With the arrival of Ebola on our shores, an Outbreak’s best friend, Panic, has tagged along for the ride. The Dallas Star-Telegram reports that

Parents rushed to get their children from school Wednesday after learning five students may have had contact with the Ebola victim in a Dallas hospital, as Gov. Rick Perry and other leaders reassured the public there is no cause for alarm.

The patient, identified by The Associated Press as Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family. Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said county officials suspect 12 to 18 people may have come in contact with Duncan.

“Right now the base number is 18 people, and that could increase,” he said. Thompson said more details are expected by Thursday afternoon. The number includes five students at four different schools, Dallas school district Superintendent Mike Miles said.

“This case is serious,” Perry said at a press conference in Dallas at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Duncan is being treated. “Rest assured that our system is working as it should. Professionals on every level on the chain of command know what to do to minimize this potential risk to the people of Texas and of this country.”

Miles said DISD officials learned Wednesday morning that five students at four different schools — Tasby Middle School, L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary School, Dan D. Rogers Elementary and Conrad High School — had come in contact with Duncan. Lowe Elementary is also being watched because it connects to Tasby.

“Since none of the students had symptoms, I’m pretty confident that none of the kids were exposed,” Miles said.

At L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary, parents pulled their children out of school early Wednesday afternoon.

“I’m scared,” said parent Kia Collins, who has four children at the school ages 5-11. “I may keep them home all week.”

DISD officials said they planned to have counselors and translators reaching out to parents — 32 languages are spoken just at Conrad High School.

How long have our country’s leaders know about the potential of virulent, deadly diseases arriving at or shores? Well…would you believe…since 2000?

The National Intelligence Council supports the Director of National Intelligence in his role as head of the Intelligence Community (IC) and is the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis.

Since its establishment in 1979, the NIC has served as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities, a source of deep substantive expertise on intelligence issues, and a facilitator of Intelligence Community collaboration and outreach.

The NIC’s National Intelligence Officers — drawn from government, academia, and the private sector—are the Intelligence Community’s senior experts on a range of regional and functional issues.

In January of 2,000, the NIC published the following report titled, “The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States”. Given the outbreak of an enterovirus which is attacking children from coast-to-coast and diseases, such as tuberculosis, which have been brought into our country by the recent invasion of illegal minors, whom the Obama Administration has transported and settled throughout our country, and last, but not least, the appearance of the deadly Ebola Virus in our country, this report is surprisingly prophetic.

Impact Within the United States

Although the infectious disease threat in the United States remains relatively modest as compared to that of noninfectious diseases, the trend is up. Annual infectious disease-related death rates in the United States have nearly doubled to some 170,000 annually after reaching an historic low in 1980. Many infectious diseases–most recently, the West Nile virus–originate outside US borders and are introduced by international travelers, immigrants, returning US military personnel, or imported animals and foodstuffs. In the opinion of the US Institute of Medicine, the next major infectious disease threat to the United States may be, like HIV, a previously unrecognized pathogen. Barring that, the most dangerous known infectious diseases likely to threaten the United States over the next two decades will be HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, TB, and new, more lethal variants of influenza. Hospital-acquired infections and foodborne illnesses also will pose a threat.

• Although multidrug therapies have cut HIV/AIDS deaths by two-thirds to 17,000 annually since 1995, emerging microbial resistance to such drugs and continued new infections will sustain the threat.
• TB, exacerbated by multidrug resistant strains and HIV/AIDS co-infection, has made a comeback. Although a massive and costly control effort is achieving considerable success, the threat will be sustained by the spread of HIV and the growing number of new, particularly illegal, immigrants infected with TB.
• Influenza now kills some 30,000 Americans annually, and epidemiologists generally agree that it is not a question of whether, but when, the next killer pandemic will occur.
• Highly virulent and increasingly antimicrobial resistant pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus, are major sources of hospital-acquired infections that kill some 14,000 patients annually. 
• The doubling of US food imports over the last five years is one of the factors contributing to tens of millions of foodborne illnesses and 9,000 deaths that occur annually, and the trend is up.

Regional Trends

Developing and former communist countries will continue to experience the greatest impact from infectious diseases–because of malnutrition, poor sanitation, poor water quality, and inadequate health care–but developed countries also will be affected:

• Sub-Saharan Africa–accounting for nearly half of infectious disease deaths globally–will remain the most vulnerable region. The death rates for many diseases, including HIV/AIDS and malaria, exceed those in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa’s health care capacity–the poorest in the world–will continue to lag.
• Asia and the Pacific, where multidrug resistant TB, malaria, and cholera are rampant, is likely to witness a dramatic increase in infectious disease deaths, largely driven by the spread of HIV/AIDS in South and Southeast Asia and its likely spread to East Asia. By 2010, the region could surpass Africa in the number of HIV infections.
• The former Soviet Union (FSU) and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe also are likely to see a substantial increase in infectious disease incidence and deaths. In the FSU especially, the steep deterioration in health care and other services owing to economic decline has led to a sharp rise in diphtheria, dysentery, cholera, and hepatitis B and C. TB has reached epidemic proportions throughout the FSU, while the HIV-infected population in Russia alone could exceed 1 million by the end of 2000 and double yet again by 2002.
• Latin American countries generally are making progress in infectious disease control, including the eradication of polio, but uneven economic development has contributed to widespread resurgence of cholera, malaria, TB, and dengue. These diseases will continue to take a heavy toll in tropical and poorer countries.
• The Middle East and North Africa region has substantial TB and hepatitis B and C prevalence, but conservative social mores, climatic factors, and the high level of health spending in the oil-producing states tend to limit some globally prevalent diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. The region has the lowest HIV infection rate among all regions, although this is probably due in part to above-average underreporting because of the stigma associated with the disease in Muslim societies.
• Western Europe faces threats from several infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, TB, and hepatitis B and C, as well as from several economically costly zoonotic diseases (that is, those transmitted from animals to humans). The region’s large volume of travel, trade, and immigration increases the risks of importing diseases from other regions, but its highly developed health care system will limit their impact.

The report also states that

Sub-Saharan Africa will remain the region most affected by the global infectious disease phenomenon–accounting for nearly half of infectious disease-caused deaths worldwide. Deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, cholera, and several lesser known diseases exceed those in all other regions. Sixty-five percent of all deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa are caused by infectious diseases. Rudimentary health care delivery and response systems, the unavailability or misuse of drugs, the lack of funds, and the multiplicity of conflicts are exacerbating the crisis. According to the AFMIC typology, with the exception of southern Africa, most of Sub-Saharan Africa falls in the lowest category. Investment in health care in the region is minimal, less than 40 percent of the people in countries such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC) have access to basic medical care, and even in relatively well off South Africa, only 50 to 70 percent have such access, with black populations at the low end of the spectrum.

So, our government has known that Sub-Sahara Africa has been a disease incubator for all these years…and, yet, now President Barack Hussein Obama has decided that their plight is an emergency, sending 3,000 of our Brightest and Best into the midst of that diseased land, risking the possibility that they will be come infected and bring their infection back home with them.

Given this fact, my question is:

Why have we not stopped travel to and from our Sovereign Nation, as regards these diseased countries? And, why did this Administration allow those diseased illegal “minors” into our country?

This scenario we see playing out before our very eyes, reminds me of the end scene in the second “Planet of the Apes” movie, where a diseased pilot, bitten by Caesar the Ape, prepares to board a plane, starting the spread of a disease which will wipe out the majority of the human population on Earth.

If you guys see any apes riding horseback, let me know.

If you see four weirdly dressed guys on horseback…run.

Until He Comes,

KJ