Its pretty clear to me that Doctors don’t know yet if the swine flu that may have killed at least 150 people in Mexico is more like the 1918 form of influenza that left 50 million people dead, or a 1976 version that was fatal to just one.
You may (or may not) recall that we have been through this issue of concern before. If you do your research, you will find that the first outbreak of the swine flu actually happened here in the US back in 1918, and over a period of 12 months, over 500,000 people died in the United States – 50 million died world wide. Very sad and scary, but our country was ill-prepared (if prepared at all) for this epidemic.
Then again in 1958, a second incident happened in this country – and as a country, we were better prepared to handle the problems, and it did not get out of control. Public information and medical services were able to handle this before it got too bad.
In 1968, we faced the third flu scare, and apparently it sickened only 13 people, with one death. The biggest problem was the media scared the bejeepers out of the general public, but it passed without worldwide effects.
Either way, the lessons learned from past pandemics in 1918, 1958 and 1968 may help reduce the severity of the current threat. A Doctor named Barry Bloom, a professor at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston says the most basic precautions, including hand washing, avoiding close contact with the sick and covering the nose and mouth during coughs and sneezes, remain the same.
He got my attention when he said that a flu pandemic that’s similar in scope to the 1918 pandemic (epidemic) could kill 71 million people worldwide and push the economy into a “major global recession” costing more than $3 trillion, according to a worst-case scenario published by the World Bank in October. An outbreak that follows the route of the 1976 event could end up doing little more than scaring the bejeepers out of people enough so they increase their precautions.
In spite of all this, it’s just too early to tell just what is going to happen. Again, encourage your children and family members to exercise those important precaution and stay healthy! We have enough to worry about anyway, let’s try and reduce the possibility of this pandemic actually becoming a epidemic.
Are you kidding me? Tell me your head won’t split open when you read this…
Lawmakers in one of California’s largest counties have secretly approved awarding an illegal immigrant child molester more than $4 million because he was beaten by fellow inmates while in custody.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors made the decision in a closed-door session, according to an local newspaper that made the settlement public this week. The lawsuit had been filed by an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was jailed after molesting a 6-year-old girl at a park.
The illegal alien, 24-year-old Fernando Ramirez, eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of battery. While incarcerated at the county’s central jail, Ramirez was severely beaten by other inmates and his attorney says deputies in charge were elsewhere during the attack.
Ramirez suffered brain damage and is unable to walk unassisted, according to his attorney, who says his client has also been left with the intellect of a 4-year-old child. That’s two years younger than the girl he molested.
The back door settlement, never the less paid with tax dollars, is the county’s largest ever for an in-custody incident involving sheriffs. All five Orange County Board of Supervisors refuse to comment on the deal even though constituents certainly have the right to know since it’s their money. The illegal alien’s family will get $3.75 million and $900,000 will go to medical liens rendered while in custody.
Let me get this straight. This monster is in the country illegally. Check. He molests a 6 YEAR OLD GIRL. Check. He goes to prison, where he gets three squares a day on the taxpayers dime. Check. He gets beat up, as most child molesters are wont to do in prison, as they are lower than pond scum in the prison totem pole. Check. And he is awarded $4 MILLION Dollars??? Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
I’m sorry, but this piece of garbage doesn’t deserve a freakin’ dime. I’m sorry he got beat up, but he did the crime, he must do the time. People get hurt and/or killed every day in prison. Guess what? That’s just life in prison. If you don’t like it, don’t commit crimes. If he wouldn’t have come into this country illegally, he wouldn’t be in this position. What is wrong with this country? And now the taxpayers of the bankrupt state of California are going to pay $4 million to this POS who molested a 6 year old??
I have NO sympathy for this scumbag. None. Nothing. Nada. Soooo – how much do you think the family of his victim is going to get?
I haven’t heard a thing that would make me believe the virus has migrated to us here in our home town, but believe me – with the mobility of people in general, it is absolutely possible. As you may know, LISD has a high population of folks who come and go from Mexico, the origin of the virus. I encourage our friends who travel to or from Mexico to please be careful and take care of yourselves and your family.
We just don’t want to believe that such things can happen to us – especially in our own backyard! But, the threat of swine flu is real, and as such should be taken seriously. We all should take steps to reduce the possibility of coming in contract with this deadly virus – if you think you have, see your Doctor.
I have no magic solutions, but as a former public safety official, I do believe we all need a plan for our families. In this case, the most effective plan to control or help prevent the spread of the virus is simply this: frequent washing of hands with soap and water or with alcohol-based hand sanitizers, especially after being out in public. Buy several small containers, and carry one with you – and use it frequently!
According to what I have read, Doctors and experts agree that hand-washing can help prevent viral infections, a surprisingly effective way to prevent all sorts of diseases, including ordinary influenza as well as the swine flu virus. Influenza can spread in coughs or sneezes, but an increasing body of evidence shows little particles of virus can linger on tabletops, telephones and other surfaces and be transferred via the fingers to the mouth, nose or eyes.
Got kids? Make sure they carry the small personal size alcohol based hand sanitizer in their backpacks, notebooks, and even keep a spare in their school locker. Encourage FREQUENT use throughout the day.
Alcohol-based gel or foam hand sanitizers work well to destroy viruses and bacteria. Anyone with flu-like symptoms such as a sudden fever, cough or muscle aches should stay away from school, work or public transportation and should see a doctor to be tested.
It would certainly benefit you and your family if you took the time to use sanitizers in your home and your car. This is an is probably a good idea if you have young children in your family. Clean or treat commonly touched areas well (door handles, table top surfaces, sinks, or anywhere that has a surface that is commonly touched by many different people).
Social distancing is another tactic. It means staying away from other people who might be infected and can include avoiding large gatherings, spreading out a little at work, or perhaps staying home and lying low if an infection is spreading in a community.
No panic necessary, but being prepared and forewarned is always a good policy. Awareness is a good step, and follow-thru to protect our family is the best tactic. Let’s all stay healthy and prevent the spread of this virus.
This article was written by George Neumayr on 4.23.09 just seemed like something to ponder…
If achieving world peace required torturing a single baby, asks a character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, would it be worth it?
“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature — that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance — and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”
The liberalism that Barack Obama seeks to complete answers Dostoyevsky’s question with an emphatic yes. What is Obama’s abortion-on-demand-forever policy but the building of a modern American way of life upon the graves of tortured babies? And not just the unavenged tears of one baby but millions of them.
This week, however, Obama did avenge the tears of terrorists. World peace, he said, isn’t worth theirs. He lectured the CIA that “What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard.”
Obama’s prim pontifications about America’s “values and ideals” inspired Chris Matthews and Jack Cafferty, among other deep and careful thinkers, to mull over the question: If torturing terrorists works — as the Obama administration had to admit grudgingly this week — is it okay? No, of course not, the chattering class proudly concluded.
One wonders why. What do they care? Having already accepted abortion and euthanasia — which are nothing more than the expedient killing of the unborn and the elderly — why should the expedient torture of terrorists, a lesser evil, trouble them? Oh, that’s right: the terrorists are guilty and the guilty under the ministrations of modern liberalism never suffer. Pain in modern life is for the innocent.
Terrorists, we’re told by pro-abortion liberals, suffer excruciating pain while the ejected unborn and euthanized elderly feel nothing. And even if the latter do suffer pain, say these liberals, that pain is worth it. After all, abortion and euthanasia sustain a pleasant and peaceful lifestyle for the strong. Let the dead bury the dead. Or, as the Supreme Court has said, imagine the disruption to America’s way of life if stare decisis in the case of Roe v. Wade disappeared and women couldn’t plan their careers and futures without the expectation of legal abortion for years to come.
Obama’s liberalism is not an opponent of human rights abuses but an embodiment of them. The CIA restricts itself to methods far less ruthless than those permitted by the platform of the Democratic Party. When will Obama bring his own platform into line with the Geneva Accords?
It is a little late in the day for Obama to worry about America’s moral reputation. Resisting evil even “when it is hard” hasn’t interested liberalism for at least four decades. It rests on an ideology of expedient evil and crass utilitarianism.
With St. Paul, Western civilization, before modern liberalism ransacked it, said: “One may not do evil so that good may result from it.” But then modern liberalism came along and reversed the formulation and now insists in the case of everything from therapeutic cloning to killing unborn children to dehydrating the elderly that one should do evil so that good may come from it.
Obama only now rediscovers the Christian ethic for terrorists, even as he weaves the “fabric of human destiny” with the tissue of tortured children.
Reading a blurb from Congressman John Carter this afternoon, he said: “I spent the week fighting the DHS report labeling everybody in the country who disagrees with the Administration as “potential terrorists”.
Bobby Eberle over at GOPUSA made a comment that really slams home the total lack of transparency in the new Administration. Here is what Bobby said: “One of the problems of TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) is the complete lack of accountability in how the funds are spent. A lending institution or other entity could be billions of dollars in debt, come to the federal government for a bailout, and then waste it on parties or trips. In addition, these companies could also use the money to fund left-wing fringe groups, and we have no say whatsoever.”
Experience has taught me that transparency and accountability are two processes that are in short supply in politics, especially in Washington. To give away billions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability and no real plan should be criminal. To use that money to fund groups like ACORN is beyond crazy. It’s OUR money! Obama, CNN, and the Congress seem to forget that fact.
Here is something by Thomas Sowell – Syndicated Columnist. If you are a conservative, you may want to read what Thomas Sowell has written. It actually gives me chill bumps, and makes me wonder what kind of country we are leaving to our children. Read this and decide for yourself.
While the rest of us may be worried about violent Mexican drug gangs on our border, or about terrorists who are going to be released from Guantanamo, the director of Homeland Security is worried about “right-wing extremists.”
Just who are these right-wing extremists?
According to an official document of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, right-wing extremists include “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” It also includes those “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority.”
If you fit into any of these categories, you may not have realized that you are considered a threat to national security. But apparently the Obama administration has its eye on you.
If you fit into any of these categories, you may not have realized that you are considered a threat to national security. But apparently the Obama administration has its eye on you.
According to the same official document, the Department of Homeland Security “has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.” But somehow they just know that you right-wingers are itching to unleash terror somewhere, somehow.
So-called “honor killings” by Muslims in the United States, including a recent beheading of his wife by a leader of one of the American Muslim organizations, does not seem to arouse any concern by the Department of Homeland Security.
When it comes to the thuggery of ACORN — its members harassing the homes of bankers and even the home of Senator Phil Gramm when he opposed things that ACORN favored — the Department of Homeland Security apparently sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil.
Maybe they are too busy worrying about right-wing “extremists” who don’t like abortions or illegal immigration, or who favor the division of power between the state and federal governments established by the Constitution.
In one sense, the Department of Homeland Security paper is silly. In another sense, it can be sinister as a revealing and disturbing sign of the preoccupations and priorities of this administration — and their willingness to witch hunt and demonize those who dare to disagree with them.
Reportedly, the FBI and the Defense Department are cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security in investigations of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. That people who have put their lives on the line for this country are made the target of what is called the Vigilant Eagle program suggests that this administration might be more of a threat than the people they are investigating.
All this activity takes on a more sinister aspect against the background of one of the statements of Barack Obama during last year’s election campaign that got remarkably little attention in the media. He suggested the creation of a federal police force, comparable in size to the military.
Why such an organization? For what purpose?
Since there are state and local police forces all across the country, an FBI to investigate federal crimes and a Department of Justice to prosecute those who commit them, as well as a Defense Department with military forces, just what role would a federal police force play?
Maybe it was just one of those bright ideas that gets floated during an election campaign. Yet there was no grassroots demand for any such federal police nor any media clamor for it, so there was not even any political reason to suggest such a thing.
What would be different about a new federal police force, as compared to existing law enforcement and military forces? It would be a creation of the Obama administration, run by people appointed from top to bottom by that administration — and without the conflicting loyalties of those steeped in existing military traditions and law enforcement traditions.
In short, a federal police force could become President Obama’s personal domestic political army, his own storm troopers.
Perhaps there will never be such a federal police force. But the targeting of individuals and groups who believe in some of the fundamental values on which this country was founded, and people who have demonstrated their patriotism by volunteering for military service, suggests that this potential for political abuse is worth watching, as Obama tries to remake America to fit his vision.
I haven’t heard a thing that would make me believe the virus has migrated to us here in our home town, but believe me – with the mobility of people in general, it is absolutely possible. As you may know, LISD has a high population of folks who come and go from Mexico, the origin of the virus. I encourage our friends who travel to or from Mexico to please be careful and take care of yourselves and your family.
Here is something by Thomas Sowell – Syndicated Columnist. If you are a conservative, you may want to read what Thomas Sowell has written. It actually gives me chill bumps, and makes me wonder what kind of country we are leaving to our children. Read this and decide for yourself.