halloween.
Democratic Party money-bags and hedge fund operator George Soros, who finances the drug legalization movement, is largely to blame for this debacle.
But back to Harold Pollack, who is described as a regular contributor to The Washington Post's Wonkblog section, a place where intellectuals are supposed to pontificate on important issues of the day. His credentials are impressive, but he seems to lack common sense.
Now that Ebola has been allowed in, there is an additional danger that he clearly doesn't want to talk about – that the public health establishment will use the fears it has generated among the populace to try to stampede people into taking a risky Ebola vaccine.
According to the CDC, human testing of an "investigational vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease" is now beginning. The so-called "fast-tracking" process is underway. Perhaps this was the intention all along.
As Barbera Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center argues, "A logical conclusion is that some people in industry, government and the World Health Organization did not want the Ebola outbreak to be confined to several nations in Africa because that would fail to create a lucrative global market for mandated use of fast tracked Ebola vaccines by every one of the seven billion human beings living on this planet."
It looks like the CDC was much faster in approving human trials of a vaccine than in stopping Ebola from coming into the U.S. in the first place.
In addition to the 1976 swine flu debacle, there were several vaccine scandals involving children during the Clinton administration. A hepatitis B vaccine was withdrawn because it contained a toxic substance, and a vaccine against diarrhea was withdrawn because it, too, was dangerous to children.
In addition to the renewed push for an Ebola vaccine, a "crash" program to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine has been underway for decades.
An HIV/AIDS vaccine sounds like a good cause. Billions of dollars have been spent by Bill Gates – and American taxpayers – on the program. But what if they get this one wrong, too? And what if a mandatory AIDS vaccine causes HIV/AIDS in millions of healthy people, many of them children and the elderly?
Whether the mandatory vaccines work or not, they will most likely be covered under Obamacare.
© Cliff Kincaid
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
