POLITICS: Bush Signs Quarantine Orders for Bird Flu

President Bush authorized government quarantine powers for bird flu, by executive order on Friday. The fatality rate for bird flu is about 70%. Dr. Keiji Fukuda of the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) says he suspects there are more cases than the 69 that have been reported. Also of note: In August of 2003, Fukuda stated that traditional efforts like quarantine would not work to control bird flu.

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Bird flu is carried by birds, which carry the virus around the world. Various animals including cats get the disease. The virus is present in the meat of infected animals like ducks and chickens. It is long-lived and attaches to surfaces like feathers - it also is present in excretions, which means it's in the environment and is transmitted via soil and water.

So as the CDC's Dr. Fukuda pointed out in 2003, quarantine won't work to control bird flu.





As any farmer can tell you, quarantine never works if you don't clean the barn. In this case, the barn is the whole planet. Rather than quarantining select human victims, it would be far more effective for the US government to enforce existent EPA regulations and ensure safe water treatment.

Yet instead of tackling the most significant bird flu transmission vectors - plus other emerging epidemic infectious diseases in America's water and environment - the Bush administration is focusing solely on person-to-person transmission and planning quarantine, which a) won't work, and b) will curtail civil liberties. One needs to wonder why.


Since 9/11, Americans have been conditioned to give up civil liberties for the illusion of safety. New measures all infringe on American civil liberties, like the Patriot Act and the President's emergency powers granted to deal with the "war on terrorism." More to the point, all these new measures have become permanent and now supplant the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The new quarantine powers appear to be part of the same package.

The potential abuse of quarantine powers and isolation camps has been discussed often at ATS. Recent reports about asymptomatic carriers and Fukuda's observations about mild cases set the stage to quarantine "troublemakers" for political purpose - on the grounds that they are "carriers."

Most likely, we can expect government quarantine powers to become permanent, like the Patriot Act.



Related News Links:
www.sfgate.com
www.reuters.com
news.scotsman.com
news.xinhuanet.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
WAR: Patriot Act II. Update
WAR: Military Says Terrorists Might Use Bird Flu as Bioweapon
Why Did Kerry Concede? What’s Next?
WAR: WHO Pushes for Bird Flu Vaccine Production

So this will be unleashed upon us whether manmade or natural. Again, the forces of nature are with Bush and his terrors.

I dont know what to make of this. I still think this is waaaaaaay too convenient for this government, seeing that they want nothing better than to take all our freedoms away.

Well how can you keep the public in the dark when all this problems are happening all over the world.

People in the US needs to ask our government what is doing to keep us safe.

Is our government doing enough testing of our meat supplies, or if just covering up so the meat industry doesn't suffer any loses.

Scientists identified the mutation process and tracks decades ago - and the big boys have been positioning to profit from the "opportunity" since then - rewriting insurance policies, revising credit terms, getting new legislation etc. This is the tail end of the strategy, and they're almost out of the closet.

FYI - Bird flu is only one of the new epidemic diseases. Do take the time to follow the links below - it's easy reading and VERY informative.

For example - "Super Bugs" are highly contagious and lethal bacteria. They can't be treated with antibiotics - in fact, antibiotics now cause previously benign bacterial strains to mutate into lethal forms - most "Super Bugs" mutate into highly contagious and lethal forms on exposure to antibiotics inside the host's body.






These and other diseases are scary - but they could be controlled with environmental clean-up measures.

However - Rather than stepping up clean-up to prevent the spread and evolution of new disease mutations, Bush cut the EPA's budget and bypassed existent regulations - rather than ordering vaccines or stockpiling antivirals, new policies establish parameters for "population triage" designed to "cull" the already sick, aged and vulnerable - and bioterrorists are set up to take the blame when the new epidemics hit.

Still, it's not a conspiracy, just good business.

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Bump-

This is a very newsworth story. I wonder why nobody seems to care..

Thats what i find fascinating about ATS.

Thanks dgt.

...Looks to me like the quarantine laws could be abused even worse than the Patriot Act. Any thoughts on that one?

Also - I forgot about this thread but dgt pulled it back up...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 2-4-2005 by soficrow]

Too right, one always thinks ideas about concentration camps are far fetched, but with acts like this, it isn't hard to imagine it become an actual reality.

How exactly you turn this into a civil rights issue, I'll never know. It's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard on here.



They are caused by people who don't take medication properly, and allow the bacteria to survive and evolve. Don't make it into some conspiracy issue.



How exactly is cleaning up the environment going to stop the Bird Flu?

That was the first thing that went through my mind too. I am not really sure but I have heard that your orginization FEMA is apparently a government within a government right? This is generally considered a bad idea. SS anyone?

When you find a dead bird I reccomend not touching it, and to contact your local health department. They will tell you what to do with the bird, and it will help track west nile virus.

West Nile doesn't impress me. It does seem to be wreaking havoc in my neighborhood though. At one point earlier in the winter I saw a flock of crows larger than any I had ever seen. I usually see crows in groups of three, sometimes groups of seven, but one day a month or two ago I saw easily a hundred in one tree.

Now they're all gone, except for one, who I've seen around the neighborhood, he likes to perch outside my window in the mornings.

Quarantine is dangerous, because it tends to increase fatalities in the quarantined population, while often doing little to stop the spread to the uninfected.

If you don't target all the vectors, you're not destroying the disease, simply.

In fact, having a lot of sick people running around might do something to bolster immune response in those who come into contact with them on a regular basis, I'm not sure.

I think this is a dangerous turning point, because along with other rules in effect, it allows the government to lock up a sizable percentage of the population if they decide to do so, even senators and statesmen, then pass judgement on the people with a limited congress, and drop all sorts of heinous laws on our heads. (As though they don't already. )

I don't know what will come, but seeing all the pieces falling into place does nothing to reassure me of a good-for-everyone outcome.

Sofi, good one, I didn't notice it until just now.

This was a long time in the coming, and I'm not surprised at all by the revelations presented. We have always been expendable, but as citizens, we are now truly and totally expendable in a legal and binding sense. The future looks more and more bleak, and that, in a way, gives me hope of a renewal. It always tends to be darkest before first light.

Life is paradoxical, so all things that are good are bad, and all things that are bad are good. This might end up working in favor of the people in this country, if enough are made aware of it, and muster the energy to get upset over it.

Clostridium is an anaerobe. Therefore it does not flourish in oxygen does it? Therefore it isn't exactly a problem under atmospheric conditions. Clostridium infects deep wounds primarily and other areas of low to no-oxygen. It will never cause any pandemic diseases. Nevermind that Clostridium is treatable with appropriate antibiotic regimes and that you can kill the spores with appropriate measures as well.

The link above says ESBL bacteria are only a problme for immuno-comprimised individuals. This is a small fraction of the problem--again no potential for pandemic.

Vancomycin resistance is a problem, especially with diseases like TB, but even though there are vanc-resistance Mycobacterium in high density places like NYC, we haven't seen epidemics. Again, not really a big concern.

Ignoring the fact that big pharma and biotech companies are spending billions bringing new classes of antibiotics to the market to buy us more time, every last one of these bacteria can be killed with the right bacteria phage. They've been using phage successfully in Russia for almost 100 hundred years to treat a variety of bacterial infections. And phage resistance usually comes at a greater cost than antibiotic resistance, so phage resistant bacteria are much less pathogenic than their antibiotic resistant counterparts. If you have to start deleting LPS from your outer membrane you're going to start finding your outer membrane comprimised at higher temperatures (especially fever grade temps) you know?

Anyway, none of the bacteria you've mentioned has much of a potential to cause epidemics and they're all treatable.

Bird flu is a little bit of a worry, but, WHO and CDC aren't really in a panic, just heightened concern. Also recent network epidmieological models have shown that even smallpox can be contained with the right quarantine measures. There are no real global killers out there in the microbiology world. Nasty viruses and bacteria to be sure, but nothing that is going to destroy civilization or even put a dent in it.

The links I provided above lead to a comprehensive series of articles from the CBC that profile "super bugs." ...Well worth reading and informative.

In fact, C. difficile IS epidemic in certain locations, specifically hospitals. It's worth monitoring - mutations happen - for example, last year, Edmonton reported a new strain of E. coli that spread via aerosol. Unheard of, right?






The point is that resistant mutations are evolving faster than effective antibiotics can be developed - at present only one antibiotic seems to work, and we can NOT count on appropropriate measures being taken to kill the spores. ...As the CBC reports, budget cutbacks hit nurses and support staff first and thus, the first line of effective hygiene defense. US hospitals are likely much worse - when the bottom line is the first priority, sacrifices are made and the patients are first to pay.





Again, please read the material. Re: ESBL - it's only fatal in immune compromised individuals - but also very likely may cause long term low grade chronic infections in otherwise healthy people. And chronic counts.







Again I disagree - the epidemics have already started.






Absolutely. This is where the research and production needs to be. FYI - A Russian scientist was in the USA about 2 years ago looking for investors to back bacteriophage production - after a brief public flurry, the press was buried and as far as I know, the initiative was killed. Apparently, the profit potential is not high enough.






FYI - one of the real problems is that current decontamination and sterilization techniques leave the super bugs alive to evolve and mutate - but kill the phages and thus prevent the phages from mutating and evolving along with the super bugs. Time for a pardigm shift.





Please read the articles - the problem is real and no, they are NOT all treatable. As Dr. Mark Miller said, "Something happened 18 to 24 months ago, ..." and now, super bugs are mutating into more virulent forms on exposure to antibiotics.






?!? ...Don't know where you get your information - but it reads like damage control.






Bird flu crosses species barriers, doesn't die and also is transmitted via surfaces, soil and water. Quarantining human victims does squat.

...all the new "super bugs" are just that - and possess previously unthinkable "super powers." There is a problem, Houston. Deal with it. Don't bury it.






See above, especially the part about damage control. ...Your information is completely inaccurate and out of date.





I agree that a certain elite segment of the population believes they are protected and immune - and is willing to sacrifice millions of people to ensure that they can maintain their standards of luxurious living. So by those terms, no, civilization won't be destroyed. Just ordinary people.

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[edit on 2-4-2005 by soficrow]

I have been following the bird flu for awhile now, thanks to sofis warning...

I still see it as a "yet to be determined".....
We only know that it can become a very fatal disease...
We also know that some get it and have no effects...
So, we can not say with any certainty, as to how widespread or how many people have it. We can only say that its more widespread than we can thought originally.

And the thing i find incredible is that for a "threat" that we are told is worthy of polio type precautions (according to our government), isn't worthy of a few Public service announcments as to the easy methods of avoiding the majority of exposure.

How many people washed their cars this weekend?
did you realize that you just exposed yourself to a potential deadly disease?
WHY ISN"T OUR VERY CONCERNED GOVERNMENT TELLING US SIMPLE TIPS LIKE AVOIDING BIRD CRAP FOR GODS SAKES? (I realize it takes more to prevent an outbreak, but they aren't doing ANY?)

When this potential epidemic happens, it will happen fast, and having knowledge like:
1.wash all fruits and vegatables, and remove outer skin...
2.avoid contact with bird crap and feathers...
3.perhaps drop the formality of hand shakes for a polite salute or nod/curtsy...
4. Put a PSA out once in awhile so that people are alert to the threat.

these steps could go ALOT farther than a quarantine, but yet, a quaratine order is ALL that has been done in regards to protecting the population...

it is for this reason alone, that i doubt that our administration is concerned about our health, as much as getting their way with our freedoms.
That theory is far more consistant with this administrations actions...

remember folks... NOT ONE PSA has been put out to inform the public, but a rash and extreme quarantine order has been issued...
Our government either doesn't care about our health, or they are too ignorant to use far more effective means to prevent an outbreak...(like educating the public).

I am not against a quarantine if it is needed...BUT, i would like to know that our leaders have done everything else they can do before hand...

More on new mutations/strains of old diseases:




Note: MRSA used to be onbly spread in hospitals - now it's endemic in some communities.

Yes Sofi I was reading on the news that the Staphylococcus once only found in hospitals is now showing up on places around cities like you say, this is very disturbing because its resistance to antibiotics.

Can anybody point this Canuck to where I can read the text of the executive order?

Or are these kept as "State Secrets" until de-classified or released through FOIA?

I want to see what's in that order.

It likely connects to other executive orders on the books, like those described on this site:



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[edit on 5/27/2005 by Gools]

I certainly dont want to be accused of over-quoting, and I certainly agree that viral overload and disease superimposition is a technical objective of the wanton globalists, but I've yet to get a handle on the posse-comitatus link leading us to some neo-nazi Aryan Nation website. Am I missing some irony or wit here?

OMG!!!!

That site has totally changed!

It's been highjacked I think.

When I clicked on "home" I get a "page not found" and the home address has nothing to do with posse commitatus.

I used an old link from another post without checking it.

Sorry about that.

Those who know me also know that I don't espouse any views remotely similar to the ones on that site.

Edit:

It used to link to a page with a list and description of all the executive orders that would go into effect if there was an emergency necessitating that FEMA be put into full action.

This site has a copy of what I wanted to link to FEMA Executive Orders


Oh yeah ... I still want to read the Executive Order ...

[edit on 5/27/2005 by Gools]

[edit on 5/27/2005 by Gools]

Okay, cheers for your link, Gools
These people are best known for setting up an encampment in NYC on September 10th 2001 ready to go the next day
These really are unruly Hooligans In Government (Reich's HIGs)

[edit on 27-5-2005 by dh]