How to Stop Ebola Dead in Its Tracks

Introduction

It has been all over the headlines in the last two days that some man in Dallas, although no details have been given about who he is, his citizenship status, or even where in Liberia he went, has contracted Ebola and brought it to US soil.  The overarching question is less about how to protect the USA from Ebola, but more of how to protect the entire world from it.  There are many proposals on how to deal with this, but only a combination of all of the solutions can achieve victory over this disease, and save the sixty percent of the world’s population.

What is Ebola and How Does it Work?

                           

Ebola is a very stealthy virus very similar to those movies wherein an alien or other creepy being uses a mind control device.  Because it is a virus, it uses the body’s cells to replicate instead of reproducing or using mitosis (a cell splitting evenly).  Because it has overtaken these cells and controls their “minds”, the cells do not send out any signals to the immune system that there is anything wrong with the body.  By the time the immune system is aware that something is wrong, the Ebola Virus has already spread.  At this point, the body either makes a full recovery because the immune system is super intelligent, or the immune system is acts like the irrational general who always has his finger on the nuclear launch button and kills the body.  At least sixty percent of the victims to Ebola have the latter immune system, and I say “at least sixty percent” because many of the survivors of Ebola have survived because they were treated just before or during the “nuclear strike”.

The “nuclear strike” that I am referring to is the hemorrhaging that is so commonly seen in Ebola patients.  This happens because the body realizes that its body is overrun with cells being controlled by Ebola and the body becomes paranoid that everyone is controlled by Ebola, so the immune system views the tissue, organs, and even the blood vessels as part of Ebola instead of actually targeting Ebola itself.  Because it attacks the blood vessels, the body bleeds internally and externally. 

Step 1: Containment

The first step to making sure that no one contracts Ebola is to make sure that the people that already have Ebola or have been exposed to people with Ebola are quarantined.  The problem is logistics in this case considering that Ebola is mainly occurring in four different African nations that have more than a million people and virtually no infrastructure.  These are four sovereign nations, so it is extremely difficult to go in there and take over their country.  Many of the average citizens of these four nations already hate Europe and the US because we have influenced and intervened in their affairs more than we should have for our own selfish benefits.  Therefore, the people of these nations do not trust us.  It is with that in mind that we need to use force as a means of containing this virus.  The only way we can lockdown these nations is to have a group of nations send a massive amount of troops to the reason.  This is not necessarily to occupy the region, but to make sure that everyone who is sick either is treated or dies in isolation.  We also need to send all of the experts in virology, endocrinology, and immunology to these nations to make sure that we can do the necessary research into finding a cure for the Ebola Virus.  By continuing to transport people from these countries to a developed country for treatment, we are increasing the risk to the developed world.  So far, the man that was infected is in isolation and there is only one more suspected case of Ebola from someone he came into contact with.  If this had occurred in Africa, there would be hundreds or thousands of people infected by now.  Therefore, infrastructure is key to containing this disease, and it will make the developing countries better at defending this kind of a threat in the future. 

The other way to contain this is to burn all of the bodies in an incinerator.  It is traditional in many African nations to touch the body of the deceased.  Considering that the body most likely has some of the Ebola Virus still left alive because the body bleeds externally and the Ebola virus survives very easily outside of the body.  The body must not be allowed to contaminate anything, so the best way to contain the touching of dead bodies is to incinerate them. 

Another way to contain this virus is to prevent any and all people from these four countries from being allowed to leave the country, and to prevent all people from entering the country unless they are soldiers helping to lock down the country or medical workers.  Medical workers inside the country need to make sure that they have a facility that they can clean up in and get tested before leaving the country so that it does not continue to spread.  Ebola is not a virus to trifle with.  Just like with any virus, adaption is inevitable, and the more bodies it passes to, the better the chances are that it could mutate into an airborne disease.  Therefore, keeping it contained is of the utmost importance. 

Step 2: Education

One of the problems in Africa right now is the general distrust of the west and proper medicinal practices.  Much like the modern anti-vaccine movement, these distrusts are based on misinformation.  About a month and a half ago there were some riots in one of these countries where the leaders of the riot claimed that Ebola was not actually a virus and the West was just trying to impose their political ill-will on their country.  Another riot happened because the people claimed that their family member/friend did not have Ebola, but was put into a hospital right next to an Ebola patient.  The latter is definitely a problem, and it would not surprise me in the slightest if that actually happened.

These problems are precisely why education is necessary.  The way to get the word out is to teach the family members and friends of the patient how the virus works and spreads when the doctor diagnoses that person with Ebola.  Billboards and pamphlets are another great way to do it as well. 

The best way to get the word out is to convince the religious leaders that it is a problem and have them deal with the issue.  Most of the people that are leading riots or hiding whether some they know has Ebola are Muslims.  The Christians in the area generally are partnering with organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, who were the first responders to the outbreak because the rest of the world did not care until it became a threat to their respective nations.  Educating people via religious means is of the utmost importance because when religious think that the government is out to get them, their religious leader is usually right. 

Step 3: Investment

As I have mentioned before, the world needs to make sure that they invest in the infrastructure of these African countries.  The reason that Costa Rica has become such a nice country is because China and the United States has invested in the country.  Costa Rica has excellent medical service, good education, and they have started constructing highways.  Because of this, many of the problems that occur in the rest of Latin America are not as much of a problem in Costa Rica.

Instead of investing the in the commercialization of Africa by companies such as Coca-Cola who monopolize the bottled-water industry and then jack up the price higher than Coca-Cola, would it not be more intelligent to build hospitals and research facilities there?  Sure these kinds of things do not pay the bills nearly as much in third world countries, but how can 60% of the population dying pay the tax bills that are due?  How can the population pay their bills if they are too busy hemorrhaging and dying?  Why not invest in good schools so that the populace can think for themselves and understand the problem and come up with a workable solution to the problem?  Sure investment into infrastructure will not line the pockets of the rich in the short run, but a lack of infrastructure will give very few people a decent living.  Nicaragua has started to become a better country in the last ten years only because other countries have started investing in them, and now their industry is growing. 

Conclusion

What We Should NOT Do

We should not plot to nuke these four countries even if it starts to spiral out of control.  Why?  Because Ebola still has a 40% recovery rate when the people are treated.  Another good reason is because the people in those countries are humans.  I am against abortion and I am against war most of the time, so why would I be in favor of murdering millions of people to save billions? 

We should also not just quarantine the countries like “Escape from New York”, and let the people do what they want as long as they do not escape from their country and bring the virus into other countries.  Quarantining these countries temporarily is important, but investment and education are important as well.  We must maintain diplomatic communication before, during, and after this is all done.

Ebola is one of the scariest diseases in the world, and it needs to be treated as such.  We must not live in fear, and we must have the resolve to bring this outbreak to a close as quickly as humanly possible.  If we follow the steps that have been written, then we will most assuredly have a resolution.  

Why the Death Penalty is Alright

I have recently come to the realization that revenge is evil, but justice is righteous.  Revenge is not the same as vengeance because vengeance in someone’s name is different than the person taking vengeance upon themselves.  This is the solution to an argument that has been nagging me for the last five years or so that I could not seem to get around.  This argument goes something like this, “Will putting this person to death for their crimes restore what was lost?”  This is a good argument because it disarms any and all emotions.  However, my initial statement is the ground that I will be using in discussing this controversial issue.

The reason that someone is put to death for a crime is not because it restores anything, but because it is just.  If someone murders ten people, does anyone actually think that this man can be rehabilitated?  I can understand changing the prison system and rehabilitating a person who killed only one person depending on the severity of the victim’s death, but does anyone think that it is possible to rehabilitate a criminal who has murdered a massive amount of people?  Sure it is possible, but in reality is it probable?  I would submit that it is not.

Let us pretend we had tried Saddam Hussein for his infamous war crimes in the United States, does anyone actually think it would be possible to rehabilitate him for his genocides he committed against his own people?  He was deserving of death, not to restore the victims or even to give the victims peace of mind, but because it is just and it should be viewed as a reparation payment to a member of humanity that was lost.  It is righteous and just for the sheer fact that someone is to be paid their wages for their actions.  If someone works for you, are you going to send them on their way without payment?  Of course not!  If someone steals $50,000 from you, are you going to demand $50,000 back?  You would probably get more because of lawyer and court fees.  Many people would claim that no one can put a value on life, so if we are so valuable, then can any amount of monetary reparative payment be enough to satisfy the suffering of a family?  I do not ask this from a vengeance standpoint, but from a reparative standpoint.  So why are we going to allow someone who murdered someone to either walk, or torture them by keeping them confined for the rest of their lives?

I have also heard that the death penalty is cruel in of itself, but let me ask a question: which is crueler, keeping a person confined in a building for the rest of their life or ending their life?  Even if we changed the prison system to a model more like Sweden, would anyone honestly be alright living in their house without being allowed to go outside for the rest of their lives?  I know I would go insane if I was never allowed to go outside ever again.  This is not what keeps me from committing crimes, rather it is my moral compass that does so.  However, I am also afraid to commit a crime because I would rather not be confined to a space for the rest of my life.

The death penalty is neither cruel nor an act of vengeance by the victim’s family or the victim.  However, if in a scenario it is about vengeance, then perhaps the death penalty should be spared until the family or the victim can learn what justice is rather than vengeance is.  We can all safely assume that bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.  So I can partially sympathize with the opposing viewpoint, but I, in clean conscience, cannot ask a criminal not to properly pay the reparations for what they have committed.

The Hypocrisy of being Pro-Choice

There are many arguments in favor of a woman's right to murder her child choose, and I find it imperative to show how every argument I have ever heard is very inconsistent with the principles that liberals hold high.  Am I a conservative?  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  This issue is a very important one to me considering that 70,000,000+ fetuses have been aborted since Roe v. Wade.  This is the greatest genocide of our time, and I am bent on dispelling the myths associated with it.

"It is my body, and I can do whatever I want with it."

This is one of the most common arguments when talking to someone about this issue.  At least argument is generally consistent considering that they are usually in favor of allowing suicide or assisted suicide.  However, if I run my child over, can I justly say, "It is my car, and I can do whatever I want with it"?  Of course not?  Why?  Because that is living and breathing human child, and then I will be thrown into prison for murder, vehicular manslaughter, criminal negligence, child abuse, and the list goes on and on.  So why is it alright to chemically burn a fetus and then cut its limbs off and extract it?  This brings me to my next point.

"A fetus is not a human life, it is only a parasite."

This is the most fun argument for me to dismantle.  A fetus is a human life, and there is scientific evidence to support this.  Beginning from day one, the fetus has a genetic code makeup from two different humans.  You don't honestly believe that the fetus is going to come out as a tree or a plant do you?  Furthermore, most people in favor of abortion are generally not supportive of Michael Vick and what he did to those dogs because dogs are esteemed as lives.  So why is a fetus, human life or not, not a life and a dog is?

Are people in favor of abortion alright with a woman choosing to kill her children after they have come out of the womb?  Of course not!  They would call it child abuse and murder.  If a fetus is a parasite inside the womb, how much more is it a parasite outside of the womb.  Inside of the womb, all a woman needs to do is make sure they do not smoke, drink alcohol, and a few other things.  A woman also needs to watch their vitamin intake, and make sure that they are properly nourished.  Once that baby is born (funny how it is only called a baby only when it is born), life becomes a lot harder for mommy and daddy too.  The baby needs breast milk (breast milk has been proven over and over to make a child smarter and have a stronger immune system than a child who was given formula), so the baby is still sapping off of the mother.  Before the fetus is born, the only money that needs to be spent on the fetus is check-ups, ultrasounds, vitamins, and food.  After the fetus becomes a baby, it must have diapers, clothing, toys, food, doctor's appointments, college education, an allowance, a tux or dress for the prom, and perhaps a car if the child is fortunate enough.  So how is a child between the ages of 0-25 not a parasite, but a fetus is?  It seems to me that if abortion is legal before birth, perhaps we should let children be aborted by their parents after they are born because it takes too much to raise them.

"It is a woman's personal health decision."

This is usually followed by someone claiming that we want to take away women's rights to vote, hold job, and various other things.  This is not actually valid considering that it is a hasty generalization.  A hasty generalization is when someone says X is true for A, so it must be true for B, C, D, E, etc.  This also has nothing to do with rights.  People like myself do not view murdering your child for your own selfish benefit (I will get to rape later) to be a human right.

If a women really wants to maintain her personal health, then an abortion is the wrong thing to do.  There is not a lack of research on this issue, and many studies have been done on this issue considering that abortion has been legal in our country since the 1970's.  Some complications that have been directly linked to abortion of PTSD, hemorrhaging, infertility, damage to the womb, damage to the cervix, infections, and even death.  Most government agencies consider abortion to be safe, but that is the problem with the government.  It seems that most governments do not care about mental health.  Mental health is more important than physical health is.  Stephen Hawking cannot really move at all, but he is the smartest man in the world.  My point is that keep the mind is tact is more important than making sure you have motor functions.  If a person at least has a mind they can achieve something.

"So if a woman is raped..."

Do I even need to finish that argument?  If a woman is raped, should they then be allowed to have an abortion?  After all, the mother did not ask to be pregnant, nor did she do anything reckless to make a man rape her.  Therefore, she should not have to have his child.  I can see how this argument is a good argument, and I personally think it is a valid arguments.  However, let us consistently apply the anti-death penalty argument to this.  Will aborting the fetus bring justice upon the rapist?  I do not think a woman should be forced to give birth to a child under circumstances of rape, but for her own sake I think it should be discouraged.  As it stands now, only about 1% (320+) of rape victims that have become pregnant from rape even have abortions, so this argument is not as good as people think it is.

To hold it against the rapist for what he did by committing murder is not a good thing at all.  This is something called bitterness.  Sure it hurts when a woman is raped, and I can't even imagine the pain and suffering and the grieving process that happens inside the woman's mind after such a horrific even, but how much will stabbing myself hurt someone else?  If I drink poison, will you die?  If a woman has her fetus aborted, will it kill the rapist?

"Most aborted children are unwanted."

So they are unwanted by their parents, why is that a problem?  Why not just give them to someone who wants a newborn baby?  I would like to know why so many parents in our country adopt children from overseas, and not within our own borders?  Perhaps the solution to abortion is to increase adoption and to make it easier to adopt a child from our own country.

Believe it or not, most abused children were actually wanted by the mother, so why are they not allowed to be aborted?  It would make their lives better would it not?  They would not have to suffer anymore, so would it not be a good thing?  Of course it would not be a good thing to kill a child for the wrongs of the mother.  To bring another point in, what about the parents who choose to get an abortion?  Their reasoning is that they cannot provide the right type of life for that child, or some other reason.  So why would that kind of a parent who thinks about their child be abusive?  Parents who think like that seldom are abusive, so this argument has also been dismantled as a hypocritical argument as has the rest of the arguments I listed.

I hope this perspective helps everyone who reads this to stand up to the powers that be and against the greatest genocide in our country has ever seen.  I would venture to say that this infanticide is on the same level as what we did to the Native Americans.  We need to end this genocide as soon as humanly possible.  

The Draw of Christians to Libertarianism

I have found it to be a strange an recurring event in modern America, yet it seems to be a norm in the United States of America.  There is this strange attraction by Christians to the neo-Conservative movement that is overtaking the United States.  The party that has embraced this significant and downright inane philosophy have been the Republicans.  Why have the Christians been attracted to such a worldview?

I would like to further discuss this issue, but only after stating where I fall on the political spectrum.  My blog is obviously called "Moderation and Responsibility", so it is apparent that I am a moderate.  I guess I should be labeled a little more as an independent than anything for the sheer fact that I am pro-life, against gay marriage (although I think that everyone should have many of the benefits given strictly to married couples, so I am not for depriving gays of their rights necessarily), for RESPONSIBLE gun rights, for socialized medicine, a more balanced tax code with a little more of a flat tax without the loopholes, and a few other things that I am not going to discuss.

I think that corporations and various rich people have infiltrated the GOP and brainwashed many of the people in the church into believing that the less government involvement there is, the better things will be.  This is, in of itself, a logical fallacy called generalization.  Generalization is the process by which people make statements about specific cases and apply them to all situations.  The problem with this in relation to politics is that governmental interference is not such a black and white problem because the purpose of the government is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity".  For a group of people who believe that their view is the only one that holds up to the constitution, it would seem in their best interest to know that this quote is from the Preamble to the United States Constitution.  If the government is supposed to stay out of everything, then perhaps it might be in the best interest to dissolve the government considering that their job is to be involved in the inner workings of the economy and the population to make sure that no person's rights are trampled.

1.  Christians in this country are generally paranoid of having their rights to worship as they please trampled.

I would like to address this point by asking this question: Where in the Bible does Jesus or any of the Apostles say that we will not be persecuted for our faith?  To put it as delicately as I possibly can, perhaps it is time that Christians stop trampling the Bible in our quest for our own selfish and greedy desires to make money.  Christians have had a a history of being persecuted and ostracized from society, so why are we so worried about having our rights taken away?  So what if this world wants to take our rights from us?  Is that really enough to stop the Kingdom of God from trampling all over the gates of hell?  Am I advocating staying out of politics?  Certainly not!  I am in full favor of promoting social justice, and I believe that we as Christians should be the ones promoting social justice.

2.  Christians do not want to betray their convictions (this is a noble trait).

The GOP is generally pro-life and against gay marriage, so it seems that the Christians in this country have also embraced the ideology of Libertarianism so that they do not go against those two convictions.  Loyalty is a noble trait, but blindly following a system that is so obviously opposed to the very foundation of our system of government is doltish to the core.  The Christians that I have met in other countries have been, for the most part, in favor of social programs, and have been the ones in their respective countries to support such endeavors before their government officials.  It makes me wonder how many more people would be attracted to our churches if it was the Christian that proposed these social programs instead of opposing them?

Are there good reasons for being a libertarian?  I do not think there are any good reasons for being a libertarian through and through, but I can see how someone can believe in "states rights".  With a country as big and populous as ours, it is hard to have a small group of people controlling the 330 million people that are in this country.  In fact, it would be very inefficient for the federal government to have all of the power.  The federal government then decided to pass the Affordable Care Act and have the states set up and maintain their various insurance marketplaces, but it seems that only the neo-Conservative states are the ones who left it up to the federal government to distribute health insurance.  The only libertarian solution to the healthcare problem is to just let it continue to do what it is doing with the exception of medicaid and medicare being available because $414 Billion per year to make sure that the people who cannot afford to pay for health insurance are kept healthy is not a basic human right or anything (I hope you picked up the sarcasm there).

My point is that we cannot leave these issues alone.  We cannot leave the people (Christians and non-Christians) of the United States of America out to dry by continuing to support the policies that helped to lead us to the economic meltdown that occurred from 2007-2008.  The lack of government regulations as well as the over-belief in the right to property are what caused the meltdown in the first place.  Christians seem to want to run all social programs privately out of their churches instead of proposing it to the government and then helping the government to orchestrate it.

I would like to wrap up this post with an anecdote.  I was sitting in Sunday School in a church in 2011, and right before Sunday School started a conversation where a man stated that we needed to "get rid of all of these social programs like social security, medicaid, medicare, and food stamps, and get these people jobs".  I responded like so, "Perhaps if Christians like would step up to the plate and help these people find work by giving them or a job or training them for a certain job, or just helping these families in their time of need by just being there, then maybe the government would not have to".  The man was silent for the rest of Sunday School and occasionally glared angrily at me to which I just smirked because I knew that I had logically beat him (in hindsight that was a very arrogant thing to do).