We should have quarantined Africa 50 years ago


Wolf DeVoon

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Previous research had suggested that HIV was first transmitted from chimps to humans and that the pandemic probably originated in central Africa in the first half of the last century. However, the latest research provides the strongest case for it emerging at a definite time and place – namely Kinshasa in 1920.

“We have managed to integrate spatial information to see where the virus emerged and how it spread to become a full-blown pandemic. Kinshasa at that time was growing fast, it was the biggest city in central Africa at that time and was very well connected to the rest of the Congo,” said Nuno Faria of Oxford, another member of the team.

“Data from colonial archives tells us that by the end of the 1940s over one million people were travelling through Kinshasa on the railways each year. Our genetic data tells us that HIV very quickly spread across the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country the size of Western Europe,” Dr Faria said.

Further social changes brought about as a result of independence in 1960 helped the virus to “break out” from small groups of infected people into the wider population, including immigrant workers from Haiti who then carried their infection back home from where it would eventually be transmitted to visitors from the US.

[The Independent]

Screening out health risks was long a part of the U.S. immigration system, dating back to the Immigration Act of 1891, which excluded “persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease.” Today, the law gives the administration the power to refuse entry to foreigners with a “communicable disease of public health significance.” A decade-old executive order specifically lists Ebola as one of those diseases with the potential to cause a pandemic.

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Basic principles. There are two anarcho-capitalist institutions of general government -- the Judiciary and a Territorial Executive.

Whether the Executive should be regulated by consent of a democratic legislature is not interesting (and not ancap). The interesting question is national defense in the broadest possible sense: territorial borders, skies, maritime boundaries, navigable waters, military installations, weapons of mass destruction, vital transportation corridors, seaports, airports, customs, and public health.

From a judicial viewpoint, liberty is the cornerstone of justice. Absent a reasonable showing of clear and present danger the Executive cannot lawfully limit a person's liberty or prevent him from entering or leaving the country. But national security cases and controversies arise after an exercise of police power. It is not the function of law courts to "make" law or to prejudge what the Executive may do in response to unusual, unforeseen circumstances that threaten national security.

Routine investigations of suspected crime, piracy, and conspiracy do not exempt police from a judicial test of probable cause.

The most urgent responsibility of a laissez faire judiciary is to propagate the rule of law as a counterweight to secret use of expulsion and surveillance by Executive Order... If the Executive wants to conduct a digital search or seizure, make them apply for a court order. Laissez faire judges, upholding the Freeman's Constitution, are sworn to defend innocent liberty and privacy, unless there is probable cause to investigate a crime. [Laissez Faire Law, p.156]

But national security threats of sufficient scale that could injure the entire nation or a significant number of innocent people, especially matters which arise suddenly and unexpectedly, require the Executive to act immediately and authorize any and all measures deemed prudent and sufficient to defend and safeguard the country.

It does not take a court order to block aircraft from West Africa or to screen passengers on other flights.

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Sending 1000 American troops to Africa is INSANE! And everyone can assume it is Obamas idea because sane people (which includes our military) are advising that we impose a travel ban to Africa.

1000 possibly Ebola infected troops returning to America is radical Islams dream scenario.

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Sending 1000 American troops to Africa is INSANE! And everyone can assume it is Obamas idea because sane people (which includes our military) are advising that we impose a travel ban to Africa.

1000 possibly Ebola infected troops returning to America is radical Islams dream scenario.

Yep.

By the way, I believe he sent 3,000...

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They aren't sending 3000 Special Forces Aidmen, either. Maybe a few. I dunno.

--Brant

if the troops get Ebola they won't have to bring it back for their mothers to go bat-shit angry insane over President Zero and it would segue over to all military mothers and military personnel and military vets--but it's the mothers, brother!

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"We should have quarantined Africa 50 years ago."

Why? Because public health officials in 1964 should have been smart enough to realize that AIDS would be first clinically observed in 1981, and that by 2014 there would be a genetic analysis showing that HIV first emerged in Kinshasa in about 1920.

Definitive proof 1985 http://www.epiinformatics.com/ADPublications/HTLV1Antibodies.pdf

Clinical evidence 1976-78 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_early_HIV/AIDS_cases#1976

Tuberculosis epidemic 1964 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2554833/

Meningitis epidemics 1950-51 http://www.fofweb.com/History/HistRefMain.asp?iPin=ENPP477&SID=2&DatabaseName=Modern+World+History+Online&InputText=%22Nigerian+meningitis+epidemics%22&SearchStyle=&dTitle=Nigerian+meningitis+epidemics&TabRecordType=All+Records&BioCountPass=0&SubCountPass=1&DocCountPass=0&ImgCountPass=0&MapCountPass=0&FedCountPass=&MedCountPass=0&NewsCountPass=0&RecPosition=1&AmericanData=&WomenData=&AFHCData=&IndianData=&WorldData=Set&AncientData=&GovernmentData=

Sparsity of achievements by 1 million African immigrants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_United_States#Academia_and_science

African immigrants transmit multiple infectious diseases http://fogartyfellows.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Barnette-Role-of-immigrants-in-infectious-diseases.pdf

Thanks for the links. That's definitive proof, all right. It took you probably less than an hour to find the links to those studies. A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing even if his dial-up connection was slower.

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A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing

I guess not. There was nothing but newspapers and UPI stories ripped from a teletype machine. America was mobilized for nuclear war, digging bomb shelters, storing barrels of water and crackers in the basement of the public library, CD volunteers with binoculars watching the skies for Russian planes. Africa was something that the Brits and Frogs dealt with.

U.S. policymakers saw North Africa, with its strategic location on the southern flank of Western Europe and its immense oil and gas reserves in Libya and Algeria, as a region of vital strategic and economic importance to the United States. U.S. military leaders also considered the Wheelus Air Base in Libya and the Naval Communications Center at Kenitra in Morocco critically important military assets. Thus, Johnson administration policy in the region focused on strengthening North African ties to the West and on forestalling Soviet attempts to dominate any part of the region by providing sufficient aid to the countries of North Africa so that the alternative of turning to the Soviet bloc would seem less attractive. U.S. leaders hoped that U.S. interests in North Africa could be safeguarded by a relatively modest effort complementary to that of France...

In Portuguese Africa, the conflict between U.S. support for self-determination in Angola and Mozambique and the U.S. need to retain the Azores base, which military advisers considered vital to U.S. security, created a serious dilemma for U.S. policymakers. Department of State representatives continued unsuccessfully to press Portugal to undertake adequate reforms in its African territories and to enter into a dialogue with African representatives at the United Nations....

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v24/summary

Whether CDC knew anything would involve a paper search: Records of the Division of Quarantine, historical files of the U.S. Quarantine Station, Rosebank, Staten Island, NY, 1921-80. Records of the Bacterial Disease Branch, 1966-70. Records of the Epidemiology Branch, concerning the study of polio, influenza, salmonella, and other diseases, bacteria, and viruses, 1927-73. Annual reports on the Foreign Quarantine Program, 1955-69. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/442.html

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Thanks for the links. That's definitive proof, all right. It took you probably less than an hour to find the links to those studies. A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing even if his dial-up connection was slower.

FF:

What is your point here?

Are you arguing that folks can't reason from a set of facts?

A person then cannot test his hypothesis?

Hell, what about the American Colonial person who pushed vaccinations by pricking a "pustule" and scraping it into colonist's bodies too inoculate them?

A...

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Thanks for the links. That's definitive proof, all right. It took you probably less than an hour to find the links to those studies. A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing even if his dial-up connection was slower.

FF:

What is your point here?

Are you arguing that folks can't reason from a set of facts?

A person then cannot test his hypothesis?

Hell, what about the American Colonial person who pushed vaccinations by pricking a "pustule" and scraping it into colonist's bodies too inoculate them?

A...

Jenner? Not Bruce?! American?

--Brant

totally confused

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Thanks for the links. That's definitive proof, all right. It took you probably less than an hour to find the links to those studies. A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing even if his dial-up connection was slower.

FF:

What is your point here?

Are you arguing that folks can't reason from a set of facts?

A person then cannot test his hypothesis?

Hell, what about the American Colonial person who pushed vaccinations by pricking a "pustule" and scraping it into colonist's bodies too inoculate them?

A...

Jenner? Not Bruce?! American?

--Brant

totally confused

Some folks had been exposed to Jenner's ideas before he published in 1796:

Figure 1. Edward Jenner's Report on Cowpox Inoculation, Published Five Years after His First Experiment on May 14, 1796.

nejm199609193351217_f1.jpeg

COLONIAL: During the smallpox epidemic in Colonial times the only form of treatment was variolation.

The townspeople set up facilities where people with the disease could go for inoculation through variolation. Variolation consisted of making a small cut in the arm of a healthy person and then applying scabs from a person with smallpox to the cut.

John Adams, who spent time in the variolation facility at Castle William in Boston Harbor, writes of his experience to Abigail Adams saying, "They [the doctors] took their Launcetts and with their Points divided the skin for about a Quarter of an Inch and just suffering the Blood to appear, buried a Thread about (half) a Quarter of an Inch long in the Channell. A little Lint was then laid over the scratch and a Piece of a Ragg pressed on, and then a Bandage bound over all."

Variolation was safer than getting the disease the natural way. However, variolation disappeared in 1796 when English physician Edward Jenner discovered that the germs from cowpox worked as immunity for smallpox. Based off this discovery vaccinations were created. People also drank large amounts of water that had been in contact with tar for two days.

During our revolutionary war, these variolation facilities were in a number of New England communities.

This one particular man was banished for it and I believe he served with the Green Mountain boys.

Can't remember his name though.

A...

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That man who served with the Green Mtn Boys--such a vague recollection.

--Brant

thanks for the info complexity, aka education

that Jenner could make the discovery that cowpox could inoculate against smallpox shows how small genius--if there is such a thing--can have stupendous results (large genius--if there is such a thing--was Pasteur)

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Thanks for the links. That's definitive proof, all right. It took you probably less than an hour to find the links to those studies. A public health official in 1964 could have done the same thing even if his dial-up connection was slower.

FF:

What is your point here?

Are you arguing that folks can't reason from a set of facts?

A person then cannot test his hypothesis?

Hell, what about the American Colonial person who pushed vaccinations by pricking a "pustule" and scraping it into colonist's bodies too inoculate them?

A...

Ever heard of back issues of scientific journals? Of course, you have. Well, why not forward issues? Come on, can anyone prove that the CDC in 1964 did not have advance copies of those 1976 and 1985 studies that Dr. DeVoon linked us to? And even if they didn't have them, that's still no excuse. Working for the government is no reason not to show initiative. It's elementary. You start with the data available in 1964, extrapolate forward to 1985, see there's a full-blown AIDS epidemic in progress and order up a quarantine of Africa and of any continent that trades with Africa and of any continent that trades with a continent which trades with Africa. Ba da bing ba da boom, no AIDS in the US of A.

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Ever heard of back issues of scientific journals? Of course, you have. Well, why not forward issues? Come on, can anyone prove that the CDC in 1964 did not have advance copies of those 1976 and 1985 studies that Dr. DeVoon linked us to? And even if they didn't have them, that's still no excuse. Working for the government is no reason not to show initiative. It's elementary. You start with the data available in 1964, extrapolate forward to 1985, see there's a full-blown AIDS epidemic in progress and order up a quarantine of Africa and of any continent that trades with Africa and of any continent that trades with a continent which trades with Africa. Ba da bing ba da boom, no AIDS in the US of A.

Very droll. It remains that the U.S. had no interest in Africa in 1964, other than military bases in Libya and Morocco. Everything done since was altruist, and there was ample evidence since 1950 of a disease-ridden continent we had no rational business touching. Independence, then and now, is a virtue.

Personally, the tragedy of HIV doesn't bother me at all, compared to our involvement in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran.

20141005_us_0.jpg

This is your nation on drugs -- the irrational idiocy of altruism. No progress since 1995.

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oops -- Ebola identified in 1976, looked like deadly Marburg virus identified in the 1960s.

...our first thought was: "What the hell is that?" The virus that we had spent so much time searching for was very big, very long and worm-like. It had no similarities with yellow fever. Rather, it looked like the extremely dangerous Marburg virus which, like ebola, causes a haemorrhagic fever. In the 1960s the virus killed several laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak

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oops -- Ebola identified in 1976, looked like deadly Marburg virus identified in the 1960s.

...our first thought was: "What the hell is that?" The virus that we had spent so much time searching for was very big, very long and worm-like. It had no similarities with yellow fever. Rather, it looked like the extremely dangerous Marburg virus which, like ebola, causes a haemorrhagic fever. In the 1960s the virus killed several laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak

Scary. It might get into African cities and India. It might become as infamous as the Black Death and the post-WWI flu epidemic. If you live in North America or Europe there won't be much to fear as any outbreak would be immediately contained. All these sick people need blood serum from the infected survivors and IV vitamin C.

--Brant

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A newscaster was talking about treating Americans with Ebola in a state of the art hospital. If just five cases are being treated at the same time the chance for a security breakdown is possible. If more than five cases are being treated . . . . as Ringo sang, "Goodbye Vienna".

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Can anyone on OL give me a reason why all connecting flights and direct flights should not be denied entry into the US until there are processing centers on islands external to the US, a la Ellis Island.

Not just for Ebola which allegedly has a 50% + fatality rate:

This is from the L.A. Times, not a paragon of truth in my not humble opinion, so accept it at your own risk:

Farrar and Piot also warned that here was "a very real danger of a complete breakdown in civic society."

In the WHO paper, researchers presented their first, full statistical snapshot of the epidemic, which gained a foothold in December of last year and has fallen hardest on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The majority of patients stricken by Ebola are 15 to 44 years old, with men and women suffering at a nearly equal rates, according to researchers. The case fatality rate -- based on confirmed cases only -- is 70.8%, with a slightly lower chance of death -- 64.3% -- for those admitted to a hospital.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ebola-may-be-endemic-in-people-20140922-story.html

Ellis Island was not a portal, it was a disease screen to see if you would be allowed to open the portal.

A...

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