Ebola Is the CDC's Self-Created Crisis

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Center for Disease Control, is sorry.

Now instead of one Ebola patient, we have a dead Ebola patient and a newly infected nurse, with a third showing symptoms as she flies about the country.

Frieden laments, “I wish we had put [an Ebola containment] team like this on the ground the day the patient — the first patient — was diagnosed. That might have prevented this [new] infection.”

But Frieden didn’t and now we know why: He was too busy measuring the size of soda cups at 7/11.

Lost in the coverage of the CDC’s self-created crisis is the fact the head of the organization is Dr. Fad. As Rush Limbaugh reminded, “(Frieden) was NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s health police force.” In other words, Frieden was the nanny city’s nanny-in-chief.

Like the pastor of the “Church of What’s Happening Now,” Frieden thinks his job is surfing the wave of the media’s latest health obsession.

Too bad Ebola is just your garden-variety deadly disease without an ice-bucket challenge or YouTube video asking for permission to check out while the star still has her hair. If only Ebola was spread through the use of trans fats, Frieden would’ve been Johnny-on-the-spot. A side effect of childhood obesity? Ditto. And it would have been time to call out the Marines if Ebola was spread at presidential fundraisers.

Wait, he’s called out the Marines. Don’t you think it curious the CDC has 14,000 people collecting a paycheck, yet when it comes time to control disease — the “D” in CDC — they send in the Corps? Are they afraid of germs?

Frankly I thought Obama’s caddy was going to have to start coughing before the president got involved, but it looks like someone is paying attention because Democrats are blaming Republicans for the Ebola crisis.

If only the disease-loving GOP hadn’t slashed funding we could have burned the bodies of the Ebola dead on pyres of taxpayer dollars and prevented the current Homeland outbreak.

Rule of Thumb when Democrats discuss money: They’re lying. CDC funding tripled from 2001 to 2010. But if an agency doesn’t get the entire increase in funding on the wish list they present Congress, the smaller increase is called a cut.

This is like filing a kidnapping report if you dreamed of meeting two hotties at the dance club, but were only able to make time with one.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal put a little political Germ-X on the lack of resources claim.

“Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the (Prevention and Public Health) fund. Yet only 6 percent — $180 million — of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity . . . one would think that “detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats” warrants a larger funding commitment.”

The CDC doesn’t have a funding problem. It has a priority problem.

Instead of being spent on relatively non-glamorous projects like expanding existing research labs, Frieden wasted money on sidewalks, bike lanes, and farmer’s markets. Duplicating programs already funded by other federal, state, and local spending.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows 67 percent want a travel ban on “countries affected by the Ebola virus.” But in an MSNBC interview Frieden gives an incoherent response, “People have a right to return . . . and it would backfire, because by isolating these countries, it’ll make it harder to help them, it will spread more there and we’d be more likely to be exposed here.”

Frieden would be more comfortable with an Ebola program mirroring the Border Patrol’s catch-and-release regime: Travelers with Ebola symptoms will be given a Medicaid card and told to see a doctor within a month.

Our chances for survival would have been better if Ebola had broken out in Denmark. Then quarantine is a no-brainer. But banning travel from Africa involves banning people with black skin, and to the left that equals racism!

Better to let a few Republicans in Texas die than have Eric Holder investigate you for a hate crime.

Connecticut and New Jersey aren’t waiting and have taken steps to impose quarantines. Dallas has been forced to follow suit. If Ebola crossing the border is treated anything like illegals crossing the border, the Justice Department will be filing an injunction accusing states of pre-empting a federal prerogative.

The White House intruder that resulted in the resignation of the director of the Secret Service is minor compared to the Ebola intruder, yet Frieden stumbles along. In a just world he and the rest of the leadership at the CDC would be forced to dig the graves of every U.S. Ebola victim.

Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher (for the League of American Voters), and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.