Thursday’s Sacramento Bee headlined the story on its front page with a rather frightening photo of a victim being buried by people totally swathed in protective clothing because Ebola is very contagious via bodily fluids:
It’s serious stuff, the [...]]]>
Thursday’s Sacramento Bee headlined the story on its front page with a rather frightening photo of a victim being buried by people totally swathed in protective clothing because Ebola is very contagious via bodily fluids:
It’s serious stuff, the highest level of WHO alert, but curiously there is no national quarantine:
WHO says Ebola outbreak is an international health emergency, Washington Post, Jul 19, 2019
NAIROBI, Kenya – The World Health Organization took the rare step Wednesday of classifying an ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo as a “public health emergency of international concern,” just days after a first case of the virus was confirmed in the major city of Goma, on the border with Rwanda.
The last time the global health body declared an international emergency for Ebola was during the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people. The designation means this outbreak qualifies for a higher level of global vigilance and mobilization to stem its spread.
Ebola began spreading in Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu province last summer and has infected more than 2,500 people and killed nearly 1,700, according to official Health Ministry figures. . . .
The declaration should not be used “as an excuse to impose trade or travel restrictions, which would have a negative impact on the response and on the lives and livelihoods of people in the region,” said Robert Steffen, chairman of the Emergency Committee.
Meanwhile, illegal alien Africans are now streaming through America’s open border. Fox News interviewed a young Camaroonian man in May who was apparently willing to spend a lot of money and travel thousands of miles to steal a “better life” in this country rather than work to build one at home:
N.b: the population of Africa is now 1.3 billion persons.
Open borders admit contagious disease as well as job-stealing aliens. One example was Ebola Tom (pictured) who traveled to the United States from Liberia in 2014 to mooch first-world healthcare as he knew he would receive in stupid-generous America. The nine days of medical treatment in a Dallas hospital cost $500,000, and he had no insurance.
Unfortunately for America, there’s a fair amount of overlap between the Ebola outbreak regions and areas migrants are leaving.
It’s reported that African aliens are crossing the US border in “record numbers” — though the actual figures are a little sketchy and are sure to climb. Still, the Texas Monthly detailed that from June 4 — 18, around four hundred foreigners from Angola and Congo arrived in San Antonio; and the Border Patrol says it detained 740 Africans in the Del Rio sector in the first two weeks of June.
Unfortunately, too many American communities are welcoming the Africans and other aliens rather than treating them as invaders. As a result, the United States is increasingly seen as the World Welfare Office, rather than the home of the citizens.
]]>The current open border brings disease which endangers the people of the United States: some, like measles had been eradicated, and others, like Zika and [...]]]>
The current open border brings disease which endangers the people of the United States: some, like measles had been eradicated, and others, like Zika and Ebola, are entirely imported from abroad in recent years.
In one case, an eight-month pregnant Honduran “visiting” America gave birth to an anchor Zika baby whose lifetime healthcare cost to US taxpayers is estimated at $1-10 million.
Ebola is now having a flare-up in Africa just at a time when gaggles of Africans are crossing America’s open border along with the rest of the world. Five hundred Africans have arrived via that route since May 30. In 2014, a Liberian man with Ebola travelled here to receive first-world medicine despite the disease being extremely contagious. His nine days of care before death cost taxpayers $500,000.
So the public health threat from open borders is very real, getting worse and is not being widely discussed — although Tammy Bruce made a good case for more attention when she appeared with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday.
Spare audio:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: While Republicans fuss about the details of Austrian economics and worry about tariffs, the U.S. border is getting closer and closer to total and utter collapse, and it’s not hyperbole.
Last May, the Border Patrol apprehended the highest number of illegal border crossers in 13 years. This is massive consequences for the country that we’re not talking about.
Tammy Bruce is thinking about them, though. She is a radio host and President of the Independent Women’s Voice and we’re happy to have her on tonight. Tammy, thanks very much for joining us.
TAMMY BRUCE: Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: So walk us through what you think some of the more obvious ramifications of this border collapse might be?
BRUCE: Well, we already know, in the broad sense, and we’ve had this conversation for years, about the problems people face on the migrant trail when it comes to sex trafficking, when it comes to the coyotes, when it comes to sexual assaults, et cetera, and the problems that children face as well.
And then what happens in the aftermath when people are here in the country? The Kate Steinle situation, individuals who are being protected in sanctuary cities, criminal illegal aliens. But the fact of the matter is, this health crisis is an element that no one is really discussing.
The team at Independent Women’s Voice — as you noted, I’m President of — has realized and has determined that our own government, when we’ve been talking about of course, infectious diseases, like measles, we thought we eradicated it. We’re on track now to the end of this week at probably at about a thousand cases in 26 states.
Typhus is moving through Los Angeles. The CDC is now warning about tuberculosis. We have new outbreaks of Ebola. Certainly Zika — that’s in Congo — Zika, in Brazil, et cetera.
And what’s not being dealt with here is the fact that you’ve got 144,000 as an example, moving across this border, none of whom, of course, we know if they’ve been vaccinated. We hear the admonition appropriately about the importance of vaccinations. But what we’ve also determined, Tucker, is that the CDC only requires proof of vaccination for people applying for migrant visas legally.
If you are trying to enter using a non-migrant visa, the temporary visa to visit, you are not required to show proof of vaccination.
So it’s an interesting ball that’s been dropped at the Federal level, and then of course at the border. The chaos here is certainly — we’re worried about American families and their health — but the people almost at the front line who are extremely vulnerable are the migrants themselves.
The Border Patrol announced last week that they’ve captured a group of about 161 people from Africa, Congo, Angola, et cetera, and of course, Congo now is dealing with another outbreak of Ebola.
Imagine with these kinds of groups emerging. Individuals coming in from Brazil with Zika; families coming up from El Salvador — the mix of what these individuals are facing in the caravan and then when they’re placed in communal areas, or end up homeless in cities where the infrastructure is collapsed, because they are so many.
IWV has started a petition. This is this is our news for today. Something has to happen. We’ve launched a petition IWV.org telling the White House that we must redouble the effort for border security.
Beyond all the other political issues we’ve heard about on this issue, this transcends that. This is about every family and every human being caught up in this chaos. Thank you. It’s important. Thank you, sir.
One such is Ebola, a mainly African disease that appeared in the US a few years ago when Ebola Tom traveled here from Liberia to get free First World medical care.
Below, a [...]]]>
One such is Ebola, a mainly African disease that appeared in the US a few years ago when Ebola Tom traveled here from Liberia to get free First World medical care.
Below, a map of Ebola cases in Africa from 2014.
Now Ebola is back, and Africans are coming here, along with everyone else on earth who has heard about America’s worsened border laxity. I reported the other day about an apparently healthy Cameroonian man who had gotten as far as southern Mexico on his way here. There’s 1.3 billion more on the continent he came from, so don’t think only Hondurans are coming.
Tucker Carlson discussed the topic last week with Fox’s explainer doctor, Marc Siegel, who focused on the medical implications.
Tucker asked whether it is now even politically “possible to block people coming from any other country in the world” in the face of danger to the American people from a killer epidemic. It sounds like not so much.
This is where the politically correct view of America as Welfare Office for the World has brought us: if any human on earth (currently 7.7 billion persons) has a health problem or wants a better job, then the United States has to admit them.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: In other developing news tonight, there are new fears that Ebola could be heading to this country. One of the worst outbreaks of that horrifying disease in history is underway tonight and spreading fast. A thousand people have already died of Ebola in the Congo. It’s one of the deadliest infectious diseases known to man, of course, fewer than one third of the people who display symptoms survive.
Just five years ago, there was a major outbreak of Ebola that made it to our country. How concerned should we be if at all this time around? For those answers, we go to the man, we always go to NYU medical professor, Dr. Marc Siegel joins us tonight. Doctor, thanks very much for coming on.
DR. MARC SIEGEL: Hi, Tucker.
CARLSON: So this seems like a development really in in the history of Ebola, a thousand people. Should we be concerned?
SIEGEL: Yes, we should. And I’ll tell you why, Tucker, because it’s in an area of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is not an infrastructure, where there is militia swarming around over 119 Ebola clinics — they have been attacked by militia. So it’s a security problem in addition to a health problem.
It’s also erupting right now. We’ve had over 100 cases in the past week alone. You said a thousand deaths out of 1,500 cases over the last year. One hundred in the past week alone.
The World Health Organization is in the middle of this, but they don’t have money. There’s not enough vaccines. Here’s a good development since 2016: we now have a highly effective vaccine. It’s been given to a hundred thousand people; that may sound like a lot. It needs to be given to millions. We don’t have the vaccines, and people are dying without even knowing they have Ebola.
Forty percent of the deaths, Ebola is identified after the person dies. It is erupting. It’s spreading. It’s getting out of control.
CARLSON: Interesting. But Ebola, at least, as it has been explained in the Western media, it seems like it would be kind of hard to miss. I mean, you hemorrhage from various orifices. I mean, it’s horrible. And people don’t know they have it?
SIEGEL: They don’t know they have it because there’s no one around there identifying it. There’s no healthcare workers in the region. World Health Organization — people have been killed. It’s not a situation — granted, someone that knows infectious diseases or even medicine is going to be able to identify it.
Now again, it’s going to spread to neighboring countries, I believe. Here’s one positive thing about it. It’s very hard to spread. You can only spread it if you come in contact with secretions, with blood. So it’s not spread casually.
So even if a traveler were to bring it here, which happened in 2014, with Craig Spencer and others, it will only spread if proper precautions are taken. If another case, God forbid shows up in the United States, hopefully they’ll isolate that case, it won’t spread here.
But there, it’s an enormous problem. People themselves don’t know what it is. They know they have some serious, horrible disease. They don’t know it’s Ebola.
CARLSON: It’s unbelievable. Ebola, of course, is far from the only deadly communicable disease floating around the globe. Do you think politically it would be possible to block people coming from any other country in the world? Could we actually do anything in the face of an epidemic at this point?
SIEGEL: What we usually do in a case like this is we bring more and more of our workers in rather than blocking travelers. But if it gets to the point where I said a hundred cases in the past week, we were considering that back in 2014, if it gets to the point where we start having thousands and thousands of cases and nothing is being done internally.
Now, the Democratic Republic of Congo is trying to help. Their Health Ministry is doing a lot. But again the militias and the security problem there, UN Forces are there, but nothing with what we need. This is becoming not just a health issue, but also an issue of having to bring in armies and a mess — a total, total mess and it’s not diminishing, it’s growing and it’s going to spread to neighboring countries in Africa.
CARLSON: I’m not surprised at all. Doctor, thanks very much for your perspective. Great to see you.
The [...]]]>
Public health is a topic that gets little attention these days except for warnings about self-inflicted problems like obesity and alcoholism. The danger from infectious disease may seem like a distant memory or a Third World trouble. But now, open borders threaten all Americans with communicable illnesses once thought defeated by modern medical science.
The United States is becoming the Third World as it fills with its people and problems. Open borders are an invitation to billions of humans on earth.
There has been huge outrage in the liberal press about the deaths in the last month of two illegal alien kids while in US government custody. Democrat Presidential wanna-be Beto O’Rourke remarked on the situation, “I want to make sure that we put the well-being and welfare of those kids before any other concern.”
What about the well-being of American kids who are your constituents, Congressman O’Rourke?
America is not the welfare office for the world — it’s our home.
Dr. Marc Siegel discussed the problem of public health under siege during a recent interview on Fox News:
(Spare video here.)
]]>DR. MARC SIEGEL: Just in the last month alone: 5,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally and 25,000 families. Well guess what — they have health problems. I mean, what’s going on in the camps down in Mexico — there’s flu around right now. I looked up flu in Mexico, there’s an upsurge of flu right now; there’s respiratory infections; there’s strep throats going on; there is mosquito-borne diseases that we see; dengue fever; there’s a risk of tuberculosis; there’s hepatitis. All this going on and we’re not screening, we’re not able to screen the people coming in, no matter how much the authorities try, no matter how much CDC now gets involved and also the US Coast Guard Med Corp was sent down there. That’s going to be an enormous help. It’s a humanitarian crisis because we can’t control the amount of people coming in.
KATIE PAVLICH: Doctor, the suggestion is that you have any concerns about the diseases that could be brought into United States by an unvetted caravan, that you’re bigoted, you’re not empathetic, but are these very serious health issues that everybody should be concerned about no matter what country you live in?
DR. SIEGEL: Well you’re talking to a physician here, and I don’t look at it politically. I say flu, let’s start with flu season. These are unvaccinated people; I say let’s try to vaccinate them. I’m not on TV saying let’s vaccinated everyone in the United States, but nobody’s vaccinated at the border, so they’re gonna spread influenza right now, they’re gonna spread respiratory infections, again the other the other diseases I mentioned. I think it’s a humanitarian crisis, but these are contagious diseases as well as other health problems that our hospitals aren’t equipped to deal with.
Now the eight-year-old boy was sent out from a New Mexico hospital with what I think was probably the flu — that’s the hospital’s fault, and Border Patrol is getting a lot of heat for that. They’re not physicians, and they have 1500 EMTs, emergency medical technicians, working for the Border Patrol that are there to screen people and get them to hospitals, but then the hospitals have to have the ability to take take care of them.
PETE HEGSETH: But all of it’s politicized, so this this young boy dies which we all agree is a tragedy and suddenly it’s it’s the policy of the United States. How do we get past that?
DR. SIEGEL: I think we get past that by talking about it right now just like this — that it’s actually a health crisis, it’s not a political crisis, and if you were to look at it politically you’d have to say that the United States has a long history of screening people. I can show you pictures from Ellis Island two hundred years ago where we’re looking for tuberculosis; doctors that didn’t even know what to do with it. Now we have the medical ability to treat these diseases, but we have to have the the physicians and the nurses in place to do so.
It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s a disgrace to actually blame this on the Customs and Border Protection. What do they have to do with it? They’re doing tremendous work down there.
PAVLICH: The Department of Homeland Security is also been pressuring Mexico to start screening inside of their shelters, but can you talk a little bit about that?
DR. SIEGEL: Okay, because I don’t think we know what’s going on there.
PAVLICH: I don’t think we do, but can you talk a little bit about how disease can spread more rampantly when you have a large group of people who aren’t in the best sanitary conditions that we’ve seen in Tijuana, the shelters in Mexico as you just said, we don’t know exactly what’s going on. The shelters in the United States are far superior to the ones that they’re stopping in along the way whether it’s in tents or something else, so does make this situation worse?
DR. SIEGEL: So you just handled the medical side very well, definitely. I actually think that that’s what it is — it’s that they’re going from one camp to the next, we can’t track people, that they’re huddled close together, that there’s not proper hygiene. If you look inside of one of these stations, you see water, you see food, you see bedding, but not a lot of sanitation and not a lot of concern about it infectious disease.
Guess what happens — a cough travels 12 feet. If you have the flu, 25 percent of the people that you encounter get the flu. People are misdiagnosing these problems. Contagions will spread like wildfire in situations where there’s people huddled close together, especially if there’s heat there. We need more medical attention to this, not more political.
Talk about a first-world problem. Anti-vaxxers have made a lot of noise about their right to stop their kids from being vaccinated, but public health concerns outweighed their complaints in the big liberal state. Opposition to vaccinations has been centered in wealthy communities like Marin County and Hollywood. Marin has the highest rate of opt-outs in California: 7.8 percent in 2013, compared to a state average of 2.5 percent. Robert F. Kennedy warned of a vaccine-caused “holocaust” — a remark for which he later apologized, but it shows the hysteria of some.
Meanwhile in the backward Islamic third world, public health workers who vaccinate against polio are murdered for their efforts by Islam followers. In Pakistan, 63 anti-polio vaccinators and their armed guards have been murdered in the last two years (Taliban Assassins Target Pakistan’s Polio Vaccinators, National Geographic, 3/3/15). In Nigeria, nine young women anti-polio vaccinators were killed in two attacks by jihadists in February 2013.
So courageous public health workers face death to keep kids safe from polio. It’s a far cry from privileged Marin County.
Below, relatives of a murdered polio-prevention worker are upset by the sight of her body at a Karachi morgue.
The impetus for the California legislation was fueled by a measles outbreak that started in Disneyland in December and infected 150 people around the west. At Huntington Beach High School, unvaccinated students were told to stay home for three weeks because a kid infected with measles had been present in the school: infectious diseases can be very troublesome!
Measles is a big threat to people with compromised immune systems. A Marin father asked for unvaccinated kids to be kept out of the school his leukemia-afflicted son attends where the opt-out rate is seven percent. The six-year-old boy was still too weak from chemo treatments to be vaccinated himself.
Interestingly, the Centers for Disease Control said the measles outbreak was not homegrown: Disney Measles Outbreak Came From Overseas, CDC Says, 1/29/15.
One of the little-discussed hazards of open borders is the threat to public health from disease-carrying foreigners. In fact, legal immigrants must have a long list of inoculations against communicable diseases, as enumerated by the CDC:
The new open-borders America is threatened by foreign disease as well as jihad terror and diverse crime. So vaccinations are more important than ever.
]]>California vaccine bill SB 277 signed into law by Jerry Brown, San Jose Mercury News, June 30 2015
SACRAMENTO — Ending months of speculation on whether he would endorse the incendiary legislation, Gov. Jerry Brown this morning signed into law Senate Bill 277, which requires almost all California schoolchildren to be fully vaccinated in order to attend public or private school, regardless of their parents’ personal or religious beliefs.
California now joins only two other states — Mississippi and West Virginia — that permit only medical exemptions as legitimate reasons to sidestep vaccinations.
“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,” Brown wrote in his signing message. “While it’s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.”
Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, co-authors of the legislation, soon after addressed reporters at a news conference held at a Sacramento elementary school where most of the students are fully vaccinated.
“The science is clear. Californians have spoken. The governor and Legislature have spoken,” said Pan, who was surrounded by a crowd of several dozen beaming mothers and young children wearing “I heart immunity” stickers.
“No more preventable contagions. No more outbreaks. No more hospitalizations. No more deaths. And no more fear,” said Pan, who is a pediatrician. “(The bill) is now law.”
Asked if he thought California’s action would spark similar changes in other states, Pan said Brown’s swift action on the bill will send a “strong signal” across the country. Neither California nor any other state “wants to continue to see (outbreaks) happen in their neighborhoods,” Pan said.
But opponents who have rallied against the bill at the state Capitol, saying the legislation violates their parental rights, immediately vowed both to sue the state and take their case to California voters.
“We are going to have a referendum to ask the public to put a hold on the law,” said Palo Alto resident Christina Hildebrand, president and co-founder of A Voice For Choice. “We will continue to fight this — we are not going away,” said the mother of two unvaccinated children.
Under the law, vaccinations would be required of children first entering public school, or when they enter seventh grade, after July 1, 2016.
The clamor around the elimination of the “personal belief exemption” heated up in California after a measles outbreak started last December at Disneyland.
By the time they declared the outbreak over in mid-April, state health officials confirmed 136 measles cases in California. Nearly 20 percent of those cases required hospitalization. That’s something that Pan and Allen said could have been prevented if more Californians, particularly those in communities with low-vaccination rates, were fully immunized.
At the victory rally, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, held the 3-month-old son of his deputy chief of staff while thanking Pan and Allen for the “courage” they showed in taking up such a divisive issue.
Over the past four months as the Legislature debated the bill, Pan, Allen and other lawmakers who supported the bill were harassed and bullied by some opponents of the legislation.
Allen said that poor behavior “strengthened the resolve of our colleages” to get the bill passed and signed into law.
“They don’t like to be mistreated. They don’t like to be threatened. They don’t like to be bullied,” Allen said.
The bill has received widespread support from health and education organizations across the state, including the California Medical Association; the American Academy of Pediatrics, California; California State PTA; California Immunization Coalition; and the California Children’s Hospital Association.
Dr. Richard Thorp, immediate past president of the CMA, thanked the governor and the Legislature for their leadership in supporting the bill.
“SB 277 is based in fact and science and will help increase community immunity across the state,” Thorp said. “This is sound public health and we hope Governor Brown’s swift signature on the bill shows how important it is for California. We applaud his fast action to keep Californians safe.”
Brown’s decision Tuesday also aligns with the opinions of two-thirds of Californians, who believe children should not be allowed to attend public school unless they are vaccinated, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll.
Still, opponents say the bill will be a hardship on many parents whose unvaccinated kids now can only attend private home schools or learn through independent off-campus studies. And, they say, some vaccines harm some children, and parents should have the right to protect their children.
Under the law, a physician has broad authority to grant a medical exemption, not only to children who have had severe reactions to vaccines in the past, but also if a family member had a bad reaction to a vaccine.
ATTKISSON: I called CDC not long ago and said how many active cases are being monitored in the United States of ebola [...]]]>
ATTKISSON: I called CDC not long ago and said how many active cases are being monitored in the United States of ebola and they said 1,400. I said, ‘Where is that on your website, these updates?‘ They said we’re not putting it on the web, so I think there an effort to control the message and to tamp it down. This is public information we have a right to and I think the media should not hype it, but should cover it.
I would be interested in more details, such as how many of the 1400 persons are visitors or immigrants from west Africa. Did Attkisson inquire about that? The President has the power to stop travel from infected nations to the US, but he would never block Africans to protect Americans from disease carriers like Ebola Tom (pictured).
As it happens, Sharyl Attkisson will be appearing live on C-SPAN’s viewer call-in program Washington Journal tomorrow morning (Tuesday). Perhaps some interested citizen will inquire further about the borders and sovereignty component of the ebola issue. (Contact info: journal@c-span.org and @cspanwj)
]]>As is often the case, reader [...]]]>
As is often the case, reader comments are more astute than the official article. Many called attention to public health threats caused by the lack of basic hand-washing and other sanitation standards that brick-and-mortar businesses must follow:
alvise giglio
If I tried to operate a brick-and-mortar restaurant in this fashion, I would be FINED and SHUT DOWN by the health department. Even food trucks have to have hot running water for operators to ROUTINELY wash their hands with soap and water. Restaurant operators must spend their own money to take courses to be certified in safe food handling methods, spend THOUSANDS on county/city health permits and other licenses.How in the heck can the city be considering a way to legalize this? Why is it in the city’s best interests to attempt to legalize this? Would the city not be better off obtaining taxes from existing restaurants that are undercut? Would LA not be better off with a few thousand street vendors picked up and deported?
weirdo2odriew
Vendors who are unlicensed, unregulated, untaxed and could potentially give their customers food poisoning is something that should not be supported. I know many turn a blind eye to this sort of thing but just remember they are undercutting lawful businesses WHO DO pay taxes and one of them could be the next ‘Typhoid Mary’ waiting to serve you up a taco.alatinteacher
Everyday LA looks more and more like the poor ghetto sections of MEXICO. Mexico has their rich and upscale cities and those communities wouldn’t allow anyone to sell merchandise or food like they do in LA. As the leaders of LA allow this activities to continue it will just get worst and worst.
Also not mentioned is how the surge of illegal pop-up sellers shows the failure of the economy to supply adequate jobs for citizens and newbies alike — see my September blog, Los Angeles: Street Vendors Increase Because of Unemployment. The jobless recovery indicates that the nation does not need increased immigration but rather far fewer imported workers.
A society cannot have just a little lawbreaking. Government permissiveness incites more lawlessness, particularly among those who reside in the country illegally and have ready excuses for every rip-off they commit.
Los Angeles shows the pathway of lawlessness and no borders to America becoming Third World.
]]>Street vendors scrape together a living, always watching for police, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2014
The young boy tugged on his mother’s shirt and begged for a shaved ice treat from Reyna Silva, who waited for customers behind her humble green push cart.
“Yo quiero raspado,” the boy in a Superman shirt repeated once, twice … six times, using his powers to break his mother’s will.
Silva, 44, scraped ice from a large frozen block into a cup and doused it with lime flavoring. The street vendor had been standing in a busy downtown Los Angeles alley for hours already this weekday afternoon, hoping to scrape a living from Christmas shoppers looking for deals.
For street vendors like Silva, the Christmas season is their version of Black Friday, except there’s no such thing as a big-ticket item — no $1,500 wide-screen TV’s, $225 Nike Air Jordan sneakers or $70 Lego sets. They cobble together a livelihood seven days a week on tiny-ticket items: shaved ice, tacos, corn on the cob, orange juice, bacon-wrapped hot dogs.
Some hope to pay for Christmas gifts that in many cases their own little girls — or boys in Superman shirts — wish for. But vendors like Silva say there are more pressing needs.
“I have to work to pay my rent, my bills, clothes and for food — to provide the basics for my son,” she said. “We’re all trying to find ways to make a living.”
And they have to do it without getting in trouble with police. However ubiquitous they are in much of L.A.’s vast urban landscape, street vendors like Silva are operating illegally. They have to be as ready to scatter when a police cruiser drives by as they are to make a sale.
Earlier this month, an L.A. council committee took a step toward legalizing and regulating street vending, discussing how sellers could obtain city permits. The plan has unleashed fierce debate over whether to legitimize the underground — but anything but secret — economy.
While some neighborhood councils support the plan, others such as Studio City Neighborhood Council members say they are against having street vendors in Studio City — legal or not.
“Putting street vendors in would only, in our opinion, cause more of a traffic jam and hinder people and perhaps become a real issue with cars and pedestrians,” said John Walker, president of the Studio City Neighborhood Council. “Some want them and probably have the room for them. We simply don’t have the room for them.”
But the potential legitimization of the city’s underground economy is raising hopes among illegal vendors who work in fear of being fined and having their wares and carts confiscated.
Carlos Chavez sells tacos out of a baby stroller, which is convenient for quick getaways. When a customer asks for a soda, the 50-year-old explains that he can’t carry too much product because it could get taken away by police. He’s lost his cart in busts at least six times, Chavez said.
“The people sometimes help me run away, but I don’t always get away,” he said. “They take it, and that’s it. I can’t fight back against the police.”
Chavez said he wishes the city would legalize his work.
“We would gain money, and so would the city,” he said. “And we wouldn’t have to worry about running anymore.”
Street vendors say business almost doubles during the holiday season. Silva said she makes as much as $500 a week this time of year, but about $200 less the rest of the year. As Christmas approaches, more vendors appear, ratcheting up the competition for shoppers looking for deals at stores selling boots, flashing, discount toys, beauty supplies, cellphone accessories.
Not far from the alley, a long line of downtown L.A.’s homeless queued up outside the Cardinal Manning Center.
In the alley where Silva has worked for 18 years, near Los Angeles and Fourth streets, the signs of Christmas were everywhere. People carried snowman piñatas or wrapping paper tucked into black shopping bags.
Hanging behind Silva were rows of piñatas reading “Merry Christmas,” as well as a small “X-mas Sale” sign. Shoppers wandered the stores lining the alley, arms heavy with Christmas booty — skirting the puddles and soaked cardboard boxes in the middle of the walkway.
“Raspados, raspados, raspados,” Silva called out every few minutes.
Shoppers walked around vendors working out of strollers, shopping carts and coolers. Some vendors wore aprons secured around their neck and hair pulled back into a tight ponytail or bun to keep any of it from touching food. Several wore a pouch around their waist for money.
Betty Ramirez, a Pomona resident, spent a day walking from store to store, shopping for her sons and other family members. After purchasing shoes, clothing, sweaters and makeup, she stopped to buy a quesadilla from a group of women set up under multicolored umbrellas.
“I prefer them to sell something and you’re buying it, instead of them asking for money out in the street,” said Ramirez, 38. “At least they’re trying to make some way of life to provide for their own home.”
Jesse Morales, 17, has helped his mother, Reyna, every weekend for the past six years. He calls himself the “cashier,” collecting the couple of dollars customers pay for corn, plantains and fried pork skins, or chicharrones, she sells when it’s too cold for raspados.
Since his father was deported after being caught street vending about five years ago, his mother has worked alone to support them. The teenager said he doesn’t expect Christmas gifts.
“There’s one less person in the family,” Morales said, “and my mom has to support me and herself, and my dad isn’t helping us anymore.”
Helene Federici, whose window overlooks the alley, says she’s seen an increase in illegal street vending in the past three years and is considering relocating.
“It’s had an incredibly negative impact on my life – the noise, the garbage, the smell,” said Federici, 37. “I can’t live or work like this … I wish they would just leave our neighborhood alone.”
When two LAPD police officers showed up at the end of the alley on a Sunday afternoon, Silva and other vendors ran off and hid. The only clue they left behind was the lingering smell of food.
This day, the officers walked down the alley and only warned the remaining vendors to leave. They can decide to warn vendors or confiscate items, he said.
“If they don’t want to listen or we have to come back a second time around and they obviously didn’t make any effort to remove the items, then at that point we have our options open to us,” one of the officers said. “But everyone’s listening to us, everyone’s moving, so this is not a real issue right now.”
Less than a minute after the officers headed back to their cruiser and drove away, vendors reappeared. Silva said she’d rather not be breaking the law.
“I do feel scared, but I need to pay my rent and feed my son,” she said. “I need to work.”
Across from Silva, Nicole Trevino, 21, fried up vegetables and bacon-wrapped hot dogs on a miniature stove in an aluminum-foil-covered shopping cart. Last year she sold DVDs, and this year she began selling food.
Trevino said she is skipping Christmas shopping this year. She wants to put the money she makes toward an apartment for her, her boyfriend and their 2-month-old daughter.
“That’s going to be my Christmas present,” she said, adding that her boyfriend is also saving money he makes from street vending. “We just want the apartment so we can all be together.”
You really cannot make this stuff up: there’s a deadly plague, so let’s bring it to America.
In the Fox News clip following, reporter Adam Housley remarked about the high level of officials who are planning to import ebola:
This State Department memo has seen by Nancy Powell, the ambassador to India. She is leading Ebola coalition for the Department of State. Also seen potentially by Pat Kennedy Undersecretary for Management you might remember the name from some of the Benghazi decision that were made. It’s basically been cleared by the highest levels of the State Department. So when we hear in briefings that there has been no plan as far as the State Department knows they may not be telling the truth or may not be communicating with each other. This apparently has been seen at some of the highest levels.
Also in the video, former UN Ambassador John Bolton remarked, “This is about the worst idea dealing with ebola I can think of.” Greta van Susteren found the proposed policy “so profoundly stupid.”
What was the point of sending US troops to Africa to build medical facilities if the crazed politicians in Washington planned to grab patients and bring them to the US for treatment? The soldiers are being endangered for foolish political do-goodery and will have to be quarantined upon their return. Why is this America’s job anyway? Where is the United Nations?
Americans are not confident about how the government is handling the ebola crisis. An Associated Press-GfK poll from last week found plenty of mistrust. For example, only one in five approve of the CDC’s work on the disease.
And apart from the danger of spreading disease, what about the cost to taxpayers at a time when healthcare for Americans is becoming more expensive and harder to find? Ebola Tom Duncan (pictured) cost the taxpayers $500,000 for nine days of intense medical care.
What’s the plan here? Some of the talk has been about NGO people, medics — that sort — being the persons to be rescued, but not including the poorest Africans will bring charges of racism, so lots of them will have to be part of the mix.
Will the Africans who recover be allowed to remain as immigrants? Will there be an Ebola Visa, courtesy of President Obama?
The Washington Times has more details:
]]>State Department plans to bring foreign Ebola patients to U.S., Washington Times, by Stephen Dinan, October 28, 2014
The State Department has quietly made plans to bring Ebola-infected doctors and medical aides to the U.S. for treatment, according to an internal department document that argued the only way to get other countries to send medical teams to West Africa is to promise that the U.S. will be the world’s medical backstop.
Some countries “are implicitly or explicitly waiting for medevac assurances” before they will agree to send their own medical teams to join U.S. and U.N. aid workers on the ground, the State Department argues in the undated four-page memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Times.
“The United States needs to show leadership and act as we are asking others to act by admitting certain non-citizens into the country for medical treatment for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) during the Ebola crisis,” says the four-page memo, which lists as its author Robert Sorenson, deputy director of the office of international health and biodefense.
More than 10,000 people have become infected with Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and the U.S. has taken a lead role in arguing that the outbreak must be stopped in West Africa. President Obama has committed thousands of U.S. troops and has deployed American medical personnel, but other countries have been slow to follow.
In the memo, officials say their preference is for patients go to Europe, but there are some cases in which the U.S. is “the logical treatment destination for non-citizens.”
The document has been shared with Congress, where lawmakers already are nervous about the administration’s handling of the Ebola outbreak. The memo even details the expected price per patient, with transportation costs at $200,000 and treatment at $300,000 per case.
A State Department official signaled Tuesday evening that the discussions had been shelved.
“There is no policy of the U.S. government to allow entry of non-U.S. citizen Ebola-infected to the United States. There is no consideration in the State Department of changing that policy,” the official said.
Another department official said they are, though, considering using American aircraft equipped to handle Ebola cases to transport non-citizens to other countries.
“We have discussed allowing other countries to use our medevac capabilities to evacuate their own citizens to their home countries or third-countries, subject to reimbursement and availability,” the second department official said.
The internal State Department memo is described as “sensitive but unclassified.” A tracking sheet attached to it says it was cleared by offices of the deputy secretary, the deputy secretary for management, the office of Central African affairs and the medical services office.
A call to the number listed for Mr. Sorenson wasn’t returned Tuesday.
Mr. Obama has been clear about his desire to recruit medical and aid workers to fight Ebola in Africa.
“We know that the best way to protect Americans ultimately is going to stop this outbreak at the source,” the president said at the White House on Tuesday, praising U.S. aid workers who are already involved in the effort. “No other nation is doing as much to make sure that we contain and ultimately eliminate this outbreak than America.”
About half of the more than 10,000 cases in West Africa have been fatal.
Four cases have been diagnosed in the U.S., and three of those were health care workers treating infected patients. Two of those, both nurses at a Dallas hospital, have been cured.
Several American aid workers who contracted the disease overseas were flown to the U.S. for treatment.
The United Nations and World Health Organization are also heavily involved in deploying to the affected region, but other countries have been slower to provide resources to fight Ebola in West Africa or to agree to treat workers who contract the disease.
The State Department memo says only Germany has agreed to take non-German citizens who contract Ebola.
European nations are closer to West Africa, making transport easier, the State Department memo said.
Officials said the U.S. is the right place to treat some cases, notably those in which non-Americans are contracted to work in West Africa for U.S.-based charities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“So far all of the Ebola medevacs brought back to U.S. hospitals have been U.S. citizens. But there are many non-citizens working for U.S. government agencies and organizations in the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa,” the memo says. “Many of them are citizens of countries lacking adequate medical care, and if they contracted Ebola in the course of their work they would need to be evacuated to medical facilities in the United States or Europe.”
The memo says the State Department has a contract with Phoenix Aviation, which maintains an airplane capable of transporting an Ebola patient. The U.S. can transport noncitizens and have other countries or organizations pay the cost.
The U.S. has helped transport three health care workers to Germany and one to France.
In the U.S., the department memo lists three hospitals — the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Emory University Hospital in Atlanta — that are willing to take Ebola patients.
According to the memo, Homeland Security Department officials would be required to waive legal restrictions to speed the transport of patients into the U.S.
“A pre-established framework would be essential to guarantee that only authorized individuals would be considered for travel authorization and that all necessary vetting would occur,” the memo says.
A Homeland Security spokeswoman didn’t return emails seeking comment.
Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning public interest watchdog, revealed the existence of a State Department plan this month. When The Times described the document to Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, he said it is evidence of why the administration balked at adopting a travel ban on those from affected countries.
“Under this theory, there could be people moving here now, transporting people here now, and it could be done with no warning,” Mr. Fitton said. “If our borders mean anything, it is the ability to make sure that dire threats to the public health are kept out.”
After those initial reports surfaced, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, sent a letter asking for answers. On Tuesday, he said the document The Times obtained “raises more concerns and questions than answers.”
“President Obama should be forthcoming with the American people about the scope of his plan to bring non-U.S. citizens infected with Ebola to the United States for treatment,” Mr. Goodlatte said in a statement.
Below, in the Godfather II film, immigrant males are given a [...]]]>
Below, in the Godfather II film, immigrant males are given a health exam on Ellis Island.
That fictional story was realistically set in 1901, but nowadays we imagine our amazing medical advances allow us to ignore the necessity of quarantine, which seems so antiquated. Or at least that’s what the administration wants us to think — anything to maintain open borders.
In fact, public health is not on the to-do list for this administration at all, to judge from the continuing unrestricted entry of persons coming from the ebola hot zone via airports, not to mention the open southern border.
Ebola is the big public health threat today because it is communicable and its ease of transmission remains somewhat mysterious. But tuberculosis, a major killer in earlier centuries, has not gone away and it is still lethal, particularly in the third world, whose residents our open borders invite. In fact, the strain of TB that exists in Central America is said to be drug resistant.
Crowded government flophouses, like the one shown below in Brownsville, can promote the spread of TB.
]]>10 Illegal Immigrant Minors Diagnosed with TB, Breitbart, October 12, 2014
DALLAS, Texas — Ten unaccompanied alien children (UAC), who entered the U.S. illegally, were diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) between January through September, CNS News is reporting. All were detained while trying to enter the United States from the Mexican border, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Their points of entry were not disclosed.
According to CNS News, these children were allowed to stay in the United States.
ORR spokesman Kenneth Wolfe told the news outlet in an email that the children were isolated and treated, “after being rendered non-infectious, all 10 were released to verified sponsors in the U.S.”
Wolfe also said, “The respective local health department connects with the health department in the city in which the child is released through the inter-jurisdictional TB notification system, and our Office of Refugee Resettlement also notifies the state. Then, the local TB control program follows up with the child and family.”
He said that none of the illegal minors with active TB are currently in the UAC program. Besides the 10 illegal minors diagnosed with TB, 125 were also diagnosed with chicken pox (Varicella), according to the article.
Wolfe also told CNS News that the ORR has not had reports of other diseases requiring isolation. He said that the ORR follows CDC guidance on these and other public health concern matters.
“Unaccompanied minors are given medical screening when they arrive at US border stations, and if necessary medical treatment,” Wolfe stated, adding that once they are part of the HHS UAC program, they get a well-child exam and are inoculated with childhood vaccinations against communicable diseases, including TB, plus a mental health exam.
He did not say if they were tested specifically for the deadly Enterovirus D-68, which former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkinson questioned if there was a possible connection to these illegal immigrant minors. Breitbart News reported that Attkinson cited a Virology Journal study which “found ;EV-D68 among some of the 3,375 young, ill people tested in eight Latin American countries, including the Central American nations of El Salvador and Nicaragua, in 2013.”
Enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68) has now claimed the lives of five youngsters nationwide. FOX News reported a sixth death on October 12. There are 691 US confirmed cases of EV-D68. They are all children. Fourteen cases are in Texas. An 11 year-old North Texas boy from Collin County is being treated with EV-D68 polio-like symptoms of paralysis since the summer.
Wolfe also said in his emailed statement about the confirmed TB cases, “If it is determined that children have certain communicable diseases or have been exposed to such communicable diseases, they are placed in a program or facility that has the capacity to quarantine.”
He pointed out that children with serious health conditions are treated at local hospitals and that the tab for these service are “fully paid by the federal government.”
The only problem is convincing the President that his first duty is to protect the American people, not send 3000 troops to Africa to set up free-to-them hospitals. In fact, it appears the White House plan is to inconvenience citizens rather than block potentially infectious Africans, according to the Daily Mail: Americans set to face increased screening at airports amid Ebola crisis.
Poe discussed the African ebola threat with another judge recently:
As a Texas congressman, Poe became alerted when Ebola Tom (pictured), the Liberian medical moocher, arrived in Dallas on a travel visa to get first-world healthcare.
Poe got media attention because of his press release and letter to the head of the Centers for Disease Control:
]]>POE: Cease Travel to Affected African Nations until the Ebola Threat Is Contained, Press Release, October 1, 2014
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, Congressman Poe (TX-02) sent a letter to Dr. Frieden, Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), regarding the recently confirmed case of Ebola in the United States. In the letter, Poe calls on the CDC to recommend that the President invoke his authority under 42 U.S.C. Title 42 Sec. 265 to prohibit non-essential travel to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea by all American citizens, resident aliens, and foreign nationals attempting entry into the United States, until this current outbreak is brought under control.
“The health of our citizens should be the main priority of our government,” said Rep. Poe. “Fortunately, there is a law already on the books with the very purpose of containing the spread of diseases into our country. The time to invoke this law to ensure Americans are not exposed to this deadly disease is now, not after the disease is spread even further within our borders.”
LETTER
Dear Dr. Frieden,
It is a serious concern for my constituents and I that there is now a confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas, Texas. While I am confident that the health practices that are in place in the United States will be effective to prevent a major outbreak, I remain concerned that it appears that Americans are still making non-essential trips to the affected areas despite the public warnings against such travel.
I believe that the recent Ebola case in Dallas highlights the fact that non-essential travel to the affected region is putting Americans at unnecessary risk. I have nothing but respect for the American military and medical volunteers that are operating in Liberia and the affected region right now. I am confident that the proper procedures have been put in place to prevent transmission to and from those groups. However, I do question why other Americans not in these groups would still travel to the region and whether or not they could become infected and bring the infection home with them.
Given the severity of this threat, I request that the Centers for Disease Control consider recommending to the President that he use his powers under 42 U.S.C. Title 42 Sec. 265 to prohibit non-essential travel to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea by all American citizens, resident aliens, and foreign nationals attempting entry into the United States, until this current outbreak is brought under control. The health and safety of the American population should always be the primary consideration in situations like this.
Sincerely,
TED POE
Member of CongressSTATUTE
42 U.S.C.
United States Code, 2011 Edition
Title 42 – THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
CHAPTER 6A – PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
SUBCHAPTER II – GENERAL POWERS AND DUTIES
Part G – Quarantine and Inspection
Sec. 265 – Suspension of entries and imports from designated places to prevent spread of communicable diseasesFrom the U.S. Government Printing Office, www.gpo.gov
§265. Suspension of entries and imports from designated places to prevent spread of communicable diseases
Whenever the Surgeon General determines that by reason of the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into the United States, and that this danger is so increased by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of the public health, the Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President, shall have the power to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate in order to avert such danger, and for such period of time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.
(July 1, 1944, ch. 373, title III, §362, 58 Stat. 704.)Transfer of Functions
Office of Surgeon General abolished by section 3 of Reorg. Plan No. 3 of 1966, eff. June 25, 1966, 31 F.R. 8855, 80 Stat. 1610, and functions thereof transferred to Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare by section 1 of Reorg. Plan No. 3 of 1966, set out as a note under section 202 of this title. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare redesignated Secretary of Health and Human Services by section 509(b) of Pub. L. 96–88 which is classified to section 3508(b) of Title 20, Education.Delegation of Functions
For assignment of functions of President under this section, see section 3 of Ex. Ord. No. 13295, Apr. 4, 2003, 68 F.R. 17255, set out as a note under section 264 of this title.