Monday, October 6, 2014

Whoa! Salon on "Rand Paul’s Dopey Science"

There are no indications at all that Ebola is air borne or that it is transmitted in any new ways, yet Rand sees clues that it is, which puts Rand in opposition with his father. SEE: Ron Paul Warns of Ebola ‘Overreaction’.

Enter Salon, which is not composed of a bunch of writers that are exactly Einsteins (They are for example as clueless about climate science as Rand is about Ebola), but they do nail Rand on Ebola:

Rand Paul’s dopey scienceBy Joan Walsh
We hear over and over that Sen. Rand Paul is the Republican Democrats should fear most— the guy who could win over anti-war voters with his anti-interventionism, young people with his supposed (mostly rumored) libertarianism, maybe even some African Americans thanks to his work on criminal justice reform.
But every time Paul gets attention for one of his interesting politicsl stands, he’s likely to repel potential new supporters with one of his crazy ones. Politics aside, anyone who cares about science and reason is going to have a hard time supporting Paul – the “doctor” who said last week that the government was lying about how Ebola...
 In a breathless “exclusive,” Breitbart News revealed that Paul thinks the Obama administration is misleading the public about the nature of the threat and how the disease is spread. “They’re downplaying and underplaying the risk of this,” Paul claimed. “They keep emphasizing that it’s so hard to transmit. Well if it’s so hard to transmit why are doctors getting it with masks, gloves, boots and hats—the whole works?”
You might think an ophthalmologist (though he’s not board certified) would be more responsible about spreading health panic. But you’d be wrong. “Could we have a worldwide pandemic? The Spanish flu in 1918 killed 21 million people, the plague in the 14th century killed 25 million people; I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I think we should have travel restrictions at this point in time coming from Africa,” Paul added.
Health experts shot Paul down almost immediately. “I don’t think that there’s data to tell us that that’s a correct statement, with all due respect,” NIH veteran Dr. Anthony Fauci told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We have had experience since 1976 with how Ebola is transmitted. And it is clear that it’s transmitted by direct contact with body fluids, blood, diarrhea, vomit, or what have you.
“And there’s no indication that there is another insidious way that it’s transmitted that we’re missing because of the experience that we’ve had. So, we’ve really gotta go with the evidence base. There’s always hypothesis and surmising about that, but there’s no scientific evidence,” Fauci added.
Ouch.

-RW 

4 comments:

  1. " with his supposed (mostly rumored) libertarianism"

    Well hey, look at that!

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  2. As bad as the ebola scaremongering is, he dug his hole much deeper here:

    "Could we have a worldwide pandemic? The Spanish flu in 1918 killed 21 million people..."

    ...because of the state's misguided "help," which is precisely what he's offering here. See:

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/10/bill-sardi/did-aspirin-contribute-to-flu-deaths/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Aspirin_poisoning

    Countless deaths were caused by US military bases and their hospitals all over the world, where people were crowded together, and in many cases, poisoned by state licensed doctors.

    Even when the state "helps" without bombs, it can't help but kill a few million people for no reason.

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  3. I cannot believe BW is this naive. LRC had a column up the other day what the Deep State politics are (regarding immigration/Cheap Labor Lobby) and Rand is actually playing up the correct side. Why are we letting these refugee communities fly freely into our country?

    If you hippies want to send me a check to cover the cost of this one Texas patient, I'll hear you out, otherwise, just another trespasser that has probably rung up $200,000, at a min., in bills.

    Yeah, and sure, trust the government "experts."

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  4. I don't see Rand's comments as that controversial or far fetched. The point he's making is we don't know for sure all the ways it can be transmitted, therefore shouldn't we be more cautious? Other epidemiologists have said that the longer a disease like this is in humans the higher the chance it can mutate and then be transmitted in new ways, even airborne. Why are we putting 5000 troops in contact in Liberia, why do we allow these uninsured, non citizens to come here with diseases and then apologize to them because we want to protect others from contracting the disease. This is a bad, painful way to die, and it should be treated with every caution and all avoidance possible. The first defense in these types of disease is to isolate from the infected areas. But we are not doing that.

    ReplyDelete