Ebola Hugs and Other Peculiar Happenings
As the Ebola crisis continues to swirl and the ineptitude of America’s president continues to be laid bare, certain oddities surrounding the situation are impossible to ignore.
For instance, why, after being administered the experimental drug Z-Mapp, did it take Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol almost 30 days to recover from Ebola? Since Dr. Brantly’s recovery, other American healthcare workers, as well as freelance photojournalist Ashoka Mukpo, have contracted and then recuperated from the virus with lightning speed.
Meanwhile, the hale and hearty relatives of “patient zero,” Thomas Eric Duncan, who brought Ebola to Dallas via Liberia and subsequently succumbed to the sickness, despite having been fully exposed to Duncan’s virus-infected body fluids, emerged miraculously unscathed from a 21-day quarantine.
For some mysterious reason protective gear did not shield nurses who cared for the dying man in isolation, but Duncan’s family, who lived with him in a small, hot apartment where he vomited and lost control of his bowels, have all been issued a clean bill of health.
Adding color to the drama, now, one week prior to a midterm election that stands to handily trounce Barack Obama’s party, the president recreated his old Chris Christie-Hurricane Sandy bear-hug stunt. This time Obama has resorted to embracing an American Ebola victim who, after leaving the hospital, headed straight for the Oval Office to meet with the fellow responsible for her contracting the hemorrhagic fever in the first place.
The woman who did this is 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham. Nina is the Dallas Ebola survivor who, immediately following her release from isolation at the National Institutes of Health, hugged the miracle worker who astonished everyone when he got Gabby Giffords to open her eyes for the first time after her almost-fatal head wound in the Tucson, Arizona shooting.
The most recent visit was similar to the one where a feeble Kent Brantly rose from his sick bed and swiftly made his way to the Oval Office to meet with America’s Obamacare creator. Once there, Dr. Brantly beseeched boots on the ground in West Africa -- boots that Obama refuses to send to Syria to fight a marauding band of ISIS fighters happily going about the business of beheading Americans.
After Nina Pham’s recovery, Barack Obama -- who treats Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu as if he’s the one with end-stage Ebola -- free of concern about contracting the virus, with minimal screening and full faith in America’s healthcare system, emulated Bill Clinton and leaned in for a face-to-face bear hug from a young nurse whose White House ensemble did not include a beret.
The message the president was undoubtedly hoping the visit would send to America was this: although medical personnel in full protective gear contracted Ebola and irresponsible doctors like Craig Spencer rode NYC subways and went E-bowling with a fever, the disease is not a danger to everyday Americans walking New York City’s High Line park, even if the guy strolling in front of them is coughing out Ebola-infested droplets from his diseased lungs.
Speaking of messages, by getting together with the man whose reckless plan to leave the borders open and insistence on continuing to grant travel visas to West Africans caused her to get Ebola, Nina Pham behaved sort of like the victim of a hit-and-run accident seeking out the driver at fault to go for a Sunday drive.
Actually, by meeting with the president, Pham probably did more harm than good.
The nurse squandered a perfect opportunity to condemn Obama’s refusal to do his job and protect American citizens. Quite frankly, as a type of public servant it was Nina’s duty to insist Obama close the border so that travelers like the late Thomas Eric Duncan would be barred from exposing health care workers to unnecessary risks.
Instead of speaking on behalf of an anxious nation, Pham pulled a Chris Christie and rushed to the White House to provide the president a pre-election day photo op by all but slow dancing with the man who hacked off her feet.
Asked whether there was any concern about putting the president so close to someone only recently recovered from Ebola, White House press secretary Josh ‘Not So’ Earnest shrugged that the president “[w]as not at all concerned about any risk that would be associated with him showing his gratitude… by hugging her.”
Isn’t it odd for Obama to want to “show gratitude” to a woman for surviving a deadly disease she contracted because he simply refuses to do his job?
Nonetheless, a sufferer of the president’s policies smiling and hugging the perpetrator of her pain is a perfect example of how well-meaning people repeatedly assist the world’s most renowned opportunistic user in his ongoing effort to ‘let no crisis go to waste.’ This is especially true since the guy Nina Pham clasped to her breast has made it quite clear that politics take precedence over the wellbeing of the people who came dangerously close to being sacrificial lambs on the altar where Obama currently ‘shares the health.’
Adding insult to injury, as part of the ruse, omitting only a canary yellow HAZMAT suit and a full-face protective mask the president recently upped the deception quotient by visiting a specialized Ebola treatment center at Emory University in Georgia.
Reminiscing about his momentous visit our intrepid president had this to say:
I want to use myself as an example just so that people have a sense of the science here. I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed, not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory because of the valiant work that they did in treating one of the patients. They followed the protocols. They knew what they were doing. And I felt perfectly safe doing so.
And so, despite the many recovery-related peculiarities and notwithstanding the soiled sheets and missed opportunities for Nina Pham to speak on behalf of those without a voice, even the Ebola epidemic has become about a man who uses hugs to convey reassuring messages to a nation victimized by his stupidity.
Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com