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Does this make sense? — 62 Comments

  1. Who cares? Why care? One more stupid thing in a world awash in stupidity, especially in high places.
    It’s just a dog.
    We would do better to deal with macrostupidity.

  2. His wife may be dying and he cares about this dog enough to kick up a fuss? Sheesh.
    Doubtless the bleeding hearts will explain why he has to do this and why it’s a good therapeutic thing for him to do: Doesn’t have anything better to do.

  3. Dogs can carry and transmit rabies to humans. Rabies is considered THE most deadly disease to humans. It has essentially a 100% mortality rate. Yet, if a family pet is exposed potentially to rabies, it is (vaccinated and) generally quarantined. It’s not usually euthanized right off the bat.

    And Ebola is not known to cross over between humans and dogs.

  4. I can’t help but note that Lagos and Dubai have a MAJOR shuttle of jet traffic to and fro.

    Lagos also is the primary destination for most west African flights.

    Lagos simply is the biggest hub for 1,900 miles around. It gets more action than airports more famous in the West.

    We must pray that Nigeria holds the line on ebola….

    But, it’s a worry: as a hub, will passengers shoot straight through to Dubai from west Africa?

    It’s the largest hub in the region. It has flights that go everywhere. It’s really a super-hub.

    Dubai needs to ‘double trap’ passengers to make sure that ebola does not get through.

    &&&

    Only now are authorities acknowledging that ebola has essentially no incubation period, per se, at all.

    It’s a VIRUS, not an egg.

  5. I love dogs and hated to see this story. If this woman dies that dog may have to sustain her widower.

    Where is Bridgette Bardot when you really need her? Lame joke under the circumstances but I’m glad to see the Spanish version of PETA stepping up. Maybe it will work out for all concerned (excepting the government types).

    I’m leery of anyone who doesn’t like man’s best friend.

  6. I could get behind this decision to put down the dog; IF there was science behind it. But, there doesn’t seem to be.

    Why don’t they quarantine the dog and see if, in fact, the dog can get Ebola? Sort of a science experiment.

    And, I’m with you, Neo, this couple has enough of their world turned upside down – they don’t need this heartless act thrust upon them.

  7. In the Texan case, patient zero reportedly threw up in the parking lot of the apartment building. It’s not unlikely that some off-leash dog lapped up some of the vomit. If it then licked your kid’s face, bingo, Ebola infection. It would be prudent to shoot any off-leash dogs in areas of infection.

    Can dogs become carriers without manifesting the disease? Like, say, Typhoid Mary? Do you know? I don’t. What’s your child’s life worth?

  8. Neo, I’m a great admirer of your blog and have been a reader / lurker for around a decade now. So please take this in the context of my great admiration for what you do:

    It’s a DOG, fer obscenity’s sake! If there’s even the slightest possibility that this dog could be a vector, or it could be carrying around virus in its coat from prior contact with nurse, or might lie on the floor and roll around in a less than fully-sterilised house and then go out to frolic in the street with neighbourhood kids, then just shoot the damn thing and incinerate it yesterday.

    It’s a dog. Humans take priority in times of plague. Time to get serious in thought and deed. Not a time to for sentimentality.

    Everybody needs to bone (sorry dog, not for you) up on mathematical expectation, Pascal’s Wager right now.

  9. Kinch:

    Welcome!

    I know it’s a dog, and human beings take priority. But why destroy a dog for no reason, when a quarantine of the dog will do nicely?

    If there is the slightest possibility that the dog could be a vector, then all animals interacting with humans in the vicinity of an ebola outbreak would have to be destroyed because any of them could be vectors. Impossible to accomplish, of course. The known animal vectors for Ebola do not include dogs. And the other scenario, virus on its coat, could be dealt with through quarantine. Virus on its coat could only live for a finite amount of time, not forever. Quarantine it till that time is over and return it to its owners, who are suffering enough.

  10. How do you quarantine a dog which might be infected? You can’t touch the animal. You can’t touch anything it may have touched. Do you shoot it with a narcodart, then pick it up with a back hoe and drop it in a ten foot pit? Now drop in some food for 21 days, or is that right for a dog? Maybe it’s 42 days for them? Then find the Army. You just get the CBR NCO to spray DANC solution all over the back hoe. What if the animal decides it doesn’t like the dart and comes after you? Do you empty your Browning 1911 automatic into it? Better do it before it gets into splatter range. We don’t need to lose any officers who probably have families and kids.

  11. Hi Neo,

    I understand where you are coming from, but I fear that in these degenerate times, ‘quarantine’ is just another word and not a grounded fact.

    Who would enforce said quarantine? What sanctions would be taken against the owner if dog was taken outside for a dump and did a runner? You and the readers of this blog, and Richard Fernandez’s and others know by now that perhaps the greatest malaise of the age is the belief that Seeming, Emoting, Pronouncing Bureaucratic Fiats are equivalent to DOING. I fear that if we don’t start to DO, a lot of of us are going to die. If not from Ebola, then something else down the track.

    In the immortal words of the mafioso in Casino, “Why take a chance?”. If we keep taking chances with dogs and porous borders and paper shuffling faux disease control, we’re going to end up saying ‘why take a chance?’ about our neighbours.

  12. Kinch:

    Pet quarantine is not something new that has to be invented. It has been around for a long time. Here are the rules for Hawaii, for example. In some countries quarantine can be done at home under certain conditions. But generally there is also provision for quarantine at an animal hospital, which would be appropriate for this case. For one dog, the dog in question here, this would not be at all hard to do, nor expensive.

  13. I’m gonna make a small bet with myself than none of the folks here yammering “Kill the dog, kill the dog” have ever had a dog as a pet.

  14. The problem according to the CDC is that dogs are carriers of the disease and are asymptomatic. Meaning that even though they are infected they do not suffer from the disease but can infect others.

    This is not as clear-cut as it seems, if the dogs are indeed asymptomatic a quarantine will be useless to determine if the dog is infected. Link below;

    http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/3/pdfs/04-0981.pdf

  15. Wrong Bill. I just value my children’s lives more than that of anyone’s dog. More than ten thousand dogs for one kid would be a fair tradeoff. If you want to get a dramatized idea of what we may be dealing with here, try reading Tom Clancy’s “Executive Orders.”

  16. Richard Fernandez has been saying that bureaucracies go through three stages when confronted with a crises that doesn’t “fit the narrative” — denial, half-measures that fail, and then, panic. I think the powers that were are now close to panic.

  17. Again, I´m spanish, so for me it makes perfect sense.

    This is usual stuff in Spain (unfortunately).

    We´re a country that doesn´t value meritocracy, but at the same time we´re always looking at Europe as the big brother we would like to use as a reference (though we never do). There´s an old proverb in Spain: Pyrinnees is Europe´s south border (Pyrinnees are the mountains that separate France from Spain).

    One feature in Spain is that “image” matters too much (specially in the south, Spain is not homogeneous. It´s more like several countries under the same flag. Indeed, main cause for independence internal issues is that some areas in the north are fed up with how Spain works).

    A couple of years ago, people who were pointing out how money was wasted (like the famous airport that has never seen a single airplane, because government built it without checking whether airlines were actually interested or not) were accused by some newpapers of hurting Spain´s “image”.

    Why is that feature important? Well, if you don´t do your job, when problems arise (and they usually do), then all is rush. You take every shortcut because cleaning your image is important. This Ebola disaster is becoming a snowball, so now it´s all about cleaning up. Quarantine the dog? That would be a professional´s choice. When you´re not professional and you want to close lose ends, you take every shortcut. Dog is a problem? Quarantine? Bullshit. Kill the dog. Who cares? (besides their family and any moderately sensitive person).

    POSTDATA And this is a personal opinion: wealth is a dangerous gift. US decline started a few years after WWII, during the economy gold age and when living standars and welfare state reached a peak. Why to point that?

    If we ask the following question: when Spain started to be that bloody mess? Looking back at history (and in my personal opinion) it all started after the discovering of America, because of all the easy american gold that paid the Spanish Empire. Before that, we were the only country that was able to stop muslim armies. It was this wealthy period that made us lose our way.

  18. I’ve nothing against dogs. But I’m a speciesist and make no apology for it. Much as it pains me to be so inflexible in the service of a principle, I’d kill a dog rather than see Obama infected with ebola.

    We all have a finite amount of outrage in us beyond which our senses are just numbed. I think that anyone who devotes more than an instant to this particular value judgment should relocate outside the nearest abortion clinic and fling faeces at it to do penance.

    Of course I am against wanton cruelty to animals and vivisection. However it’s not even midday here in Hong Kong, so am not going to invoke Godwin so early in the argument and point out who else once fetishised the sanctity of dogs over a large part of humanity.

    And yes, I grew up with a dog and I see them all around me every day in my present life and see the joy they bring their owners. I get it. But the issue under discussion is not about love of dogs, it’s about love of our families and children and unknown probabilities multiplied by INFINITE downside. Perhaps the less statistically inclined amongst us should google Pascal’s Wager and Expected Value.

    Nothing further to add to this discussion, except to acknowledge the sincerity of all participants. This is a very special comment community and a highlight of my day, every day. Long may it continue!

  19. PETA is actually responsible for executions of various animals.

    In fact, far more than the other institutions can, since PETA has its own source of funding they use for this, because the amount of money to keep the animals alive is far beyond PETA’s political contributions.

  20. POSTDATA And this is a personal opinion: wealth is a dangerous gift. US decline started a few years after WWII, during the economy gold age and when living standards and welfare state reached a peak. Why to point that?

    It’s more about how that wealth was created. Fiat currency is essentially social security on a far larger and invisible scale. By converting to a fiat currency, FDR could print as much money as he wanted, although there were limits to the industrial sectors. They did this via confiscating gold or consolidating it.

    So afterwards, people were essentially on wealth created as a result of war + government welfare. It wasn’t wealth based on production or virtue any more.

  21. I own an animal facility that could do it. I won’t. Exactly why would I risk the lives of the dozen young women and men who work for me? So you feel better?

    Dogs are carriers of the disease, can transmit it, and are asymptomatic. You can not tell if they have it apart from fluid testing that may not show signs for weeks (or longer). If the dog has been in the residence of a confirmed Ebola victim, then it is a genuine vector. Like a gun on a coffee table, you assume it is loaded.

    But since you are insistent, say I do so. I take the dog in for months. Which 19 year old girl on my staff should I ask to draw the samples? Would you like to? Should I? Will you care for my 3 children if I get a needle stick?

    I love all animals –all of them. Including the human kind. To save a person’s life, I would do all of the above and more. Beyond that, herd immunity has to be our goal. If you don’t understand that concept (and the hard choices it forces on us in relation to a lethal communicable disease) please don’t judge those who do.

    Perhaps some state entity may come up with an alternative or facility for a few months. I don’t know, I would like that to happen as well, but the authorities are not being unreasonable in the face of a lethal threat. It is just that the potential human victims you want risked are judged as the more important factor. That and nothing more. There is no idiocracy here beyond emotional thinking.

    Best of luck to you.

    IP

  22. While I would prefer a rational policy where the dog could be quarantined and then tested for the Ebola virus, I am actually encouraged by the Spanish taking Ebola seriously enough to want to kill the dog and incinerate it.

    This contrasts dramatically with the clusterfuck that is going on in Dallas. No government official seems to be treating a contagious and fatal disease for which we have no cure with the seriousness that I personally, living in the Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex, think it deserves. I am reminded of the words Fred Thompson spoke in the movie, “Hunt For Red October” i.e. “This business will get out of control. It’ll get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”

    I genuinely hope that I am overreacting and that the clueless nitwittery on display does not result in hundreds or even thousands of deaths over the next few weeks.

  23. I’ve had dogs, loved dogs my whole life. My three bird dogs hunt together with me as a team. They look at me funny when I shoot at a flushing bird and miss. It is a wonderful partnership, and one dog in particular would run herself into the ground hunting desert quail for me. But I don’t let her. I have over $7000 of veterinary bills invested in that one dog, who is 13 and going strong. They have never heard an ugly word from me nor had a hand laid on them in punishment. They are beautifully trained.

    That said, I will criticize Neo’s remark: “If there is the slightest possibility that the dog could be a vector, then all animals interacting with humans in the vicinity of an ebola outbreak would have to be destroyed because any of them could be vectors. Impossible to accomplish, of course.”

    This is classic Leftwing quitter thinking, not doing 99% of a job because you have in your prospective wisdom determined that achieving 100% is impossible. It is a self-defeating mindset. In Obama’s case, it defeats not him but the entire nation; we’ll only bomb ISIS from the air at night, hit only pickup trucks because we can’t assure against collateral damage. It is the same argument (not logic) that concludes the borders might as well be open because we can’t keep 100% out, that we shouldn’t any send illegals back because we can’t send them all back. The same argument that you should not take your turn at bat because your average is only .101 and you’re not going to get a hit, so siddown.

    So here she wants extraordinary efforts be expended for one dog (as detailed here by others) while PETA is killing them in their hundreds every day. She might be a Neo, but she is not yet a Con. Cons depend on logic.

  24. The article boricuafudd linked to above was useful; I did not know there were studies on the risk of canines carrying the ebola virus. However, if I read the article correctly, infection of a human from a canine with ebola has never been documented. Further, any possible danger would come from stray dogs which are eating ebola-infected dead animals. Those are the dogs that test positive for the virus. And dogs eating infected carcasses are not likely in Spain, much less in the U.S.; it’s a safe bet the Spanish nurse’s dog hasn’t ingested the ebola virus in such a manner.

    So it seems to me that putting down the dog is extreme and panic-driven. Or perhaps an effort to do something easy and visible as a means of saying “look, we’re handling the problem.”

  25. Don Carlos:

    I am not objecting to destroying the dog because I’m a bleeding heart about dogs. Nor am I objecting to destroying the dog because I think that it might make some rational sense to kill it, and yet we shouldn’t do it because we can’t kill all the animals that might have come in contact with the Spanish Ebola patient. That’s not what I’m arguing.

    Destroying the dog doesn’t make sense scientifically. That’s why it needn’t be done. The argument for destroying it might be stronger if the dog had been eating an Ebola corpse, or licking the vomit of an Ebola victim, or something of that nature, but unless something like that is alleged here (and there’s no indication it has been alleged), it makes no sense. Also, there are other remedies (quarantine) for whatever potential Ebola virus problem one can even imagine happening with this dog, short of destroying the dog.

    And in addition, I made an analogy to what would be another suggestion that doesn’t make sense but would seem to logically follow, to destroy any animal that might have had contact with an ebola victim. My point is that neither makes sense, not the first part (destroying the dog) nor the second (destroying all other animals that might have been around an ebola victim—unless of course those animals are bona fide ebola disease vectors such as fruit bats, which don’t live in the Western Hemisphere). I am not saying that it makes sense to destroy the dog but we can’t do it because we can’t destroy all the animals that might have come into contact with the patient. I was saying that destroying the dog made about as much or as little sense as destroying the other animals.

    By the way, even in the cases of actual animal-to-people transmission for Ebola (for example, via fruit bats), the transmission occurs when the people eat the animal. No one’s planning to eat this dog.

    The idea of the Ebola virus lingering for a long time in the dog’s fur does not conform with what we know about it, either:

    “Ebola is an ‘enveloped’ virus, which means it is surrounded by a lipid membrane. That membrane protects it from its surroundings, but even more importantly is essential to its ability to fuse with and enter living cells. And it’s pretty poor protection, as it is vulnerable to light, heat, dryness, and almost any detergent or alcohol you care to name. The virus in saliva on a counter top will be inactive in minutes…

    If they euthanize this dog I’m not going to be raising a hue and cry. But I think it is completely unnecessary and quite literally overkill.

  26. Ymarsakar,

    That makes sense. Wealth in Spanish Empire was indeed virtual wealth, since gold is basically a currency unit, not a production one. When all the gold came from America, there was no more production in Europe, just more gold. The american gold brought the production from North Europe to Spain, the same way the debt brings the production from China to US.

  27. Now that the subject’s been a bit diverted, I can’t help jumping back in 🙂

    Re Gold, it got even better than that. Chinese imperial taxes had to be paid in taels of silver. Non-payment could be more detrimental to one’s health than a lien. Official late Ming and early Qing China were rather inward-looking head-up-you-know-where places. Pace Needham, not a whole lot of Adam Smithery let alone Austrian Economics going down in that place at that time.

    And lo, the gold-silver exchange rate in Europe and China diverged. And who had oodles of silver being mined in Peru? This was the arbitrage play of the millennium. Nice work, if you could get it.

  28. I grew up with dogs. I appreciate that many people become extraordinarily attached to their pets. However, I’m right there with Kinch above me in this thread. I think some vastly underestimate the problems and expense involved in a quarantine.

  29. What I don’t understand, really, is how it’s been established that quarantine is easy and inexpensive, yet people are yelling about how we must kill the dog anyway, offering up fiction novels as proof that the dog must be killed. Why stop at the one dog. Let’s kill every dog in the neighborhood as well. Hell, let’s kill every dog in town! Dogs like to lick and sniff each other, and while we’re in the business of wildly overreacting, let’s put a bounty on the dog’s head of 50 euros, with an extra 20 euros for each additional dog in the neighborhood.

  30. By the way, another small piece of news that helps to understand the whole picture.

    The Ebola infected nurse was not told that she had Ebola. Nobody phoned her, nobody went to her home to bring her to quarantine.

    She discovered that she had Ebola BECAUSE SHE SAW IT IN THE TV NEWS.

    And then she went to the hospital.

    No joke.

  31. This is really getting dumb. I live in North Louisiana. We do not have Ebola. No one has the symptoms. Dallas is 250 miles away. We make the sticks look good. But the doctors are being told that they must be tested for Ebola. This is the kind of junk that happens when no one is in charge, as what has been the rule of thumb for the last 6 years.

  32. NEO: why not quarantine the dog for a while?

    I keep telling you to LEARN about the doctrines and goals of said doctrines to understand why? you keep telling me you know… then you ask dumb questions like the above

    PETS are Bourgeoisie!!

    Its why the left socialist mayer of ny wants to end the horses in central park

    its why they want to kill the dog, not quarantine it.

    every opportunity to act while cloaked by the ambiguity of something else is always taken. after over a decade been waiting till someone bothers to learn about the goals, doctrines, beliefs, and so on as to the hard core left.

    spain went way to the left, to the point of mandating fat models on runways to be equal (bringing to life “Harrison Bergeron”

    “Harrison Bergeron” is a satirical and dystopian science-fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. The story satirizes the policy of equality of outcome as an agent for achieving societal equality, and dramatizes the dystopian effects of such a policy if implemented to its logical extreme via government social engineering.

    Chinese city kills 5,000 dogs to control rabies

    Horrific animal cruelty that shames China: Wild mob kill dogs just for WALKING into a city

    The owners of dogs and pets exploit them, the way that capitalists exploit workers for their own pleasures.

    EVERY action they take is in some way from reading these papers and things as to the dialectics. Its why PETA says a boy and a dog are not any different, etc.

    you keep looking for answers in the wrong place, and wonder why you dont understand them… they are EASY to understand once you take the time to read enough as to their collective ideology, not just watch them and figure it out from a distance

    Tsun Tsu:
    “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”

    and

    If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

    ut if your too bored, lazy, disinterested, incurious etc…then you will just sit around confused by their actions

    Species and Class
    Exploring the animal-human relationship from socialist and anarchist perspectives
    Theorizing pets’ role under capitalism
    http://speciesandclass.com/2014/07/18/theorizing-pets-role-under-capitalism/

    Companion animals, like other domesticated animals, are distinct from human proletarians in that they so not sell their labor power under the pretense of free choice. Rather, companion animals are themselves commodities. Their labor power is sold all at once, by others, unlike proletarians who sell their labor power in increments. Further, companion animals work toward the creation of a marketable commodities, as do other domesticated animals. While, say, cows involuntarily labor toward the production of milk, offspring, and flesh, companion animals involuntarily labor toward the reproduction of human labor power.

    Richard B. Lee defined the reproduction of labor power, a Marxist concept, this way. “In a capitalist mode of production, reproduction of labor power occurs on a daily and generational basis,” Lee said. “Daily reproduction of labor power involves the provision of food, clothing, rest, and emotional support for the workers, the task of restoring their depleted capacity for work, while generational reproduction of labor power involves child rearing and child care, the work involved in producing the next generation of workers.”

    Companion animals are involved in the daily reproduction of human labor power by helping to meet their owners’ psychological and emotional needs. This forced contribution is quantifiable. Studies show that human proletarians who own pets have lower blood pressure, anxiety, and risk of depression, among other things. According to Dr. Edward Creagan, an oncologist at Mayo Clinic, “A pet is a medication without side effects that has so many benefits. I can’t always explain it myself, but for years now I’ve seen how instances of having a pet is like an effective drug. It really does help people.”

    i dont have timne to find the requisite points, but the round about is that owners of pets exploit them for their own gain, imprisoning them, and removing them from wherever they belong… the owner benefits, the companion animal is seen not to benefit, but is seen to be exploited.

    But on the whole, pet ownership certainly doesn’t benefit companion animals. According to the website of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of the 7.6 million pets who enter shelters nationwide every year, 2.7 million unwanted, healthy animals are killed. Human domestic violence figures perhaps give the best idea of pet abuse’s scope. According to the Humane Society of the United States, over two million women and men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year, and 71 percent of victims say their abusers also targeted their companion animals. No doubt more prevalent than intentional cruelty toward pets is unintentional neglect by well-meaning owners. Even when this is not the case, companion animals’ lives are inevitably dull and circumscribed, as these creatures have been reduced to near-complete dependency on their human masters.

    So they are not killing the animal for the public good, but saving it by euthanizing it from such a horrid existence in which its owners, holding it captive, have subjected it to their boring lives of dependency!!! and since the public would not understand this, as they do not see their evil behavior, any more than the capitalist that has a beautiful home does when they employ workers at much lower wages.

    “The injustice done to the pampered lap-dog is as conspicuous, in its way, as that done to the over-worked horse, and both spring from one and the same origin–the fixed belief that the life of a ‘brute’ has no ‘moral purpose,’ no distinctive personality worthy of due consideration and development. In a society where the lower animals were regarded as intelligent beings, and not as animated machines, it would be impossible for this incongruous absurdity to continue.” — Henry Stephens Salt

    This is the basis for things like vegan/vegetarianism as an ideological movement (vs a health movement, as most could not survive on vegetables alone without taking suppliments given we are NOT cows, but omnivore predators – see canine teeth in animals and what they mean)

    Henry Stephens Salt

    was an English writer and campaigner for social reform in the fields of prisons, schools, economic institutions, and the treatment of animals. He was a noted ethical vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist, socialist, and pacifist, and was well known as a literary critic, biographer, classical scholar and naturalist. It was Salt who first introduced Mohandas Gandhi to the influential works of Henry David Thoreau, and influenced Gandhi’s study of vegetarianism

    of course if your going to sit there and watch them, and try to figure out their behavior from doing so, your not going to get far, as your not going to know the inane ideas of academics prosletyzing social changes and building idea upon idea into towers of oddities.

    Salt is credited with being the first writer to argue explicitly in favour of animal rights, in his Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1894), rather than focusing on improvements to animal welfare. He wrote: “If we are ever going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a ‘great gulf’ fixed between them and mankind, and must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood.”

    IF you bother to study what informs their thinking, then you would not be so in the dark as to what they do!!!!!!!!!!! its really that simple…

    It was Mr. Salt’s book, A Plea for Vegetarianism, which showed me why, apart from hereditary habit, and apart from my adherence to a vow administered to me by my mother, it was right to be a vegetarian. He showed me why it was a moral duty incumbent on vegetarians not to live upon fellow-animals – Mahatma Gandhi

    there is always a lot more given about 200 years of almost unquestioned logical bs on top of logical bs that the public sides with without ever actually reading what they are a part of.

    if they did, not only would they understand why stopping ebola is racist, and why kill dogs, and end the careers of park horses, they would understand why the politicians they vote for, once in power, do wacky things that they never asked them to, and do not listen to them without realizing that they are being used and tricked into empowering the politicans fomenting and realization of such doctrines, not getting a servant to representational government

    there is no nicer way to put it given my frustration of saying it over and over and over again, and knowing that its not resulted in one iota of change as no one could read their stuff and then not get what it is they are doing. even the question of fool vs knave only has a place in the minds of those who dont read the dialectical reasoning and morality and urgent goals…

  33. From the WashPost article quoted, regarding ebola on surfaces, then say:

    The virus in saliva on a counter top will be inactive in minutes…

    Then they say (regarding virus on surface’s):

    “How long will it remain infectious? Hard to say, exactly, though there have been scientific studies on just that question.”

    It’s is clearly very dependent on factors like temp and type of surface, but the biggest thing is that nobody really knows. It varies too much. It doesn’t take much of the virus to get sick. People like the american nurse got sick removing ppe from doctors to be disinfected I believe. The spanish nurse got sick wearing stuff and maybe by taking it off. (assuming they didn’t get it through small droplets in the air).

    The Ebola infected nurse was not told that she had Ebola. Nobody phoned her, nobody went to her home to bring her to quarantine.

    She discovered that she had Ebola BECAUSE SHE SAW IT IN THE TV NEWS.

    What???? Insanity! We in western countries have been spoiled by vaccinations and antibiotics. We are not prepared for a true outbreak.

  34. It makes no sense to argue, on the one hand, that hospitals and public health agencies should exercise every possible precaution and use extreme vigilance to defend against the spread of Ebola — but on the other that we should relax that vigilance because we feel sorry for a dog. Commenters on this thread who seem to know what they’re talking about have explained that 1) although dogs don’t become symptomatic with Ebola, they can carry the virus, and we aren’t sure whether they can spread it and 2) quarantine would not necessarily prevent the spread of infection and would place the lives and health of human beings at risk. If they’re right — and they seem to know what they’re talking about, while I don’t — well, then, yes, it certainly does make sense to euthanize this particular dog.

    Also, as it appears that the authorities in Spain dropped the ball in applying contagion precautions to such a degree that at least one nurse is already infected, I do NOT feel the least bit comfortable trusting the same authorities to know how to quarantine a possibly-infected dog.

    Look, I’m glad to be counted as a mushy-hearted dog-lover. I grew up with dogs, I number several dogs among the best-loved beings I’ve had the good fortune to know in my life, and though I don’t have a dog now, I’m going to have one again as soon as the circumstances of my life permit. Dogs are one of the great joys of human existence. However, we are people, not dogs, and we need to prioritize our health over theirs.

  35. Dogs are a very very great deal more then property to their owners. People regularly risk their lives and treasure for their dogs. Lots of people without feelings don’t get it.

    Killing this dog is a lunatic hysterical response to the unknown.

  36. You are sitting in a restaurant, enjoying your breakfast, when a very emotional woman enters the dining room and begins sharing the story of her “little girl named Snow.”

    There is only one small problem with the accuracy in the woman’s story. “Snow” is not a little girl, she is a chicken.

    The woman in the restaurant (and the video attached below) is Kelly Atlas. She is an Oakland, California-based activist, organizer and designer with Direct Action Everywhere. The group’s website says that it strives to “create a world where animal liberation is a reality.”

  37. People used to find “meaning” in families, but when feminists outlawed that as an option and promoted more meanign outside the home for liberated women. we have latched on to wackoland to replace the meaning we used to find in family, friends, religion, and social cohesion.

    you go grrrls!!! you have improved society so much since your ascendance… take a bow

  38. Sorry, but dogs have been found to carry ebola, without symptoms.

    If someone gets ebola, then you do need to put down any pets that can carry the virus.

    Harsh, but the pet owner puts everyone who has future contact with the pet at risk.

  39. Artfldgr,

    >> “Its why the left socialist mayer of ny wants to end the horses in central park

    its why they want to kill the dog, not quarantine it. ”

    I´m afraid not.

    All this mess, from the decission to bring the missionary to the current outbreak, it has been handled by the right party. Madrid has been governed by the right party, both gobernor and mayor (well, the spanish equivalent) for a couple of decades.

    Not that the left is better, but let´s give to Caesar what it´s his.

    Bringing the missionary was very likely due to the links between the spanish right and the Catholic Church.

    Be aware that spanish right is very different from the european/american one. We didn´t have age of enlightment, and society kept a semi-aristochratic structure. Our right wing is quite close from the traditional pre enlightment high class, (we call it “Little Misters”, what gives an idea about their psychology). Hand work was seen traditionally as something shameful in the spanish right.

    Tell a republican that building your own house with your own hands is shameful. Well, that´s the distance between american and spanish right wing.

  40. Harold: yes, because commenter IP’s concern for the health and safety of the young employees in his animal health facility definitely shows that he’s “without feelings.” Honestly, what a cheap shot. Can you comprehend a distinction between being “without feelings” and being capable of understanding that feelings aren’t always the best basis for human decisions?

  41. Artfldgr:

    By the way, my question “why not quarantine…” is actually somewhat of a rhetorical question. I’m well aware that there are several answers, including a political one.

  42. Yann:

    That is shocking, if true.

    But it probably shouldn’t be. Authorities have been caught flat-flooted on things that should have been obvious, such as monitoring health care workers who worked directly with the Ebola patients brought back into the West.

  43. Thomas Eric Duncan, the first known person to develop Ebola in the United States, has died in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas,

  44. yann

    All this mess, from the decission to bring the missionary to the current outbreak, it has been handled by the right party. Madrid has been governed by the right party, both gobernor and mayor (well, the spanish equivalent) for a couple of decades.

    After the bombings near the elections they went socialist not rightist… the left likes to blame the right for the ill it causes. if you look at the reference i gave, the whole anti pet thing started in the 1800s

    Spain’s economy has tumbled deeper into recession under the premiership of Mr Rajoy. A further 700,000 people have joined the dole queues, pushing unemployment to 26.2% of the workforce. And as the value of their homes falls further, frightened Spanish consumers are keeping purses zipped tight. Many must raid savings to get by. – 2011

    Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) – Mariano Rajoy Brey is the Prime Minister of Spain, elected on 20 November 2011. He has been leader of the People’s Party since 2004. Under Prime Minister José Maré­a Aznar, Rajoy was Minister of Public Administration from 1996 to 1999 and Minister of Education from 1999 to 2000; he then served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2000 to 2003. Rajoy led the People’s Party into the March 2004 general election, an election won by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Subsequently Rajoy was Leader of the Opposition from 2004 to 2011.

    so they went from peoples socialists… to workers socialists…

    The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party better known by its initials, PSOE is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Carlist Party, founded in 1833

    center left my arse… social democrats are menshivicks.

    Soraya Sé¡enz de Santamaré­a Anté³n is the next down the power line and is a Spanish People’s Party politician and the current Deputy Prime Minister of Spain

    Minister of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness Luis de Guindos Jurado is a Spanish politician, a member of the Spanish People’s Party

    Cristobal Montoro Romero is a Spanish People’s Party politician. He has been the Minister of Finance and Public Administrations of Spain since 22 December 2011

    José Manuel Garcé­a-Margallo y Marfil is a Spanish politician and is currently Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. Previously he was Member of the European Parliament with the People’s Party, part of the European People’s Party and vice-chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

    I can go on… but the “PEOPLES” party is a communist party… just like other socialist left parties…maybe not hard line like the PEOPLES republic of china, but same ideal if not the same power and control.

    now tell me another joke…

  45. The Mayor of Madrid Ana Botella Serrano s a Spanish politician belonging to the Spanish People’s Party and Mayor of Madrid since December 2011.

    so yann.. your wrong on the mayor too…

    you can say what you like about the way they bill it as conservative, but note the left things hitler was on the right, and hitler was way on the left, with only stalin more to the left. so its RELATIVISM blinds you to the nature of the beast. even more so when you look to see the previous incarnations and what made them up, and what they stand for

    and socialists all read socialists stuff, and use thatknowlege to look down on the common people who are not informed as to what it is and what it should be. it helps them do things to the common people who are not in the know, and are not enlightenerd and had their conciousness raised.

  46. s actually somewhat of a rhetorical question….

    great,,,
    I waste my time answering rhetorical questions that people dont point out are rhetorical.

    aspergers causes me to waste a lot of my life on such bull puckies…

  47. It’s actually a PETA-sanctioned solution.

    Send animals to be euthanized in PETA “shelters”.
    Send humans to be aborted in Planned Parenthood “clinics”.
    Harvest their embryonic, fetal, and adult cells for stem cell therapy. I wonder if Gosnell was censured for violating protocol and embarrassing the abortion industry.

  48. neo-neocon,

    It´s true.

    This is a piece of news about how the nurse discovered she had Ebola reading a online newspaper (I made a mistake when I said TV).

    http://goo.gl/Wy4VIj

    This is a TV interview to one of the nurses that treated the missionary infected with Ebola. Among other things, she said that she had no idea about how to use a biological safesuit. Or how they were told “not to use too many gloves or medical gowns”. I suppose, because the hospital had orders to cut down expenses in sanitary material.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XoV5ZzArhs

    A nurse told his superior that he couldn´t retire and dispose residues from the Ebola patient because he had no idea about how to do it and what to do with them. He was ordered to do it anyway, and was threatened with losing his job.

    http://goo.gl/XtH8QM

    By the way. The dog has been already killed.

  49. Artfldgr,

    Nope.

    You can´t translate literally political terms from Europe to USA.

    “Liberal” in USA means left winged. In Europe is the equivalent to the american “libertarian”.

    “People´s” in Europe refers to conservative christian democrats. You have here for example the European People´s Party,
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party_%28European_Parliament_group%29

    which is the group that gathers conservative parties in the European Parliement. En Europe, communist parties are usually named just “Communist party”.

    Please, dude, don´t teach me spanish politics. I´m spanish, I have some slight idea of it.

  50. Quarantine as an option is not supposed to be farmed out to other people via outsourcing. If the invested home person can’t build his own quarantine unit, then he should pay someone else to build it on his property and then take care of said dog.

    Lots of dogs become neurotic from staying at home all the time. This dog only has to do so for 2 months.

    The person doing so must be quarantined to, but then again they’re already requiring that.

    So all the people afraid of NIMBY, not in your backyard and don’t want the moral risk or luck, stop thinking government is the solution. Making people do things is far inferior to giving them the tools for them to fix their own issues.

  51. A couple of things the US did to create wealth, real or false.

    Income tax, obviously. President WIlson was big on wealth redistribution. FDR was using social security to basically launder money, plus trying to get the US into a war helped with centralized economy and debt creation.

    Then dropping of gold standard allowed money to be printed ad infinity, since most of the cash is electronic, no longer physical. Can double it or triple it and nobody even notices. Weimar Republic level inflation. The US avoided that because Democrats incrementally “transformed” the system with a little bit here, a little bit there. What Republicans helped to do, they thought was good for the country, but in fact was just a con scheme set by the Leftist alliance or the Democrat founding members.

    Even changing the Senate vote to be one of popular vote was part of it, in the long term.

  52. Art, is it Asberger’s fault you’re too self lazy to capitalize sentences or is that your own habit?

    The reason you became the way you are is because you did it to yourself, not because you had Asberger’s. You limited yourself by agreeing to Obey Society and accepting your shackles.

    You have no one to blame but yourself but because you refuse to, you find you get stuck by problems and challenges the rest of us have surpassed. Isn’t that frustrating.

  53. Y

    The BIG innovation during FDR’s tenure was the collateralization of residential real estate.

    Ever since the actual source of money in the American economy is derived from real estate lending… with 30-year amortization being common — even in commercial real estate. (It’s mated to a 5 or 7 year term — so these are still bullet loans.)

    In ALL prior eras, property was financed STRICTLY with bullet loans, all of it.

    The typical deal was 50% down at escrow, and 50% due in 60 months. Interest was due, monthly, until the bullet loan came due. THIS was the norm all the way through the Roaring Twenties.

    This loan-effect TOTALLY swamps the gold vs fiat issue.

    BTW, FDR did not go off the gold standard, Nixon did. FDR was only half-pregnant: he Re-Rated gold to the dollar. Then he prohibited American citizens from owning gold. (bullion and specie) He did NOTHING to stop aliens from owning gold and specie.

    (Some clever Americans simply ran north to Canada and put their double eagles into safety deposit boxes. Otherwise, there’d be none in public hands, even now. The immense count tells you just how many Americans ran over the border with specie. BTW, they wouldn’t have had to declare it upon exit or entry into Canada. It was legal tender — at its face value. This dodge is still used to get specie up to the great white north without upsetting the Canadian border police. Such coins are declarable at their face value.)

  54. The Euthanization Doctor CLass gets a bonus for that. It’s how they work. The abortion serial killers in the US also get that for profit PP stuff going on that nobody wants to look at.

  55. I’ll repeat that anyone who doesn’t care about dogs being killed by the government (Spain, SWAT raids) is without feelings, without a soul.

    Using Spain as a model, what are all you dog owners going to do when the CDC dictates that all the dogs in an area need to be killed because someone has Ebola. When the SWAT teams come around to club your dog to death, what are you going to do?

    There is no evidence that dogs are a vector for Ebola. The study cited on this thread is on African dogs EATING CORPSES. The dog in Spain didn’t do that and it isn’t going to happen in the US either.

    In China they regularly send teams around to club to death tens of thousands of dogs because some dog in the area has rabies. With a “it’s just a dog” attitude that’s coming to the US.

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