Maybe she’s on a Caribbean cruise?  Or, maybe, just maybe, she’s a stand in for Steven Tyler at an Aerosmith reunion?… Anyone?

WASHINGTON DC – Earlier this week, Sen. John McCain called for an Ebola czar, not knowing one already effectively exists. Why should he, since Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H., has been completely M.I.A.
You have to wonder sometimes if anyone in a leadership position in the Obama administration bothers to show up to work these days.
Case in point is Dr. Nicole Lurie, who arguably should be front and center in planning for and responding to the Ebola outbreak.
After all, it’s right there in her job title. She’s the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, a position created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that reports directly to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Her mission, according to the HHS website, is “to lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies.”
Lead? Well, maybe she’s leading from behind, because Lurie’s been nowhere to be found since Ebola showed up on U.S. soil. (more…)

With zero experience in healthcare, disease controls or medical best practices, Ron Klain is appointed by President Obama to lead the Ebola Crisis Team.  Hey, it’s not all that bad – he could have chosen Ben Affleck…
WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday turned to a trusted adviser to lead the nation’s Ebola response as efforts to clamp down on any possible route of infection from three Texas cases expanded, reaching a cruise ship at sea and multiple airline flights.

Facing renewed criticism of his handling of the Ebola risk, Obama will make Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, his point man on fighting Ebola at home and in West Africa. Klain will report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the White House said. (more…)

5-Month-Old Lancen Kendall of Phoenix Arizona becomes the seventh child to die as a result of Enterovirus D68 since mid-August.

Arizona – […]   Lancen Kendall, is one of 24 cases statewide that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is testing for the deadly D68 strain.

Lancen’s parents say he showed no signs or symptoms that he was sick and that he just didn’t wake up from a nap earlier this month. He was rushed to Banner Thunderbird Medical Center and, five days later, pronounced brain dead.

“The lack of warning is the scariest part to me. We didn’t know he was sick,” said his father, Kevin Kendall.

The death of their 5-month-old is still an impossible scenario for the couple. Their son always had a beaming smile and appeared healthy, they say, but doctors determined he was dying from a strain of the enterovirus.

“It’s kind of terrifying that it literally came out of nowhere,” said his mother, Kathleen Kendall.  (link)

Lancen’s death in Arizona follows the deaths of children in Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, Missouri and a severe case in Alabama. (more…)

The advisors to the President feel this Oval Office update was effective, hence the upload to the White House site.
The YouTube ID of lEFOUGKBc40?rel=0 is invalid.
Key takeaways: The White House doesn’t support a travel ban (quarantine) from West Africa because it would drive people to be deceptive in their travel arrangements. In essence “they would lie”.
This position is undermined by the fact that patient Zero already lied to gain travel access to the U.S. subsequently creating the original Ebola exposure. This deception occurred while no travel ban is in place, so why would a travel ban increase the likelihood of deception? (more…)

The Kurds battling for Kobane (Kobani) continue to request resupply and additional weapons from the U.S. and Turkey. However, neither President Obama nor President Erdogan have done anything to provide reinforcements for the Kurdish fighters.
Despite their isolation, and with assistance from airstrikes in the surrounding terrain, Kurdish fighters have been able to recapture strategic locations from ISIS control.

SYRIA – Kurdish fighters have launched an unlikely comeback against Islamic State terrorists besieging the Syrian town of Kobane, amid claims the resistance forces have now reclaimed swathes of the city.
Images this morning showed Kurdish YPG soldiers triumphantly raising their flag above Tel Shair hill in the west of the city, where ISIS’ own black jihadist flag had recently been flying.
Assisted by sustained U.S. and Arab airstrikes, the massively outgunned Kurdish troops have managed to do what looking impossible only a week ago – force ISIS to abandon strategic locations in the west of Kobane and pin them back elsewhere in the city.
(more…)

This is what happens when you politicize a public health issue. Bureaucrats have to keep the concentric circles of protectionism around the President fully supported. Contradictions then become glaringly obvious.
CBS Reports Ms. Vinson was cleared to fly with a fever by the CDC.    Today the CDC says Ms. Vinson should never have flown.
You know…. well,… protocols and such.   Yeah…. watch:

(more…)

The siege of Kobane (Kobani) enters day #29 tomorrow. The Kurdish men, women and entire families continue to hold about two-thirds of the city.
Day #28 saw six suicide car bombs from ISIS aimed at Kobane leadership positions inside the city. Meanwhile in Turkey President Erdogan still refuses to assist the sieged city and will not permit Kurdish citizens from Turkey to cross the border to join their brothers and sisters in arms.

To the contrary today saw Erdogan actually begin to bomb the Kurds inside Turkey in clear violation of a 2 year ceasefire. Erdogan is doing just about everything he can to speed up the collapse of Kobane in Northern Syria. The longer Kobane holds out, the more politically dangerous the elements within Turkey become to the centralized power of Sunni Erdogan.
Simultaneously, pressure, or more aptly put, “optics” and “political pressure” are creating a disconcerting place for President Obama. At his core Sunni Obama wants desperately to support his ideological brother, Erdogan. However, the longer the Kurds in Kobane are able to hold on, the more pressure mounts upon Obama as more people begin to ask the question ‘why is he not helping them’?
(more…)

(Via The Federalist)  […]   See, in 2004, Congress passed The Project Bioshield Act. The text of that legislation authorized up to $5,593,000,000 in new spending by NIH for the purpose of purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack. A major part of the plan was to allow stockpiling and distribution of vaccines.

Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”

(more…)

The Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Kobane (Kobani) would beg to differ.
Despite the obvious, and well documented, non-support for the Kurds fighting in Kobane, Susan Rice goes on Meet the Press and proclaims the administration strategy is to support them.

“This is very early days of the strategy. The strategy is very clear. We’ll do what we can from the air. We will support the Iraqi security forces, the Kurds, and ultimately over time, the moderate opposition in Syria to be able to control territory and take the fight to ISIL.”

Water is no longer wet.

(Full Story Via WFB) On Sunday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said the United States would not reevaluate the strategy to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), despite its recent territorial advances, and said that the Obama administration is still not considering boots on the ground. (more…)

The True Story Of Enterovirus D68 is Not A Story of Surprise

Back in July of 2014 we outlined how the “surprise influx” of Unaccompanied Alien Children from Central America was not in actuality “a surprise”.  We knew it was not a surprise because the Obama Administration was specifically pre-planning for an influx a full seven months before the story began to reach the headlines:

On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.
Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.

Obviously the key take-away was:  How could DHS and HHS claim a surprise when they were specifically looking for contractors to handle a very specific number of UAC’s seven month earlier?

Immediately we knew a few things.  First, we knew it wasn’t a surprise.  Second, we know this administration never lets a crisis go to waste.   The UAC crisis was soon framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ to position a more favorable outcome for comprehensive immigration reform.  It almost worked.
Almost. (more…)