The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Homeland Security’s Customs & Border Protection (CBP) (not taking into account, the use of fever reducers to skirt through US ports of entry) have issued new screening guidelines to be implemented at five U.S. airports for people entering the country from Ebola-plagued countries.
More than 94% of the people who travel from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone enter the United States through these ports of entry, i.e., New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare, and Atlanta international airports.
JFK International Airport will institute the new screening guidelines (“enhanced entry screening”), Saturday, October 11, 2014. Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare, and Atlanta international airports will institute the new protocol Monday, October 13, 2014 (Columbus Day).
Below are excerpts from the CDC’s press release, parts of which reads as if the Obama administration is more concerned with not offending the nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone than they are the possibility of a national Ebola pandemic.
“CDC is sending additional staff to each of the five airports. After passport review:
- Travelers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone will be escorted by CBP to an area of the airport set aside for screening.
- Trained CBP staff will observe them for signs of illness, ask them a series of health and exposure questions and provide health information for Ebola and reminders to monitor themselves for symptoms. Trained medical staff will take their temperature with a non-contact thermometer.
- If the travelers have fever, symptoms or the health questionnaire reveals possible Ebola exposure, they will be evaluated by a CDC quarantine station public health officer. The public health officer will again take a temperature reading and make a public health assessment. Travelers, who after this assessment, are determined to require further evaluation or monitoring will be referred to the appropriate public health authority.
- Travelers from these countries who have neither symptoms/fever nor a known history of exposure will receive health information for self-monitoring.
Entry screening is part of a layered process that includes exit screening and standard public health practices such as patient isolation and contact tracing in countries with Ebola outbreaks. Successful containment of the recent Ebola outbreak in Nigeria demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach.
These measures complement the exit screening protocols that have already been implemented in the affected West African countries, and CDC experts have worked closely with local authorities to implement these measures. Since the beginning of August, CDC has been working with airlines, airports, ministries of health, and other partners to provide technical assistance for the development of exit screening and travel restrictions in countries affected by Ebola. This includes:
- Assessing the capacity to conduct exit screening at international airports;
- Assisting countries with procuring supplies needed to conduct exit screening;
- Supporting with development of exit screening protocols;
- Developing tools such as posters, screening forms, and job-aids; and
- Training staff on exit screening protocols and appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE)…”
Taking advantage of a good crisis (false flag, black swan depending on whom you consult), timing is everything.
Within hours of the CDC’s issuance of new Ebola screening protocols (“enhanced entry screening”) at five US ports of entry, airplane cabin workers at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal D staged a 24-hour strike.
The cabin workers backed by SEIU Local 32BJ are protesting hazardous work conditions, Ebola and the opportunity to become unionized.
Collective bargaining aside, all everyone deserves to be protected from the Ebola virus whether it is in the workplace or on the streets of America.
Three or four days are not enough to train cabin cleaners to clean airplane cabins and bathrooms adequately and safely, let alone handle hazardous chemicals without risk to themselves, their families and the people who travel by air.
Finally, all travelers have to do is take two aspirin 20 minutes prior to touchdown on U. S. soil and voila, no fever. That being said, between the CDC’s issuance of countless faux protocols and their daily briefings, something stinks.
What is the Obama administration working triple time to distract us from?
LINK:
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p1008-ebola-screening.html
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