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The Gov. shouldn’t have let in Sick Africans. Millions of people have died because of AIDS & the same thing will happen with Ebola.
Welcome back Health!
Health,
1.) HIV was brought to the U.S.A by a European
2.) Nobody knew what HIV was and being that it kills by attacking the immune system it’s symptoms are not readily apparent as a new virus and by the time it was already recognized as an merging virus it was already imbedded in the population
3.) it is not possible to quarantine a country and anyone that travels to one. It’s just not practical unless you would stop ALL immigration and ALL travel from any country on earth. All that restricting travel would do is make it impossible for foreign doctors to fight the virus and let it evolve and mutate further into more dangerous/ infectious strains.
Health,
1.) I do not work for the government
2.) Where HIV first found it’s way into the human population has nothing to do with the fact that it was probably not introduced to America by an African, and was not recognized as an emerging virus or threat until it was already imbedded in the population, it is thought that the first case of it in the USA probably occurred as early as the 1950s and as the article that you copy and pasted above stated it only showed itself by causing it’s victims to succumb to other diseases it did not have it’s own easily recognized symptoms.
3.) My point was that it isn’t practical to effectively quarantine a section of the world that big and that all that attempting to do so would do is prevent foreign doctors from going to fight the virus which would allow it to mutate and evolve into more virulent and infectious strains. Trying to hide from it won’t work. It’s got to be dealt with.
It certainly is possible to temporarily prohibit entry to the U.S. from anyone who were within specific countries.
Lior,
Sure, but in order to stop a virus you would also have to stop people who had contact with anyone who may have traveled to any of those countries, and then anyone who may have had contact with those people etc.
For example: Tom from Liberia can travel to Mozambique where he has contact with Fred from Haiti. Fred now returns to Haiti and has contact with his cousin Carlos from Dominican Republic. Carlos’s brother Elvis works in Florida and comes to the Dominican Republic for the holidays where he spends the holidays with Carlos and then flies back to Florida on a plane with 250 passengers from all over the USA.
The USA can have the strictest laws blocking travel from Liberia. It won’t help.
It will help. You needn’t reach a perfect record of barring entry of every possible candidate to achieve a significantly reduced risk of contagion. By barring entry you will significantly reduce the risk even if it isn’t foolproof.
brb i need to wash my glasses thought this thread title said shopping diseases.
Lior,
My point is that you won’t stop the virus from coming here and spreading that way and all that you will do is spend tons of money and prevent doctors/educators from going over there and actually beating the thing.
You might or might not stop it. But you’d certainly (significantly) reduce it’s likelihood of reaching here. And it doesn’t cost a ton of money to bar entry.
If that Liberian had been denied entry you wouldn’t have had him here or the multiple people it now spread to and dozens of people currently under surveillance or quarantine.
“Just stop any arrival, even indirectly from West Africa. Many countries will follow!”
Actually you can’t fly from any of the three countries that have been affected by this epidemic (Guinea, Liberia, or Sierra Leone) to the US. There are no flights.
There are, however, flights from Texas from/to the rest of the US. Quarantine Texas. The rest of the US would be better off, anyway.
Health,
1.) You are wrong about HIV. It had been in the USA at least 7 to 10 years and probably closer to 30 years before it was recognized in the early 80s (first probable case was in the 50s and there was what was later definitively recognized as cases by the late 60s early 70s)
2.) My point is that to be effective the quarantine would also have to cover people who had contact with people who may have traveled to West Africa and this is not practical. I elaborated in my posts above.
“By 1984”
By 1984 we understood how difficult it is to spread HIV and that there was no reason to quarantine anyone. Today there are millions of HIV-positive people, many living normal lives. You want to quarantine all of them?
“And it doesn’t cost a ton of money to bar entry.”
Actually if you bar everyone who has been to any country where there has been a case, you haven’t just cost a ton of money, you have destroyed the world economy.
Lior,
1.) As CharlieHall pointed out above barring entry comes at an extremely high cost.
2.) The point is that an ineffective quarantine (like barring entry from countries with cases) would in any case prove useless and only prevent people from actually fighting the virus. If it wouldn’t have come over here with a West African then it would have come over with someone who had contact with a West African, or someone who had contact with someone who had contact with one etc.
An ineffective quarantine is about the most harmful thing you can do in a situation like this
Again, it is not ineffective as it will reduce the likelihood and incidents of the disease spreading in this country. Even if it won’t eliminate the possibility. Better one case than three cases. Better two cases than six cases. The more you reduce the likelihood and incidents of it spreading, the better. Even if it isn’t entirely eliminated. The less cases the better off we are and the better off we are in fighting it on our shores.
Health,
1.) If HIV had been circulating in the American population for 10-30 years before it was recognized quarantining a couple thousand people would not have done anything. The amount of people that would have to be quarantined after a virus has been circulating that long would be astronomical and it would be just about impossible to track down everyone who may have been infected and quarantine them
2.) Looking at people’s passports won’t help because of the reasons I listed above. In order to have an affective quarantine you would need to quarantine not only West Africans but also anyone who had contact with one or with anyone who had contact with someone who had contact with one etc. it’s simply not possible. See the example i gave lior above.
Health,
1.) You are making up facts. Saying that the disease would have been easy to control on the early 8s does not make it so. Once a virus is circulating in a population for over a decade there is practically no way to figure out how many people had been exposed over that period and isolate them. How could you know that there was only a handful cases after the disease had been circulating for probably 30 years before anyone recognized it ?!
2.) You aren’t addressing my point here. If all countries on earth don’t do a quarantine at once it won’t help for the reasons i wrote above
I think the whole ebola thing is a big hoax, to distract everyone from everything that’s happening in the world.
Health,
1.)You are wrong. It wasn’t only in “certain populations” it was first clinically diagnosed in “certain populations” but it had been circulating in the general population for anywhere from 10-30 years before it was even noticed in those populations. The first victims of it in the USA (way before the 80s) were a diverse group.
2.) My point is simply that if Ebola isn’t controlled in Africa and we just attempt to lock out that entire part of the world it is virtually guaranteed that the virus will get here somehow. Expecting the whole world to want to follow (or even be able to have secure enough borders to follow if they wanted to do so)is far from being realistic.
Health,
1.) I’m not making any assumptions. Why would you assume that for 30 years the disease was only circulating in certain populations? Most people didn’t know if they had it at that time as more and more people got educated about it more and more cases were noticed everywhere. Also even just “intravenous drug users” is way too big of a group to quarantine in any case. That group alone would include an incredible amount of people, how do you think they would track down anyone who had used an intravenous drug in the previous 10 years??
2.) Outbreaks start with 1 person. 1 person can expose hundreds of people in just a few hours (just has to take a plane and then an airport shuttle etc.) by trying to block off half a continent and not trying to stop the epidemic over there it is virtually guaranteed that people will slip through the cracks eventually, the only difference then will be that the virus would have had more time to mutate.
Health,
1.) Regarding HIV: The infections you mentioned were observed in a very diverse population and had been occurring for decades. Just because AIDS was clinically diagnosed in a certain population does not mean that it was endemic to that population, you are assuming that it was. What is your assumption based on? Also forcing everyone who had used intravenous drugs or touched a body fluid of an intravenous drug user in a decade to submit for testing is very unrealistic.
2.) Regarding Ebola I don’t think that West Africans “should” be able to come here. If it would be possible to keep ebola out of the USA with travel bans I would be very pro them. I don’t think a ban would work to prevent ebola from coming here, would be damaging to the economy and allow it to mutate in more infectious strains. That’s why I’m against it. I elaborated more in my earlier posts
Health,
1.) you said “You don’t read my posts or you don’t understand them! Hiv is a virus -therefore anybody who contacts this virus -gets it. HIV became endemic in the 80’s, despite your denial.”
I’m guessing you meant “an epidemic” here the word “endemic” doesn’t make sense in that context. AIDS was first clinically diagnosed in certain populations in the 80s, it (or the HIV virus that causes it) had been circulating in the general population for decades. That’s besides the point that to do what you propose the government would have had to force everyone who had used an intravenous drug or touched the body fluids of someone who had used an intravenous drug since about 1970 to submit to a quarantine/testing for it even have a chance of being effective. That’s not very realistic at all.
2.) If you cannot prevent the Virus from coming here you shouldn’t waste resources trying to do so. You should try doing something that has a chance of having an effect.
P.S. Look up the word “endemic”
Health,
You said, “So what??? As far as the general population – this was only a handful!”
Again what is your assumption that after decades of circulating in the general population there is was only a handful of cases based on?
You said,
“Actually all they would have to do is start holding the law drugs are illegal”
That’s ridiculous! If “holding the law” was so easy then there wouldn’t be drugs in the USA today. The US has and had fairly strict drug laws for quite some time. It’s like saying “I have a great idea to end the drug problem in the USA let’s enforce drug laws and then drugs will go away.
Regarding Ebola, the point that I have been saying over and over is that a travel ban won’t keep the disease out of the USA. It won’t effectively “keep away the sick people”.
Health,
You said,
“It wasn’t an assumption; if you read anything about Aids – you’d know it causes other things. You must have missed my post of -“There might not have been a diagnosis of Aids, but there was diagnosis of the opportunistic infections & Kaposi disease.””
Again, Those infections you mentioned where observed in a very diverse population over many years. It
Here’s a little crash course on the subject:
It is estimated that there were over 12 separate “spillover” events of HIV into the human population between around 1908 and the late 1960s, the first spillover either in or around The Congo.
When Congo declared independence from the Belgian Empire (1960) the only educated people in the Congo were Belgian (that’s how it was in many countries ruled by colonial governments) there were no Congolese doctors.
After independence the Belgians left so the UN sent in 4500 Haitian medical doctors and professionals to help the new country get off the ground (Haitian culture is similar to that of the Congo and they both speak French). Haitians were emigrating to the USA and Europe for a good 20 years before AIDS was recognized not to mention that thousands of Belgians had been living in areas where the disease had been spilling over from around 1908 for close to 50 years before emigrating back to Europe (and having contact with plenty more people that traveled or could travel to the USA.)
Now in the early 1970s a company named Hemo Caribbean was exporting between 5 and 6 thousand liters of blood a month that it bought off of improvished Haitians for use in medical products and blood transfusions. This stuff was not screened for HIV as no one knew what it was yet.
The blood came from an estimated 170,000 Haitians- any number of which could have been carrying HIV which by that time (unknown to anyone then) was prevalent in Haiti.
By the early 1980s when HIV was noticed in certain populations in the USA this thing was far beyond control. It wasn’t just a few thousand people that had to be tested and it wasn’t in a small area.
You should really read a bit about the subject of zoonotic diseases. It’s a fascinating subject and you should stop talking down to people who disagree with you when you aren’t familiar with the topic being discussed.
Regarding Ebola if a Travel Ban would not effectively keep Ebola out of the USA then it does not reduce the danger to American citizens.
Health,
1.) Regarding HIV:
The piece that you copy and pasted above does not contradict what I wrote in my earlier comment. It’s a paper on the situation in a location called the Veneto region of Italy in 1986. Nothing to do with the USA or the situation in general (although even if it did it wouldn’t have contradicted what I wrote.) You clearly don’t know much about this subject at all. Again you should try learning a bit about it, it’s a fascinating topic. (A slightly irrelevant fact is that Ronald Reagan was president in the early 80s he wasn’t exactly known for running a “liberal” administration and it was administration that responded to the first discovery of AIDS)
2.) Regarding Ebola:
Again, a travel ban would not prevent the disease from coming here so it wouldn’t save lives. All a ban would is wreck the economy and give the virus more of a chance to mutate which would result in a deadlier strain coming here which would kill more people.
Diseases such as Ebola, and quarantines, were quite common until about 50 years ago. All they have to do is dust off their old laws and go back to the procedures then used – which included quarantines of travellers from affected countries. Given the way the world’s economy is connected, anything other than a short term travel ban would disrupt the economy which is why no one is discussing it. Fortuantely ebola isn’t very contagious (unlike influenze or smallpox), and while it is more contagious than AIDS (HIV) it still isn’t a big threat to places with functional public health systems (which includes most of Africa, except for a few countries that destroyed their public health system recently with messy civil wars).
1.) you have not addressed any of my points including the fact that thousands of liters of Hatian blood were being shipped to the USA for years and thousands of Europeans had been being exposed to HIV for close to 50 years before emigrating en masse from spillover zones.
Ronald Reagan definitely messed up the response to the epidemic, the government should have started a campaign to educate the public about safe practices to help lower the amount of people who would unknowingly expose themselves to the Virus. He (and many conservatives) don’t and didn’t like people talking about STDs or anything related to them so they ignored it (every once in a while you can probably still hear conservatives whining about S- Ed in government run institutions including schools today).
We are discussing if a Travel ban and forced testing should have been attempted.
Attempting a travel ban or forced testing of everyone who could have been exposed would not have been possible. Like I pointed out above even just rounding up anyone who had used an intravenous drug in the previous 10 years as well as anyone who may have been exposed to the body fluids of someone who used one is not realistic. This is not even mentioning anyone who was exposed any other way (contact with blood from Hemo Carribean or someone who received some, a European who had either lived or had contact with someone who lived in the Congo, anyone who had traveled to Haiti/had contact with a Haitian etc.)
Regarding Ebola,
Trying to put in place a Travel ban instead of getting the Virus under control in West Africa IS giving it a bigger population to mutate in. It is inevitable that people would “slip through” the travel ban carrying the strains that had more time to mutate. Thinking that a Travel Ban would not effect the economy is ridiculous. To even give the appearance of possibly being slightly effective it would have to cover much more then the 3 “main” countries affected.
Health,
1.) You said “Just because it was possible – doesn’t mean it happened. And how do I know it didn’t? Because AIDS causes other diseases which were documented and there weren’t alot of them.”
There were a lot of them. For the 10th time those diseases where observed in a very diverse population and HIV can lay completely dormant for over 10 years without showing any symptoms.
2.) You said “I agree with you about his response, but I disagree with the liberal solution. The only real solution is quarantine. S– education doesn’t work. That’s why there are new cases everyday, since the 1980’s!….Most of the way it was spread was from the Gays, and they should have been tested. Anyone testing positive should have been quarantined. This wasn’t done because it wasn’t PC!”
Of course it works. People are more likely to use safe practices if they know about these dangers then they are to submit to testing, you have this ridiculous idea that if the government wanted it could easily just round up all people who had in the past 10 years used an intravenous drug, Gays, Haitians or Africans or anyone who had contact with them in the pervious 10 years. This is not possible!!!
You keep just repeating the same assumptions over and over as if they are facts. You are assuming that AIDs was specific to the populations it was first clinically observed in. This is a false assumption. The diseases you keep mentioning where observed in a very diverse population. The idea that AIDS is a G– Disease contributed as much as anything else to the conservative government in the 80s ignoring it.
3.) “You put words into my mouth – to push your beliefs. Noone said instead of! A travel ban would keep it more or less out of the US. They should have done that with HIV – not letting in Africans.”
No, a travel ban would not keep it out of the USA. All it would do is make it harder for/prevent medical professionals from going there.
Another point: There is no cure for AIDs or even HIV (to keep it from progressing to AIDS)the “quarantine” you are proposing would be in affect locking anyone who tested positive for HIV in prison for life. The assumption that people would have reported for government testing in this situation is beyond ridiculous. (Admittedly not much more ridiculous then the assumption that if the government had wanted it could have simply tracked down anyone who was among OR HAD CONTACT with a G–, an Intravenous drug user, a Haitian, a European who lived in a spillover zone, or any of the people who may have received a blood product for Hemo Carribean since the early 70s.)
If anything the government did caused the disease to spread it was their unwillingness to discuss and educate the public on the dangers of the disease and how to minimize the danger of contracting it, due almost entirely to a misguided “Conservative” idea of morality that prevented them from publicly discussing anything to do with STDs
Misguided idea of morality? So I guess you are for s-ed in yeshivas as well?
ari-free
The policy almost definitely contributed to the spread of an epidemic that killed tens of millions of people. Make your own call if it was misguided.
As far as Yeshivas I do happen to believe that a form of S Ed done properly in a way that does it’s best to take into consideration both the Hashkafos and cultural sensitivities of the Yeshiva community would be very beneficial. I am not sure that this is the proper venue for that discussion though…
1.) Again your assumption that if the Government wanted it could have easily rounded up everyone in the populations AIDs was first clinically observed in as well as anyone they may have had contact with and lock them up for life if they tested positive is beyond ridiculous. No one would submit to testing if that was the case!
Just in the populations that AIDs was first clinically observed in:
There where thousands of people infected with HIV from blood products in the USA alone, thousands more in Canada and thousands more in Europe (about 6000 in the USA alone) a whole lot more then that would have had to be forced to submit to testing knowing that if they tested positive they would be locked up for life (at least 15 thousand as well as their spouses, children or anyone they may have had contact with.)
There were thousands in the G– Community that was mostly underground and very few would admit to being part of (another contributor due to “Conservative” moral ideas)
There were thousands of people who since the early 70s had used an intravenous drug and anyone they had contact with.
Thousands of Americans that had either been to or had contact with a Haitian.
Just in the population that AIDs was first observed the government probably would have had to “quarantine” over 10,000 people (lock them up for life) and since those people would have been having relationships with people outside their circles for up to 10 years while carrying HIV it would not have helped anyway.
Education is the only thing that has helped at all and gotten people to submit to testing and reduce their own chances of contracting the disease
2.) Regarding ebola: we are discussing if a travel ban would be affective. Quarantine and/or testing of those entering from those countries would be fine, you are trying to change your position or simply forgot what we were discussing or are “moving the goal posts”
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