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Second US Case of MERS
Health officials have confirmed a second U.S. case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Florida this week. Not a native of the states, the victim was visiting from Saudi Arabia. Health officials say this case is unrelated to the other recent one diagnosed in Indiana.
“The risk to the public remains very low,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, health officials are trying to contact all the passengers on the planes the man took to inform them to watch out for early signs of the MERS virus.
This virus has been found in camels, but officials don’t know how it is spreading to humans. It can spread from person to person, but officials believe that happens only after close contact. Not all those exposed to the virus become ill.
But it appears to be unusually lethal – some estimates have suggested it has killed nearly a third of the people it sickened. The estimate has been dropping as health officials have begun diagnosing more and more cases with less severe illness. But the estimated fatality rate for MERS still is far higher than what’s seen with seasonal flu or other routine infections.
Are we looking at the beginning of a new pandemic? As a physician, I seriously doubt it. However, what if this virus mutates into something more contagious? Though slim, the possibility is there. Like all viruses, MERS is prone to frequent mutations, and does have the potential to become more infectious. And what makes this scary is that we still have no treatment, prevention or source for this virus.
By 2013, farmers were growing genetically modified crops on more than 420 million acres of land across 28 countries. However, both the environmental and human safety of these crops still remains highly debated. Without long term, controlled human safety data available, this concern is certainly valid.
Because of this concern, politicians, particularly in Europe, have created regulations to monitor GM products. However, in the United States, labeling of these foods is not mandated by the government. In fact, it is mostly voluntary in nature.
A new test called “MACRO,” which stands for: multiplex amplification on a chip with readout on an oligo microarray is now available to identify these crops. The sensitivity of this new genetic test is the best on the market and can identify about 97 percent of the known commercialized modifications.
As the Europeans take the lead in using such tests, the United States lags behind with the transparency of these foods. While the FDA goes after soaps and e-cigarettes, real and potential harmful foods/chemicals can be poisoning our country with little being done to stop it. Where are our priorities? Better yet, who is paying off the FDA and politicians?
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No Conservatives Christians Allowed
Has the media turned so progressive that any non-progressive, conservative thinking person is shunned from working?
Regardless of your social beliefs, you should find the treatment of David and Jason Benham by HGTV a little troubling. I understand that some disagree with their Christian beliefs but that is certainly not the point nor is it the issue. The issue is that they lost their show on HGTV not because of what they did but what they believed.
We are now finding media censoring themselves at a heightened, liberal level. Will conservative checks now be done for every person who tries to get any job on TV, the newspaper or on the radio? If you attended a mass in which the pastor or priest demonized abortion, could you be out of a job? The scarier thing to ask is if this liberal litmus test will spill over to different professions? Remember what happened to Brendan Eich from Mozilla or the scrutiny Chick Fila-A received.
We are heading to this point. My great grandfather was the first Martino to come to the USA in the early 20th century. He left Italy after he and his other 3 brothers were arrested for attending a democratic rally. His 3 brothers died in jail, and he came here to start a better life—in a place where freedom of speech was guaranteed by law.
Where has that guarantee gone? Well ask yourselves this– how many CEO’s are going to come out and say that they are pro-life? I can guarantee it will be zero. They will be too afraid to speak their mind for fear their job or company would be in jeopardy. The media attack dogs are ready and more than willing to pounce on anybody who does not adhere to the progressive party line.
The sad part is that there is a complete double standard. Remember Obama sitting through Reverend White’s hate filled speeches? Where was the media outcry. Sure, it was discussed and written on conservative outlets, but the main stream media killed the story before it really got legs.
The truth is as the mainstream media gets more progressive, our country gets worse.
A new study from the Brooklyn Institution states that more US businesses are being destroyed than are being created. This trend has been most striking over the Obama administration, culminating with the worst numbers since the beginning of 2009.
There is no states or regional localization for these numbers. The poor business growth and the destruction of businesses are seen throughout the entire 50 state union. The only valid conclusion when looking at these statistics is that the problem arises from a central source and not on the local level. When I write of a central source, I am, of course, referring to Washington DC.
Since Obama has taken office, there has been an attack on the middle class. Despite Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s confirmation of his lies, the wealth gap between the rich and poor is widening by the day, while squeezing out the middle class in the process.
Remember, small business is the spine which makes America’s economy and creates most of the jobs in this country. However, as any small business owner will tell you, it has become more difficult by the year to maintain that business. Higher taxes, no incentives, new laws and an unfriendly central government has made business ownership increasingly more difficult. Also, it deters the entrepreneurial spirit and discourages anyone from wanting to create their own business.
Despite the lower unemployment rate, it clearly explains why the nation’s workforce shrank by more than 800,000 workers in April, sending the labor force participation rate plummeting 0.4 percentage points to 62.8 percent.
Despite what you hear on the news, America’s economy remains in a downwards spiral. Many have given up looking for work and are now on the government doll, or they just decided to retire due to the bad economy. As this trend continues, America’s competitive edge will soon be lost.
Don’t let this happen.
Recently, Chris Stigall spoke with comedian Rob Schneider. The comedian’s responses were both candid and honest. He was open about his feelings of the Obama administration and of the liberal press.
He stated, “Democracies don’t end well. We are sliding very fast towards fascism. It’s an ugly kind of thing. There’s this kind of mob mentality that we have to be careful of.”
He also admitted that he was pressured by the media and the Hollywood establishment to have a more liberal or progressive stance on political issues. He said, “There’s a polarization that’s happening…I do think you look can look at government and go, ‘Wow, it is out of control now,’ and if you do criticize or tend to be not directly along a liberal stand, you can get murdered.” He went on to comment that the biggest government watchdog, the media has taken sides and no longer accurately reports the news. He stated, “We don’t really have freedom of the press. It’s owned by about eight different companies, and it doesn’t really express or help the average American.”
Schneider was critical of the President’s handling of the economy and he feels certain policies are negatively impacting businesses. He noted, “There’s not one segment of business under the Obama administration that hasn’t been hurt…he attacks for-profit schools, which is totally an elitist thing from a guy that went to Harvard. I think for free, by the way.”
Some say the more conservative segment of the population is paranoid that the media is a leftist propaganda machine or that the government is out to get them. However, with honest comedians like Rob Schneider and the blatant IRS scandal, there is substance to their argument.
People ask me as a physician if a new, incurable virus or bacteria could spread across the world, causing a massive pandemic. Unfortunately, I tell them the answer to this question is “When, not if.”
The truth is that bacterial and viral pathogens have been around for millions, if not billions of years. While modern antibiotics, on the other hand, have only been around for around for less than a measly hundred years. Plus, with worldwide travel, people not taking their full prescription of antibiotics, and the rapid mutation rate of diseases, it is just a matter of time before one of these bugs causes real problems.
In my book The New Reality, I write of such a scenario. Unfortunately, this situation may be more plausible than fictional in nature. With the recent disassembly of the American healthcare system, rising national debt, and deteriorating research grant funds, we may be financially unable to handle a massive pandemic—making this scenario more likely by the day.
I’m not a fear monger, but a recent article caught my attention about a deadly virus that was brought back from Saudi Arabia. It is called the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and carries a 25-30% mortality. The virus comes from the same family as the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, coronavirus, which killed almost 800 people worldwide in 2003. The incubation period of the virus — the time between exposure and development of symptoms — is about five days, similar to SARS.
The patient who contracted MERS was returning home to Indiana. Upon arrival, he began to have shortness of breath, coughing and fever. Officials do not know the origin of the virus or how it spreads. The MERS virus has been found in camels, but officials don’t know how it is spreading to humans. There is no vaccine or treatment available. In some countries, the virus has spread from person to person through close contact, such as caring for or living with an infected person. However, it is unknown how the patient became infected.
“MERS is now in our heartland,” said Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, during a briefing Friday.
The scary thing is what happens if this MERS virus mutates into something more deadly. By nature, virus routinely mutate—making treatment of such illnesses as the common cold and HIV very difficult to treat. So what happens if it mutates into something more deadly or possibly something more easily spread?
It is certainly a reasonable question to ask. And the only true answer is to be prepared. But as our ability to prepare is under serious jeopardy as a direct result of Obama’s new domestic policies and the Affordable Care Act, we may all be caught someday off-guard for such an event.
For more information please refer to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-confirms-first-case-of-deadly-mers-virus-in-indiana-man-who-traveled-to-saudi-arabia/2014/05/02/b27673b4-d233-11e3-a6b1-45c4dffb85a6_story.html
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Mark of the Beast?
A recent article with this quote from Revelation 13:16-17 piqued my interest:
And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.…
Who is the beast and what is the mark? Whatever your beliefs or feelings on this passage may be, the new RFID tracking chip may make you rethink your preconceived ideas. RFID chips are certainly not new, and they are in all of our cell phones, ipads and some have their dogs implanted with them. And if you don’t know what RFID chips are, they are wireless non-contact devices that use radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects.
However, with miniaturization, these small chips as noted on the above picture (seen compared to a grain of sand) can be easily placed on every human on the planet. The procedure would theoretically take less than a second with the right implantation device (such as a modified syringe) and only require a local anesthetic. This concept may seem foreign but we’ve been taking baby steps towards this point for years. The NSA already willingly admits they have RFID information on all of our cell phones for years and can easily track us at an time.
Is it such a leap to make it mandatory by the government to have one of these chips implanted in all of us? What if they advertised that it would be a good way to monitor your kids—especially if something happened to them? It would play on every parent’s greatest fears, and many would flock to get them. Then, what if the government made the chip free for everyone under the age of 16? I then possibly foresee that if this happens, the government would next say that no child is allowed in school if they don’t have the chip.
I hope you all can see the domino effect. Where will it lead? Well, one hint can be found in the quote above from the Book of Revelation: in order to do any commerce such as buy or sell it would have to be done through the chip. If this sounds crazy, it makes perfect sense if you are the one’s levying out taxes. Just think of all the new venues of taxes the government could collect.
I’m not an alarmist. However, the RFID chip does sound eerily similar to the mark of the beast. Just think of what I have written the next time you hear or read anything about the chip. It may make you stop and take a second look.
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Journalism is Dead
Are there no good, honest reporters left on the planet? Where are the Edward Murrows or Walter Cronkites? No, I’m not saying journalism is completely dead, but in the 21st century, just about all of them have lost their credibility. Instead of asking the hard hitting questions or seeking the truth, they are bound now not to their journalistic morals but to their political agenda.
Take for instance the recent coverage of Obamacare. The basic truth is that Obama lied about everything in the law in order to get reelected. “You will keep the same doctors.” “Your rates will go down by 2500 dollars.” “Healthcare for everyone.” Lie, lie and another lie. There is not a shred of truth to any of these statements, and few to no reporters are calling him out on these blatant lies. If President Bush did the same, he would be crucified over the air waves.
People are losing their health coverage, losing their jobs and having their salaries cut all around the country as a result of this law. Yet, where is the press outrage? Where are the hard questions? No one is calling the president out on either of his lies or his failed policies. Remember the hard hitting questions during Watergate? Those days are long gone.
We are at the brink of a new cold war or worse yet, war with Russia and what are the latest questions for Obama on his Asian tour? “Did you like the green tea ice cream?” “How did you like the ice cream dessert in the shape of Mt. Fuji served at the state dinner?” Am I crazy but shouldn’t the press be asking about the devaluation of the yuan, North Korean nuclear tests, the imminent invasion of the Ukraine or the inefficacy of NATO?
The days of when real reporters covered the news are long gone. Now we have a presidential cheering squad that pollutes the American mild and hides the truth under a smokescreen of political correctness and progressive ideology.
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Obama Prolongs Recession
The best way to prolong a recession and stifle the economy is by continually raising taxes. Unfortunately, this self-destructive policy has been Obama’s disastrous domestic policy ever since taking office. Under Obama’s recent proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said this would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people. And you all thought Jimmy Carter was a disaster.
Plus, under Obama’s budget proposal, according to the CBO, the budget will never balance. But over the next ten years, the federal government would add $7.183 trillion to its debt held by the public. And in my opinion, that is a conservative number that does not account for the trillions of dollars of mounting debt accrues from Obamacare.
The problem now in America is that he job market has stagnated considerably under Obama. With full-time work hard to find, workers have built temping into a de facto career, minus vacation, sick days or insurance. The assignments might be temporary — a few months here, a year there — but labor economists warn that companies’ growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers’ career trajectories and retirement plans. In March, the temp industry added 28,500 jobs. As these numbers grow on a monthly basis and as more people are just simply giving up looking for work because the jobs aren’t there, America’s full time labor force dwindles by the day. Plus, as incentives to stay home and live under the government dole continue their insurmountable rise under Obama, there is no longer incentive to look for work for many people.
A recent story I came across I think nicely sums up the current state of the American work force. For seven years through 2012, the number of Californians aged 50 to 64 who live in their parents’ homes swelled 67.6% to about 194,000, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The jump is almost exclusively the result of financial hardship caused by the recession rather than for other reasons, such as the need to care for aging parents, said Steven P. Wallace, a UCLA professor of public health who crunched the data. Plus, the number of Americans 55 and older who have been out of work for a year or more was 617,000 at the end of December, a fivefold jump from the end of 2007 when the recession hit, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Any economist can realize that these numbers and trends all stink and are hazardous to a solvent American economy. Plus, if you think the national unemployment numbers disagree with my statements or is an accurate barometer of the health of our economy, you are sorely wrong. These numbers reflect only those who are actively seeking work. Most have simply given up or settled on part time employment—both of which artificially pads the unemployment numbers.
America is heading in the wrong direction, and if we don’t do anything now, the consequences will be dire.